The Sell: NRL star Gutherson’s $2.3m move to Dragons heartland revealed
Dragons co-captain Clint Gutherson and his partner Jesse Arena have bought in the region, spending $2.3m on a recently-built duplex home in Woonona.
NSW
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The St George Illawarra Dragons co-captain Clint Gutherson and his partner Jesse Arena have bought in the region.
The 2025 recruit, who joined the Dragons after nine seasons with the Parramatta Eels, has spent $2.3m on a new home with his partner, along with a small contribution from the family.
The recently built duplex home in Woonona, a beachside Wollongong suburb 15 minutes’ drive north of WIN Stadium, has four bedrooms and two bathrooms.
Its marketing suggested it drew inspiration from Art Deco architecture.
The home has a north-facing rear yard with views of the escarpment and glimpses of the ocean.
There’s an outdoors kitchen on the rear tiled terrace, with Beefeater appliances.
The master suite has a walk-around wardrobe and an ensuite with double shower and double vanity.
Guy Hampton from McNeice sold the home in the coastal suburb, which has a $1.5m median price, according to PropTrack.
Gutherson and Arena, and their daughter Rory, had left their Northern Beaches abode after the NRL transfer. They sought $3500 a week for the four-bedroom Collaroy Plateau home they had built for just shy of $1m a few years ago.
They had demolished a 1960s home after Gutherson paid $1,875,000 in 2019. He transferred a half share to Arena earlier this month.
After told by new Parramatta coach Jason Ryles he wouldn’t be the first choice fullback, Gutherson signalled his intention to relocate to Dragons heartland after signing a three-year deal with the club.
“I’m going to move the family down, enjoy a change of scenery,” he said.
“I feel … excited and honoured to be able to come here and put this jersey on and have that badge on my chest,” adding the move would give him “a chance to really buy into what they’re doing and be close to training and all the boys”.
Gutherson had long had a penchant for property in his native Northern Beaches.
He retains an investment in Mona Vale, where he was born, which cost $800,000 in 2016, the year he signed on for the Eels after departing the Manly Sea Eagles.
In 2021, he sold a Collaroy investment for $1.53m, having paid $1.2m along with other family members in 2018.
Soon to turn 31, his first home purchase was at Cromer.
The Dragons sit 12th on the NRL ladder, having only won one of their last seven games.
During Friday night’s game at Townsville, the ABC Sports Radio broadcast described his skills with “beautiful hands.”
OOH LA LA, IT’S SUNNY HERE
The indulgent exploits of holidaying estate agents in sunny Europe during the July listings break reached their crescendo with postings from aboard TRG agent Gavin Rubinstein’s five-suite €135,000 ($242,000) a week rental, On Time.
The social media uploading even prompted UK tabloid attention since Ruby Adler, the buxom former Made in Chelsea cast member, was onboard as it sailed the Mediterranean.
It seems the constant stream of bronzed boasting did not go down well back in damp Sydney, with Sunday Confidential columnist Briana Domjen commenting on the “nauseating number of images shared to social media.”
Thankfully for The Sell, there were no estate agent entourages at any of the cultural opportunities on offer, such as the Coco Chanel Roaring Twenties exhibition at Villa Paloma in Monaco.
Nor in Paris, where the highlight was the David Hockney exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, complete with his many works following his move to Normandy – to avoid the constant bothering in London and Santa Monica.
But the quelle surprise was spotting A Bigger Grand Canyon, Hockney’s 1998 painting on loan from the National Gallery of Australia, which had been bought in 1999 with the assistance of Kerry Stokes, Carol and Tony Berg and the O’Reilly family.
On the south of France property front, there’s been little renovation progress at Roc et Mer, the Symond family retreat at Eze-sur-Mer. Every time The Sell cruised past the €13.75m ($A24.5m) waterfront – on the 600 bus – there was concrete dust storm emerging from the seafront bought last year by retired mortgage broker John Symond in the names of his children, Stephen Symond and Deborah Symond O’Neil, who was briefly at the Grand at Cap Ferrat before heading to Saint Tropez.
Of course the Point Piper dentist David Penn and his wife Linda, the Lowes Manhattan heiress, are gutting Villa Mirasol at Cap d’Ail. Son Josh Penn and his husband Ben Palmer, who recently sold their Point Piper mansion to the Gold family, apparently plan to relocate to give their children an “international upbringing”.
PRIVY COUNCIL KNOCKS BACK SYDNEY WOMAN’S APPEAL FOR SHARE OF TRUST
The Privy Council in the UK has rejected the appeal of Vaucluse socialite philanthropist Ashley Dawson-Damer for entitlement to further provision from the historic family trust.
The family wealth stems from butter and beef shipments by trader George Skelton Yuill who emigrated to Australia in the 1880s, and whose daughter Winifreda married the Earl of Portarlington in 1907.
The family created a trust for beneficiaries which included “the children and remoter issue” of his grandson, Viscount Carlow. Viscount Carlow had two sons, one of whom, John Dawson-Damer married in 1982 for a second time, taking Ashley (nee Mann) as his wife, and making her a discretionary beneficiary.
John died in a motor-racing accident in 2000, and relations between the family advisers subsequently soured. She was mostly cut out of the Bahamas-based trust, and was not consulted nor informed until 2013. By 2009, some 98 per cent of the $US402m Glenfinnan Trust had been distributed to John’s brother, George Dawson-Damer’s genealogical family.
Proceedings began in the Bahamian Supreme Court in 2015, with Dawson-Damer claiming decisions had been made in bad faith, unjustly excluding her and without proper consideration of her interest.
The counter argument was that Dawson-Damer was independently wealthy, adding that 2 per cent of the trust remainder, valued at US$14m ($21m) in May, had been retained as a safety net for her.
There was a 21-day hearing ahead of the initial 2022 judgment, which ruled the failure to seek an update on Dawson-Damer’s financial needs was only a “very cursory” lapse.
The Court of Appeal upheld that conclusion in 2023.
The Privy Council found earlier this month that there had been a breach of the fiduciary duty of proper consideration, but “Ashley cannot show that the trustee, or a reasonable trustee, would have acted, or even might have acted, any differently had there been no such breach”.
The Privy Council “will humbly advise His Majesty that her appeal should be dismissed.”
Yuill’s estate in County Laois was Emo Court, the second-largest enclosed estate in Ireland, with neo-classical 1790 building with stunning dome, which was sold in 1920 to the Irish Land Commission.
Dawson-Damer briefly sought $30m for her Leslie Wilkinson-designed Vaucluse home, Greenway, in 2022. It cost $4.2m when sold by filmmaker Jane Campion in 2001.
A $4.8M DEN FOR LION’S PRODUCER
The Northern Beaches film producer Shahen Mekertichian, best known for bringing the Oscar-nominated film Lion to the big screen, has bought at Suffolk Park near Byron Bay.
He’s spent $4.8m on a 1.16ha inland acreage estate marketed as a “rainforest-like compound”.
Set close to the Coopers Shoot escarpment where a sandstone rockface meets the rainforest, the two-level home features six bedrooms and several living and dining areas that open to terraces.
There is a wine cellar and a games room. Its grounds have a firepit area, heated swimming pool, and a three-car garage with adjoining workshop and studio.
It has ocean views.
The home was on the market for over 400 days before it was sold by the local Sotheby’s office, who advertise to interstate buyers that they offer a complimentary pick-up and drop-off car service, as well as Facetime walk-throughs.
PropTrack puts the Suffolk Park median price at $1,810,000, down 6 per cent annually after 44 sales.
Mekertichian has a whole-floor penthouse in Queenscliff which was bought for $6.1m in 2019.
He previously owned on Fairy Bower in Manly, selling for about $18m in 2023, having paid $927,000 for the property in 1993.
He is a director of Sunstar Entertaiment, which produced the hit film Lion starring Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel, which made $140m worldwide after its 2016 premiere.
He is also a director at Liquid Capital Management.
‘BEST EVER’ PENTHOUSE FINALLY SOLD
The penthouse in Vaughan Blank’s STM Property Group’s six storey Vilon, Point Piper complex has finally settled at $22.5m, two years and two months after the strata registration.
TRG agent Gavin Rubinstein who conducted the initial 2022 marketing, described the penthouse as “the best penthouse I’ve seen in Sydney, and I have seen a lot of good apartments.”
An early offer of $27m for the apartment, set more on Wentworth St than Wolseley Rd, that came with $30m hopes, did not proceed.
Designed by architects BKH, the penthouse sold through Michael Pallier and Mary Lin of Sotheby’s to property developer Fedor Czeiger and his wife, Elizabeth, who recently sold for $45m in Bellevue Hill.
Vilon’s sub-penthouse initially sold in 2022 for $16.5m through Rubinstein, but the Yang family opted not to proceed to settlement of the 240sq m whole-floor level five residence.
It resold last November for a weaker $12.82m through Sotheby’s.
The initial sale in the non-waterfront complex was off-market to retired Darlinghurst restaurateur Helen Spry, from the boomtime late 1980s eatery Chez Oz, and her adman husband Malcolm for $9m in 2020.
Mary Ingham, of the Ingham chicken family, spent $12.6m, and former Proline Sporting Products director Ken Wolpert spent $14m on the garden apartment.
Most of the front curved balconies eschew full glass in preference for a concrete wall.
DJ TIGERLILY SPINS A PROFIT
Dara Hayes, known as DJ Tigerlily, has snappily sold her Matraville investment property, with eyes on buying a family home.
Hayes bought in 2019, before the boom for original houses that are making way for coastal duplexes.
Sydney Sotheby’s agent Brooke Marshall had initially sought $2.3m with the price guide upped, before it sold mid-week for $2.79m.
The home cost $1.8m.
IMPRESARIO’S HOME SOLD
Urimbirra, the far South Coast retreat of the late theatre producer Martin McCallum and his partner, yoga teacher Gwynne Jones, has been sold before its scheduled August auction.
The stone provincial farmhouse, set on 34ha close to the village of Tilba Tilba, had come with a $5.75m to $6.25m price guide.
McCallum, who died in 2024 aged 73, brought Les Misérables to Australia.
SPORTY CAM SCORES $6.3M
The contemporary Coogee Beach house of former Channel 9 sportscaster Cameron Williams, which sold ahead of its March auction, settled at $6.3m when bought by Luigi Iacullo.
The four-bedroom Brook St property, set in an elevated location 500m from the beach, had $5.7m guidance through James Ball and Mark McPherson at Sydney Sotheby’s.
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Originally published as The Sell: NRL star Gutherson’s $2.3m move to Dragons heartland revealed
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