This waterfront property was once offered as national park. Now it’s set to be carved up and sold off

For almost 20 years, billionaire high-roller Phillip Dong Fang Lee has hatched grand plans for his private bushland property on the state’s Mid North Coast. There was the Peter Stutchbury-designed eco-resort, an 18-hole golf course, an 11-bedroom mansion atop Fame Mountain and even a quarry.

Through it all, the local resident action group has not only lobbied against any major redevelopment of the 400 hectares on a marine sanctuary at Fame Cove, but harboured hopes it would eventually be acquired as a national park.

There are plans to subdivide the 400-hectare property at Fame Cove.

Those hopes are not lost on the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, which has long maintained an awareness of its potential as a national park even as it continues to conduct on-site inspections and monitor two Aboriginal cultural heritage sites on the property.

But Lee and his wife, Xiaobei Shi, have other plans, announcing on Friday that they plan to cash in on the property by carving it up and selling off individual lots.

“Ultimately, this could result in up to 16 lots being offered for sale to any buyers as part of new housing opportunities in a very beautiful region,” said a spokesman for the Lee family. A subdivision application is expected to be lodged in the coming week.

Phillip Dong Fang Lee and his family corporate interests have clocked up a slew of environmental breaches on the Fame Cove property.

However, Mid-Coast Council is a few months away from finalising a proposal to protect the land as a significant natural habitat by rezoning it from rural land to C2 environmental conservation.

Complicating matters are orders recently handed down in the Land and Environment Court imposing a $200,000 bond and quarterly progress reports to restore the once-pristine bushland through a program of remediation and stabilisation.

If not completed in two years, a penalty notice warns the owner risks a fine, jail or sequestration of the property.

The Fame Cove property was first publicly touted as a potential national park in 1998 when Boral offered it to the National Parks and Wildlife Service for $1.1 million.

But when the money couldn’t be raised, it was sold into private hands.

The new owners applied to subdivide the property into 10-hectare lots, but that failed when the state government stepped in and seized planning control given “state and regional significance”.

The Fame Cove property near Port Stephens was first offered as a national park by Boral in 1998.Credit:

After that, then-owners Angelo Doukas and John St Pier proposed to build an eco-village on 40 hectares, dedicating the rest as national park, but abandoned the plan when Lee offered to buy it.

Lee and Shi paid $8.8 million for it in 2006 with no finance required. Ownership later transferred to the couple’s Tea Garden Farms Pty Ltd, of which Shi was made sole director in 2019. She remains the ultimate owner.

Since then, the property has clocked up a series of breaches of environmental protection laws, of which the first was an almost $200,000 fine in 2009 after a dam wall failed during excavation.

In 2014, there was an $8000 fine after a section of bushland was cleared and felled trees were left in the marine sanctuary. In 2019, a magistrate issued the maximum $88,000 fine for unauthorised removal of vegetation and for dumping rock deposits on the waterfront.

Cleared trees dumped in Nanabah Creek, which feeds into Fame Cove, resulted in an $8000 fine in 2014. Credit: Ross Griffiths

The latest orders handed down by Justice Rachel Pepper in the Land and Environment Court were scaled back from originally court-ordered stop-work and clean-up orders.

In exchange for the compromised schedule of works, the development approval to build three houses (including the 11-bedroom mansion) and internal roads have been surrendered.

But neighbour Len Yearsley, who heads up the Fame Cove sub-committee of the North Arm Cove Community Association, says the $200,000 bond and reporting requirements don’t go far enough given Lee’s deep pockets.

“This is the last remaining parcel of undeveloped waterfront land of its size in Port Stephens, and it would be a wonderful asset in an area where there is no significant national park or tourist attraction,” said Yearsley.

Lee rose to prominence in Australia in 2015 when he and Shi set a non-waterfront house price record of $39.9 million for their Point Piper mansion Mandalay. As well as a slew of high-end homes in the eastern suburbs, the couple’s corporate interests have amassed more than $47 million worth of property on the Mid North Coast.

The extent of Lee’s wealth was laid bare in 2021 when his Australian assets – including 16 properties, an account at The Star casino, and a fleet of luxury cars – were frozen as the tax office pursued them for $272 million.

The following year, Lee emerged as a star witness in an inquiry into The Star and its suitability to hold a casino licence – he turned over more than $2 billion at the casino from 2007 to 2021.

The freeze orders have since been lifted and Lee has settled with the Australian Tax Office.

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