$27m Noosa waterfront home has sparked a legal war within the Jalna yoghurt family
The purchase of a glamorous waterfront property has sparked a legal dispute over a wealthy family’s $100m-plus fortune, which came from the Jalna yoghurt brand.
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EXCLUSIVE: For most people, the McLaren family’s seaside getaway on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, would be good enough.
It’s just across the road from the beach and the view from the pool on the front deck is of the boats bobbing at the local yacht squadron and out to the waters of Port Phillip Bay.
But it’s here that Campbell McLaren and his wife, Pam, held a crucial meeting in June last year that allegedly enabled them to buy a second, even nicer, mansion for a record $27m by the waterside in Noosa, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
The purchase of the Noosa pile, which followed the sale of the McLaren family’s stake in its Jalna yoghurt business, is among transactions that has sparked legal war within the clan over the fate of its $100m-plus fortune.
Former Federal Court judge John Middleton, KC, is now tasked with investigating the affairs of the family’s trust and winding it up – a move family members hope may help smooth waters that have become more turbulent than Port Phillip Bay in a thunderstorm.
The trust was set up by Campbell’s late father, Bruce, in 1978 – the same year that the family paid $350,000 for the Jalna dairy business, which at the time produced cottage cheese, sour cream and just one variety of yoghurt.
According to a 2013 profile of the family published by The Australian, Campbell ran the business and his older brother, Stuart, did sales and accounts until he retired. Stuart died in 2012.
Campbell’s sons, Wes and Lachlan, eventually took control of the business but Stuart’s children, Kate and Candace, were not involved in its management.
Under the McLarens, Jalna grew to two dozen different yoghurt varieties and filled supermarket shelves, becoming a household name.
The trust became extremely profitable, throwing off millions of dollars in profit every year – it made more than $54.6m between 2013 and 2022, according to Supreme Court documents filed by Candace. That’s a lot of yoghurt.
Candance launched legal action last year, seeking orders that included removing a company controlled by Campbell and Pam as trustee – something the couple, and other family members, agreed to in April.
She also claimed that the trust also regularly paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Campbell, and similar amounts to companies associated with him.
Things were good for Campbell and Pam, who lived a life of quiet luxury that included trips to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, sailing the Greek islands, shopping in the markets of Marrakesh and visiting the ancient rock ruins of Petra, in Jordan.
They lived in an Italianate mansion in leafy Melbourne suburb Camberwell for almost two decades before selling it in favour of a city bolthole on St Kilda Rd.
The pair broke into the headlines last year with the sale of Jalna and the purchase of the Noosa dream home.
On April 29 last year the family sold its two-thirds of Jalna to Lactalis, a French company that is one of the world’s biggest dairy groups, for $110m – valuing the entire enterprise at about $165m.
And on November 3, Campbell and Pam bought the Noosa property, which wasn’t even on the market, after falling in love with it while they were staying there on holidays.
The property is nestled in Noosa’s most exclusive enclave, Noosa Heads, a stone’s throw from Ricky’s River Bar, which Test cricketer Michael Clarke and then-girlfriend Jade Yarbrough visited before their furious late-night showdown in January.
It features four bedrooms, a hot tub, private pool and its own pontoon for parking the yacht.
The fate of the $110m reaped from the Jalna sale and where the money came from to pay for the purchase of the dazzlingly white-walled Noosa home are among issues ventilated among family members in the Victorian Supreme Court.
Middleton will need to determine what exactly the family trust owns, and who’s entitled to a share in it – he’s already started, asking the court last week for a ruling on whether Stuart’s widow, Maria, and her children are inside or outside the tent.
But despite the long list of issues, there’s one problem he – and the McLaren family – won’t have to deal with.
This week, Jalna recalled two of its yoghurt varieties because they are contaminated by bacteria. With the McLarens long gone from the scene, that’s Lactalis’s problem.
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