Outbreak stirs up the shaken cocktail set

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

There’s been little interest in trophy home sale prices at Zoom video dinner parties on the Mornington Peninsula this week. The Aspen cocktail party coronavirus cluster is instead the major topic.

The chitchat reached fever pitch when the unthinking glitterati ski set was lashed by a Liberal politician. Tim Smith called them “flogs” given some of the returned skiers allegedly didn’t do the right thing and self-isolate in their Melbourne homes, instead seeking respite, with golfing, horse riding and socialising, in the pricey playground.

The milder local member, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, said any yet-to-arrive holiday-makers should stay away from their weekenders.

It was an estate agent, of all people, who came to the defence of the party host, Toorak businessman Andrew Abercrombie.

“All he did was have a party,” Andrew Stuart, who’d missed the now-infamous cocktails, told the Herald Sun, from his own isolation at his peninsula farm.

Meanwhile back on the sales front, Margin Call hears whispers Patricia Cross and her husband Paul Meadows will emerge as the buyer of Richard Bouris’s recently sold Portsea retreat.

Cross, a former director at NAB, Macquarie, AMP and Wesfarmers, calls South Yarra home. The chair of Commonwealth Super Corp already has a peninsula retreat, but will upsize to the $6.5m home, one of two offloaded by the former JB Hi-fi boss.

The John Wardle-designed backbeach property has ocean views from its 8200sq m site. Bouris also sold next door for about $4.5m, which had been built as his children’s cubby house.

Sotheby’s agent Rob Curtain secured both sales, along with their Rye beach box, which Margin Call reported as having sold for $384,000, $50,000 above reserve at its Australia Day auction.

Bouris plans to build a house not far from his recent Shelley Beach, Portsea, bathing box acquisition.

Double negative

Andrew Abercrombie did issue a statement that he had twice tested negative to the virus, and he had not spent his isolation at Portsea. Abercrombie and wife Shadda have a Toorak riverfront home and a $6.9m Noosa apartment.

The founder of FlexiGroup has also endured the financial services group’s shares falling 65 per cent since the start of the year, from $1.86 to 66c. Abercrombie holds 23 per cent, equating to $64m.

The low-key businessman almost replaced Peter Costello as the local member in the blue-ribbon Higgins electorate. But he lost out to Kelly O’Dwyer, the then 32-year-old staffer of the former federal treasurer, in the 2009 preselection contest.

Time for a sale

The most exquisite offering amid the Goulburn manor house contents of the former Oxford Street fashion retailer Graeme Webb is an 1850s French clock.

This weekend’s online Shapiro Auctioneers offerings follow the sale of historic Wollogorang, the 1840s Breadalbane home of Webb and his late wife, Janet Alstergren.

Supported by four gilted sphinxes, the Regency clock had been purchased by the couple from the late Bill Bradshaw, who had a pokey shop on Queen Street, Woollahra.

The clock comes with an 1890s label bearing the name of English horologist Charles Frodsham, the keeper of Queen Victoria’s clocks.

Wollogorang was built for the English sea captain Henry Edenborough. The 1841 census shows his cattle farm supported four ticket-of-leave men, five shepherds, eight gardeners and stockmen, and four servants. He sold to the neighbouring pastoralist Chisholm family and returned to England where he died a year later in 1855.

Galloping ahead

Given it’s one of the only live sports left on TV, Channel 7’s coverage of the Australian Derby at Randwick will be a race meeting that truly distracts the nation today.

While Richard Freedman will be on track, the other stars in the Seven stable, Bruce McAvaney, Emily Bosson and Katelyn Mallyon will provide insights from their living rooms.

Fresh from the Rosehill Guineas win, Castelvecchio, part-owned by John Messara’s Arrownfield, will go off the favourite, barring any late mail.

“We’ll give the ATC Derby a bit of a nudge,” part-owner and 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones told his mate at the TAB, Glenn Munsie. Businessman John Leaver, who was an early adopter of the self-isolation lifestyle, also has a stake.

Next Saturday Castelvecchio will likely front up for the $2m Queen Elizabeth Stakes, which has had its prize money cut from $4m due to COVID-19 cutbacks.

That’s subject to a go-ahead from Racing NSW, which Peter V’landys has steered through the tempest to ensure race meets continue behind closed gates.

Bellotti’s high hopes

The Clifton Gardens home of the former ANZ managing director Steve Bellotti has been quietly listed with record $30m off-market hopes.

Bellotti, now chair of Token Capital Management, and his wife, Carrie Hayes Bellotti, the former owner of the O2Aspen spa, plan to return to the US.

Their Brazilian-modern-inspired residence was designed by architect Shaun Lockyer after they bought the 1700sq m waterfront in 2014 for $9.5m.

Meanwhile, hedge fund manager Rob Luciano and his wife Samantha have emerged as the $18m buyers of the Balmoral Slopes residence of Siobhan Downe, the former wife of veteran Macquarie executive Andrew Downe. Luciano, the head of VGI Partners, exchanged before the pandemic impacted on the Mosman property merry-go-round. Downe’s sale ranks among the top five in Sydney this year. The list is topped by the mystery $22m sale of the Palm Beach trophy home of the late media legend Sam Chisholm. The mooted buyer, Mike Cannon- Brookes, has also been touted as the $18m buyer of the German government’s Woollahra property.

Cannon fires up

Tech giant Atlasssian held its annual conference online this week instead of live in Las Vegas. The summit, on a flawless stream, was kicked off by co-founder Scott Farquhar.

Then Cannon- Brookes, sporting his go-to grey hoody, opened day two from Sydney, although in which of his many homes he’s opted to take refuge was not obvious. He and wife Annie, who have four children, have amassed a portfolio in affluent Sydney suburbs, including Double Bay, Point Piper and Palm Beach along with the Southern Highlands, costing $177m.

“We’re living in an uncertain time right now, so if any of my kids run in to the room, I apologise in advance,” Cannon-Brookes said from his home office. There was a neatly arranged set of five books, including Lonely Planet’s Atlas of Adventure. Cannon-Brookes says businesses need to embrace the new normal to thrive. “We are at the beginning of a new era of transformation.”

It was reminiscent of another era of transformation 50 years ago. “It started with IBM launching the 704 mainframe.”

Deutsch offloads

F45 founder Rob Deutsch is selling his Bronte home. The listing has views across empty Bronte Beach from its Bronte Marine Drive dress circle. Paying a 2018 high of $11.2m when upsizing from a $600,000 Bondi apartment, Deutsch, a former equities trader, renovated the home last year. The guest bedroom in the garage disappeared, replaced with an opulent cocktail bar.

Deutsch, who recently settled on a $2m Mermaid Beach bolthole, has been spending more time in the US given hopes for a US float. But that might be waylaid given the impact of the virus on the now closed F45 workout spaces.