Playwright David Williamson and family downsize from Noosa
Famed Australian playwright David Williamson and novelist wife Kristin have put their beachside property on the market.
Legendary octogenarian playwright David Williamson and his wife, journalist and novelist Kristin, are downsizing at Queensland’s Sunshine Beach.
The home they bought in the late 1990s as their escape from the Emerald City, has been listed with $15m to $16.5m expectations, through their actor son turned-local-estate-agent, Rory Williamson.
The four-bedroom, two studies, four-bathroom home cost $1.9m in 1998.
It was designed by environmentalist architect John Mainwaring in the Beach House compound, which comes with beach frontage and shared tennis court.
There have been just the three sales among the 10 villas in the enclave since their purchase 24 years ago.
“If I get writer’s block, I can walk just a few steps and I’m on one of the best beaches in Australia,” David Williamson said of the home with 407sq m of internal and external undercover living space.
The studies are lined with posters pointing to their past, including Gallipoli, the Peter Weir film with its Williamson-written screenplay, and a Michael Leunig illustration from their early days in Melbourne.
The downsizing decision had “caused a lot of heartache”, Williamson conceded.
“We have to downsize. We are getting on in years … It doesn’t appear so, but offcourse we are,” Williamson jested in a video accompanying the marketing.
“When we came here we started with one grandchild,” Kristen said. “Now we have 14 … we love having them,” she said.
At the time of their travelling north upgrade, they sold their Pearl Beach, NSW Central Coast retreat for $520,000.
It had been the coastal hamlet that helped inspire his 17th play, Money and Friends, set on the holidaying sundecks at mythical Crystal Inlet, which explored financial stresses testing friendships in the recessionary early 1990s. Another of his plays, the 1979 Travelling North, addressed issues of family, relocation and death.
The Williamsons have owned at Noosa since the early 1980s. Rory’s visits began when he was aged three while on visits from the family home in Birchgrove.
The Williamsons bought a $1m duplex set back from the beach last year, along with a $1m house with bushland views at nearby Tewantin.
Offers close December 14 for the Sunshine Beach house named Aeolus, after a god in Greek mythology who was the divine keeper of the winds.
“The house captures beach living … the light coming at the right direction and the great breeze ways,” Williamson noted.
Sotheby’s sets up shop
The lucrative Noosa real estate sales market is set to become more competitive with the arrival of Queensland Sotheby’s in the town next month.
Its office won’t be on Hastings St, but on Noosa Dr, Noosa Junction, not far where Michael Malouf’s buzziest Calile Hotel, Fortitude Valley enterprise recently spent $15m on a 2ha site on which they plan another boutique hotel.
Queensland Sotheby’s International Realty chief executive Paul Arthur has acquired the Brown & Co Noosa Junction sales division, with Stephen and Andy Brown heading the team, to be joined by Jet Rose Properties agent Richard Bowen.
It adds to Queensland Sotheby’s presence at Main Beach, Brisbane, Port Douglas and the Whitsundays.
“My aspiration was to bring one of the most revered brands to the Noosa clientele.
“It’s such an international region that the national and global essence of the Sotheby’s network will be welcomed.
“We have a proven record of connecting discerning buyers and sellers with extraordinary properties.”
The Noosa Shire has had subdued activity this year, with 300 sales over $2m so far and 50 of them over $5m. Last year’s boom times saw 475 sales over $2m, with 75 sales above $5m, according to CoreLogic.
Auction success
There were 2393 homes taken to auction across the combined capital cities last week, the busiest week since June. Of the 1824 results collected so far by CoreLogic, 61 per cent were successful, slightly down on the previous week.
Melbourne was the busiest auction market with 61 per cent of the 774 results collected so far finding buyers. The priciest was in Balwyn, where $5.25m was paid for the five-bedroom, six-bathroom chateau style home at 20 Freeman Street. Built at a $1.4m cost in 2011, it last sold at $4.02m in 2015.
Sydney, with 740 results collected so far, saw 64 per cent sold.
Adelaide was the strongest capital at 66 per cent.
CoreLogic’s Tim Lawless noted activity will rise this week, with 2560 homes scheduled for auction.
Brisbane beauty
An Indooroopilly estate resplendent with flowering jacarandas, listed for the first time in five decades, was the nation’s top weekend seller when it fetched $5.76m amid Brisbane’s lacklustre 47 per cent success rate.
Matt Lancashire and Tom Lyne of Ray White secured the sale of the 1919 Hunter St cottage set on a 3083 sq m lot with tennis court, whose official land valuation sits at $2.6m.
The auction attracted 14 registrations with seven bidders active before being sold to a local buyer.
There had been 68 buyer inspections and more than 6000 views on realestate.com.au.
The four-bedroom, three-bathroom home has been held by the Knowlman building family for 48 years, having traded for $86,500 in 1974.
The house features fireplaces, hoop pine floors, sash windows and ornate ceilings.
A nearby contemporary riverfront trophy home was passed in at its auction through Jason Adcock of Adcock Prestige.
The top bid for the 2011 Kevin Hayes-designed, multi-level abode edged into the hillside was $3.95m, with negotiations continuing.
Adcock’s marketing noted the house was set on a deep 1166sq m lot that rose steeply above the river’s edge, so the Jilba St house site had been “completely unaffected by prior flood events.” It has attracted some 2695 page views on realestate.com.au.
Historic mansion
Sydney’s top sale came pre-auction when $5,485,000 was paid for the five-bedroom, three-bathroom home at 3 Gladys Ave, Wahroonga.
The 2010-built house that cost $775,000 to build sits on a 1303sq m holding. The block cost $960,000 in 2007.
Sydney also saw the private treaty sale of the restored historic mansion Orielton at Harrington Grove, by the estate of the late Sir Warwick Fairfax, who’d bought the property in 1944. Now set on 6.5 hectares, the 26-room mansion that dates back to the 1880s was restored under the supervision of Terry Goldacre of Harrington Estates, which has been responsible for the residential redevelopment of the Fairfax family farm holdings in Sydney’s west.
It could be your own Downton Abbey
Built in the 1870s, this massive pile on 2.83ha in NSW’s Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s finest heritage estates. Asking price: $10 million.
‘Relief needed to lure buyers back’
Interest rates would need to be cut five or six times to motivate buyers back into the property market, with younger Australians likely to purchase sooner.