Cronin Island: Inside Gold Coast’s most exclusive enclave
The Gold Coast’s most exclusive enclave has been home to some of the city’s most expensive property and one of its most controversial residents. This is its inside story.
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WATERFRONT property on the Gold Coast has always come at a premium and Cronin Island has long been at the centre.
While less heralded than its most colourful neighbours – Chevron Island and Paradise Waters – the small enclave’s single street has less than 40 properties, making its mansions highly sought-after.
Some of the Gold Coast’s best-known figures have lived on the island in its 53 years.
Last week the Bulletin brought you the early days of the island, from its creation in the 1960s until its 1980s boom.
This week we look at its twists and turns from the 1990s and some of those who called it home.
Cronin Island had made history in 1985 as the location of the Gold Coast’s first $1m sale.
The so-called “recession we had to have” hit in the early 1990s but the suburb’s large houses continued to secure price tags of more than $1m on the rare occasions they came onto the market.
Among its residents during the 1990s were former Channel 9 game show hostess Joan Waters, industrialist George Stratigo and prominent property developer and surf lifesaving legend Peter Lacey.
Mr Lacey was acclaimed as one of the 25 greatest surf lifesaving figures of all time and had worked with high-profile development companies Raptis and Sunland Group and sat on the board of IndyCar.
He died in his sleep at his Cronin Ave home in early 1997.
The same year brought another Gold Coast property record, this time by prominent Japanese developer Shuji Yokoyama.
Mr Yokoyama had bought into the island in 1985 after spending $1,35m for the former mansion of businessman John Bartlett.
In the late 1980s he demolished the Bartlett house to make way for an $8m, 2314sq m, eight-bedroom mega mansion which he planned to live in during the three months he spent on the Gold Coast each year.
By 1997 he was ready to move on and put the house on the market. It sold for $6.5m to computer software magnate Masafumi Miyamoto, just shy of the then-Queensland house record of $6.8m.
“By any standards, that’s a great price,” PRD Realty joint managing director Mr Gordon Douglas said at the time.
“People have made a lot of money in the stockmarket; we’ve seen a lot of sales above $1m in the last few weeks.”
Ms Waters sold her Cronin Island mansion for $4m in 1998.
By 2000, Hedges Ave had overtaken Cronin Island as the record-breaking strip but it continued to attract big-name buyers and guests, including Mark McIvor and automotive group head James Frizelle.
During the early 2000s, Hollywood stars Rowan Atkinson and Buffy The Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar both stayed there while filming the 2002 film Scooby Doo.
Perhaps the biggest name to take up residence on Cronin Island in the early 2000s was then-30-year-old Billabong boss Matthew Perrin and his family, who lived in a mansion neighbouring the former Yokoyama home.
The home sat across two lots, includes seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a 2000-bottle temperature-controlled wine cellar, and garaging for 12 cars.
The Yokoyama home, used as a filming location for Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, also went back on the market in 2003 for $13m but failed to secure a buyer. The price dropped first to $10m before selling for $7m to David and Marion Baird.
By the late 2000s, the global financial crisis hit.
Perrin, who had exited Billabong in 2002, declared bankruptcy in 2009 with debts of more than $28m after investing heavily in China.
It was soon discovered he had taken out two mortgages worth about $13.5m against his Cronin Island home.
The Commonwealth Bank sought to seize the property in a bid to recover the lost funds but Perrin’s former wife Nicole won in court arguing that her then-husband had forged her name on loan documents.
It sold for $6.1m to Terry Gavan, head of EMACS Electrical, in 2012 while Perrin was sentenced in 2017 to eight years in jail.
He was released in 2019 after serving two years.
The mansion went on the market and set a Cronin Island record in 2020 when it sold for $12.45m to a Chinese buyer from Sydney who intends to use it as a permanent home.
Perrin’s ex-wife, who lived in a neighbouring house built in 2016 for years after their divorce sold that mansion for $7.3m in mid-2021.
Revealed: Inside Coast’s most exclusive enclave
IT doesn’t get any more exclusive than this enclave in the centre of the Nerang River.
Less than 40 houses sit on Cronin Island, the man-man offshoot of Chevron Island, making its mansions among the most prized real estate in the entire city.
While less-known than Hedges Ave, the famous “millionaire’s row”, Cronin Island’s Southern Cross Drive has quietly made a name for itself as the home to some of the city’s most expensive properties and biggest sales of recent years.
In June 2021, No. 16 Southern Cross Drive sold for $7.3m while No. 17 sold a month later for $8.9m.
Another, the six-bedroom No. 14, has been on the market for more than two years and has an asking price of more than $13.75m.
It’s the latest chapter in the tale of an enclave which has been home to some of the Gold Coast’s richest and most powerful people, as well as the scene of a key business figure’s very public downfall.
The story of Cronin Island dates back to nearly a decade before it was constructed to the creation of its neighbour – Chevron Island.
Chevron Island was the dream of developer Stanley Korman who, in 1957, snapped up Wedgewood Island, a sliver of land to the west of Surfers Paradise and built what is today known as Paradise Island. After finding success, he set his eyes on Goat Island, a small piece of land in the middle of the Nerang River which real estate kingpin Laurie Wall sold to him.
More than 400 people attended the development’s opening in March 1960.
By the late 1960s, Chevron Island had some of the most highly prized real estate, though its streets were still relatively sparse of houses.
Aerial photos from the era show the future Cronin Island unconnected to Chevron Island and untouched by development.
But it didn’t last for long and, with the opportunity for more real estate, it was bought by developer Hooker Rex which began selling its 39 lots in 1969.
It was the same year that the company began to develop the nearby Paradise Waters precinct.
Prices for the south-facing canal blocks were $10,000 to $12,000, with the eastern and western-facing river blocks selling for $16,000 to $18,000.
The north-facing sites were the most expensive, priced at $18,000 to $20,0000
Real estate agent Tony Hancock, who was operating in Surfers Paradise during the late 1960s, said there were few takers.
“I tried to convince many of my old customers to buy,” he told the Bulletin in 2001.
“They’re now kicking themselves because they didn’t.”
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Cronin Island became a semi-secret base for rich-listers. It made history with the first $1m sale on the Gold Coast, in 1985. The property went for $1,015,000.
Among those were developer John Bartlett, who was one of Queensland’s richest men in the 1980s.
The man behind some of Nerang’s biggest developments and the famous Bartlett’s Liquor Barn, a popular riverside pub, put his house on the market in late 1985.
Rod Roberts, of PRD Realty, said the house could break Gold Coast price barriers if sold.
“As far as I know, no one has ever paid $1.5 million for a home on the Gold Coast but this is one of the best in the area,’’ he said.
The mansion successfully sold for $1.35m to Japanese developer Shuji Yokoyama, president of Daikyo Kanko, who built the Palm Meadows precinct at Carrara.
By late 1987, Cronin Island was rapidly become popular with buys, as values skyrocketed on the back of a “drastic” shortage of land.
Max Christmas Real Estate figures showed prices in the enclave had shot up 75 per cent in a single year.
Some of the buyers planned to demolish the existing houses in favour of building bigger mansions, similar to the wave of mansions which replaced the Mermaid Beach shacks on Hedges Ave in the 1980s and 1990s.
Among them was the Japan-based Mr Yokoyama who demolished the Bartlett house to make way for an $8m, 2314sq m, eight-bedroom mega mansion which he planned to live in during the three months he spent on the Gold Coast each year.
Mr Yokoyama said he chose the Cronin Island site, opposite Paradise Waters and next to Chevron Island, because it is “”the best spot, the best residential area’’ on the coast.
He told media at the time that he wanted to advertise Australia to the VIPs of the world using his mega mansion.
Though the late 1980s weren’t all glitz and glamour – the Gold Coast City Council targeted an illegal brothel which was alleged to be operating inside one of the island’s houses in mid-1988.
NEXT WEEK: RISES AND FALLS ON CRONIN ISLAND.
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