David Wenham exits Potts Point stage left, looks to pocket $6m on way out

David Wenham has long been one of Potts Point’s most high-profile locals, having settled into the neighbourhood more than 25 years ago when it was heavily populated with seedy nightclubs and the veteran Aussie actor was best known for his role as Diver Dan on the ABC series SeaChange.

A lot has changed since. What was once Sydney’s most colourful neighbourhood now ranks among its most expensive, while Wenham has managed to ditch the sex symbol label to be better known as an actor’s actor, if not one of the busiest of his generation.

The four-bedroom apartment is set to hit the market for more than $6 million.

But don’t expect Wenham and his partner Kate Agnew to be seen locally in future, given they have already vacated their four-bedroom apartment in the landmark art deco building Macleay Regis and listed it with Richardson & Wrench Elizabeth Bay’s Jason Boon for more than $6 million.

The north-facing spread with harbour views is a consolidation of two apartments on level 7, and comes with a car space picked up in the complex next door in 2015 for $155,000.

The Macleay Regis was built in 1938 by Woolworths founder Harold Christmas, and has featured a who’s who of Sydney ever since. Gretel Packer staked her claim on the building in 2017 when she bought the penthouse for $8.75 million.

The north-facing apartment has been the home of David Wenham and Kate Agnew for about 25 years.

Actor Craig McLachlan and his partner Vanessa Scammell also own a one-bedder in the building, which was rumoured to be quietly on offer a few months ago for $1.6 million to $1.7 million, but looks to have been withdrawn from the market before it sold.

Eliza penthouse mystery buyer

Billionaire Richard White has developed quite a fondness for the CBD’s landmark Eliza building overlooking Hyde Park, since he bought the whole 8th floor apartment for $6.5 million last October.

The one-time guitar technician and founder of logistics giant WiseTech Global is rumoured to be behind the recent off-market sale of the building’s penthouse for $15.5 million.

Sources say it was a direct, off-market sale of the two-storey penthouse from Glencore mining senior executive Peter Freyberg and his wife Kylie, who purchased it new in 2014 for $12.365 million from the developer Ceerose.

WiseTech chief Richard White is the rumoured buyer of the Eliza penthouse for $15.5 million.Credit: Jessica Hromas

The Freybergs have since decamped to the Walsh Bay waterfront, where last May they paid $14.65 million for the apartment of Bellevue Hill-bound James Symond.

Enquiries to Mr White were met with silence this week, leaving it to the paper trail to reveal the penthouse settled in the name of a trust of which one of the directors, Reg Kennedy, has the White family home in Bexley as his registered address.

White’s Bexley house, known as Victoria House, is arguably the best in the St George area. Built in 1855, it was run as a wedding venue by White’s grandparents for more than half a century until it closed in 2014, and was later converted back into a private residence.

As WiseTech’s stocks have soared, so too has White’s wealth (estimated at $4.7 billion on last year’s Financial Review Rich List) and the size of the family home along with it.

What is currently a 3700 square metre family compound looks set to expand further, after the same trust that purchased the Eliza penthouse also bought a bungalow next door to Victoria House for $3.5 million. Not bad for an unrenovated house on a busy road in a suburb where the median is $1.4 million, according to Domain data.

Bronte’s musical chairs

Agents have long said the best buyers in Bronte are locals, with the occasional expat and Tamarama homeowner weighing into the market. So, it should be little surprise to hear that NRMA’s chief executive of its tourism business, Rachel Wiseman, is rumoured to be the buyer of Deborah Hutton’s recently sold digs for about $10 million.

Rachel Wiseman sold her Bronte apartment on Thursday ahead of its scheduled auction.

Wiseman has lived across the road from Bronte Beach since 2005, when she and her former partner, private equiteer Simon Moore, paid $3.6 million for the penthouse above the shops, from creative power couple Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin.

NRMA Expeditions chief Rachel Wiseman has bought for about $10 million.

Moore has since up-graded to a $35 million mansion in Vaucluse with his partner Lucinda Cowdroy, having sold his former Bronte house for $23.38 million to blockchain boss Dorjee Sun.

And Wiseman has also ridden the boom to good effect, selling her beachside pad this week.

McGrath’s William Manning declined to comment on the sale, but it was flagged as sold online on Thursday, and a well-placed source says a slew of buyers forced the sale price up to more than $8 million.

Despite being heavily promoted throughout the campaign, Hutton’s sale was also shrouded in secrecy by agents Bethwyn Richards and Michael Pallier, leaving her cashed up to join the throngs of Sydneysiders moving to the South Coast.

Deborah Hutton has swapped Bronte for Wombarra on the South Coast.

Records show the former model has paid $5.6 million for a dated three-bedroom cottage on the beachfront at Wombarra.

The purchase is a less glamorous abode than her former Hamptons-style digs, but it might be a renovation project for the homewares spruiker, given it comes with a DA for a new residence and a pool.

Centennial Park’s record hopes

The Centennial Park trophy home of Melanie MacNab, wife of international consultant to the UN and NATO, retired Colonel Andrew MacNab, kick-starts this year’s high-end market with record-setting hopes of $18 million to $20 million.

The Federation mansion of Melanie and Andrew MacNab kick-starts this year’s trophy home market.

The couple have listed their Federation mansion with The Agency’s Ben Collier, given plans to spend more time at their historic Hunter Valley cattle farm, Bickham Homestead, although there is also a Palm Beach weekender in the mix for their Sydney visits.

The tree change comes just a few years after the MacNabs completed a major year-long renovation of the residence by designer Alexandra Kidd, with new interiors throughout and a fully kitted-out loggia at the rear, plus a self-contained apartment above the three-car garage.

The property was previously redesigned by architect Luigi Rosselli, when owned by Wesfarmers senior executive Ed Bostock and his wife Emma, who sold it to the MacNabs for $13 million in 2019.

Given the already strong interest in the three-level residence at the top end of Lang Road, it’s expected to easily sell for more than Centennial Park’s $16.5 million high set in 2018, when prominent art patrons Dr Gene and Brian Sherman bought down the road from tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes is rumoured to be interested in yet another Coasters Retreat holiday home.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Still with the co-founder of software giant Atlassian, Cannon-Brookes has no sooner settled on yet another holiday house at Pittwater’s secluded hamlet Coasters Retreat than he is already rumoured to be in negotiations to buy another.

As locals recalculated the value of their real estate this week, following Cannon-Brookes’s settlement on his $4.65 million digs – more than doubling all previous house price records – the rumour mill has gone into overdrive that he has already asked his new next-door neighbour how much it would take them to sell.

It won’t be cheap. The Whitehaven estate is set on a vastly larger double block of 4500 square metres.

Shalimar seeks new owner

Drummoyne’s historic waterfront property Shalimar could stake a claim to the local record house price books thanks to its debut on the market this weekend for the first time in 84 years.

Shalimar is up for sale for only the second time since it was built in 1898.

The heritage-listed residence, on almost 3000 square metres with a tennis court and tidal pool, was built in 1898 by City Mutual Life Assurance Society George Crowley for his wife Pauline, to a design by architect George W. Durrell.

In 1938 it was purchased by Anne and Charles McNiven, the latter of whom was co-founder of what was then the largest ice-cream manufacturer in the country, McNiven Brothers.

Now held by a family company controlled by the McNivens’ twin daughters, Jean Solomon and Marjorie Whitford, it is expected to set a suburb high of about $15 million, through Savills’ Martin Schiller, topping the $12.2 million sale by hotelier Rod Salmon in 2017.