Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s home security concerns
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have been forced to beef-up security at their Southern Highlands home.
Actor Nicole Kidman and singer husband Keith Urban have approval for a gatehouse at their Bunya Hill, Sutton Forest, estate.
But, with no sign of any construction, locals are guessing the family’s traditional Easter holiday in the NSW Southern Highlands might not be on this year.
The works have been costed at $32,450, so their security will not be in much splendour.
The gatehouse application stemmed from the “property owners’ need to have security guards on the premises when they’re at home”.
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It seems the couple arrange for the hire of a portable structure which is towed onto the property and set up at the entry gates along with a portable WC facility for the security guards.
“This is a detraction from the heritage property’s elegance and not in keeping with the owners’ expectations for the long-term appearance of the site,” the application approved by Wingecarribee Council says.
The proposed heritage character design will “feel as though it was part of the original entry gates”.
Brett Goff Building Design & Drafting lodged the paperwork.
There have been other small projects on the 44ha Bunya Hill, which was bought in 2008 for $6.5m from Peter Coad, the then head of global markets at National Australia Bank, and his wife, Helen, through Drew Lindsay in conjunction with Martin Schiller.
Bunya Hill is an 1878 Georgian mansion with wide sandstone verandas, pressed-metal ceilings, 10 marble fireplaces, and a carved cedar staircase.
It had previously been known as Mount Valdimah, named after Denmark’s King Valdemar the Great, and also Shrublands.
Kidman has often donned gumboots and gardening gloves over Easter, although, if she does this year, it will be quickly back to the United States, where she is producing a movie for Amazon titled Holland, Michigan, and starring alongside Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen.
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The film, described as a darkly humorous Fargo-esque thriller set in Holland during Tulip Time, is about a schoolteacher who suspects her husband may be a serial killer.
The bulk of the film is being shot in Nashville, Tennessee, where the celebrity couple reside, but also at Michigan’s Windmill Island Gardens, home to de Zwaan windmill, the last mill transported from the Netherlands.
The location has had a tulip time in May since its first crop of 100,000 tulips in 1929.
Of course the NSW Southern Highlands, which comes alive at Easter, has its own Tulip Time, in September, with the Ada Corbett Gardens mass-planted with 75,000 tulips in a spectacular springtime display.
There are another 30,000 tulips planted across the shire, creating a picturesque vista which has been going since 1911.
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Originally published as Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s home security concerns