Where the rich live: the nation’s elite suburbs
The rich are different – and where they choose to live is, surprisingly, not all about a water view.
Australia’s most popular suburb with the country’s richest people does not have prime waterfront views, easy access to the airport for landing one’s corporate jet or luxury skyscrapers, though the local restaurants are excellent.
Forget a view of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge or the ability to board a superyacht only metres from your front doorstep. No suburb in the country features a greater concentration of members of The List: Australia’s Richest 250 than Melbourne’s Toorak.
What Toorak lacks in flash and pizazz it makes up for with easily the highest property prices in the Victorian capital, and a collection of mansions that offer large grounds for their owners, with plenty of room for tennis courts, swimming pools and immaculate gardens.
At least 23 of the 250 wealthiest people in the country call Toorak home, and unlike Sydney’s prime harbourside suburbs, such as Point Piper and Vaucluse, it does not have a natural geographic advantage. Instead, Toorak is seen as a place to live when one has truly “made it” in Melbourne.
Billionaires such as John Gandel, Lindsay Fox and Alex Waislitz live in Toorak, but even their holdings look relatively small compared with some of the flashier properties in the country’s west, where billionaires tend to flaunt their wealth more than they do in conservative Melbourne.
MORE: The List: Australia’s Top 50 Mansions
Take Perth’s Mosman Park, which is most famous for Chris Ellison’s $57.5 million mansion, bought from billionaire Angela Bennett in 2009. Ten years later that is still Perth’s most expensive property deal – and one of the most costly in Australian history – but the suburb also has one of the largest collections of the Richest 250 living there, including Ralph Sarich and Rhonda Wyllie.
But Australia’s richest youngsters – Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar – rule the rich property stakes, at least for now. Inseparable at work, the duo have paid a combined $170 million for adjacent mansions in Sydney’s Point Piper.
Here is the breakdown of just exactly where Australia’s richest people have bought and extended their trophy homes.
VICTORIA
Toorak is clearly the place to be for Melbourne’s monied elite, with the suburb home to billionaires such as retail magnate John Gandel and trucking king Lindsay Fox, who has put on many a famous party at the Irving Road property he has owned since the 1970s.
Fox and another 22 members of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 live in Toorak, ranging from long-established residents such as billionaire Paul Little to Jayco caravans owner Gerry Ryan and young property developer Tim Gurner.
The Toorak elite have bought well. According to calculations The Australian used for the 2019 edition of The List, the average house owned by each of the 23 in Toorak is worth an estimated $23 million – meaning collectively the Toorak wealthy are sitting on combined assets worth close to $400 million.
Those houses were bought for an average price of $8.5 million and the average year they bought in was 2004 – meaning that the Toorak dwellers have more than doubled their money in that time.
Big purchases by The List members in Toorak include a five-bedroom, six-bathroom contemporary residence on Hopetoun Road with a tennis court and swimming pool, bought by Gurner last year for $17 million.
That house cost slightly less than the $19.25 million Chemist Warehouse co-founder Mario Verrocchi paid members of the Smorgon family for a six-bedroom trophy home including a pool and tennis court in late 2014.
Nearby suburbs are also popular. They include South Yarra, where property developer Larry Kestelman is building the luxury $800 million Capitol Grand building. Kestelman has dubbed it “the tower of power” and has installed David Bromley as the artist-in-residence. By early next year Kestelman himself will move into the penthouse apartment, a residence that could be worth up to $50 million on the open market.
For now though, perhaps the most impressive and costly apartment in Melbourne held by a member of The List is the East Melbourne penthouse owned by commercial property developer Sam Tarascio. It occupies the higher levels of its building and was reported to be valued at $15 million in 2007, though at least one agent has said it is worth up to $30 million given its proximity to and views of the Melbourne CBD and surrounding skyline.
While Toorak and nearby is generally the place to be for the city’s wealthiest citizens, the most expensive house in the state – and potentially the country – is found about five kilometres north in Kew, where the historic home Raheen is situated.
Bought by the late Richard Pratt and his wife Jeanne in the early 1980s, the Italianite mansion on Studley Park Road was formerly owned by the Catholic Church and had been the official residence of Archbishop Daniel Mannix and four other archbishops before its sale. The Pratt family added a large, modern glass-encased wing designed by Glenn Murcutt and the residence now houses Jeanne Pratt and her billionaire son, Anthony, and his family, who also spend a portion of the year in their New York penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.
Raheen, which sits on grounds measuring more than 11,218sq m, has been estimated to be worth at least $100 million if it were ever to go on the market. Its historic wing and gardens are also used for charity events as well as political and business fundraisers.
Not content with the current building, the Pratt family is in the midst of a $9.5 million extension that will extend it all the way to Yarra Boulevard and is subject to height restrictions agreed to with a nearby hospital. The new wing is effectively a third home on the estate, and comprises four new bedrooms and five bathrooms, plus a retreat space that acts as a segue between the two modern structures.
When all renovations and extensions are completed, it is estimated that Raheen will be worth well north of $100 million.
NSW
Such is the drawing power of Sydney’s harbourside suburbs, including Point Piper, Vaucluse and surrounds, that a relatively new entrant to the ranks of Australia’s wealthy elite is said to have paid at least $38 million for a mansion that does not even offer waterfront access. Sunny Ngai, who with his family inherited ABC Tissue Products from late father Henry last year, was reported to have shelled out that sum for a designer mansion in Vaucluse’s Fisher Street in September. The three-level home was bought by plastic surgeon Michael Miroshnik for $7.15 million in 2014, and while it has been extensively renovated the steep increase in price shows just how hot Sydney prestige property can be.
Ngai will have several members of The List as near neighbours, including apartments king Harry Triguboff, who lives with his wife Rhonda on a 5200sq m amalgamated Vaucluse block on the waterfront. The Meriton boss’s house is even bigger than the $80 million 4270sq m block put together by Menulog founder Leon Kamenev down the road. Late last year, Kamenev won a three-year battle to build a huge mansion across four neighbouring properties he bought in early 2016. Construction of the four-level home with pool, gym and multiple terraces is costing at least $10 million.
Vaucluse has also become famous for the $67.25 million waterside mansion Jerry Schwartz bought last year. It has a 25m pool – the largest private swimming pool on the harbour. Schwartz is planning to take a wrecking ball to the existing Gone with The Wind-style residence, and will spend at least $5 million on renovations that include raising the level of the tennis court to make room for a home cinema, six-bay garage and storage. There will also be a tunnel and lift to connect the street all the way down to Parsley Bay, where the boathouse and private jetty sit.
Yet Vaucluse would probably be overshadowed by nearby Point Piper, where Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes paid $100 million for the late (Lady) Mary Fairfax’s Fairwater in 2018, a year after his co-founder Scott Farquhar shelled out $71 million for the Elaine estate next door. The pair have surpassed billionaire Frank Lowy in wealth terms, but the Westfield co-founder lives alongside on Wolseley Road, commonly referred to as Australia’s most prestigious street.
Point Piper accounts for the most members of The List: Australia’s Richest 250 who live in Sydney, and most are long-term holders in the suburb. Lowy and his wife Shirley paid $310,000 for their waterfront home in 1971 and bought son Stephen Lowy’s house next door for $1.3 million 20 years later, demolishing it to extend their own residence with a tennis court and home cinema. Jack Cowin, the fast food king behind the Hungry Jack’s franchise and majority owner
of Domino’s Pizza, has lived on the street since 1980, when he paid $750,000 for his house, while Paul Lederer, the former owner of Primo Smallgoods, paid $26 million for his house two doors from Lowy in 2008.
The average value of a house in Point Piper held by members of The List – Australia’s Richest 250 is calculated at $60 million, which is close to the price paid by the son of Huang Bingwen, the family patriarch behind China’s paper packaging manufacturer for tobacco-related products Shantou Dongfeng Printing, for the waterfront mansion Altona in late 2016. That average is well and truly exceeded by the house owned by Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond, who tried to sell his multi-level sandstone, cement and glass mansion and was offered $100 million but decided to retain it. It sits across 2685sq m and has six bedrooms, two swimming pools and 75m of water frontage.
But the price for Altona was exceeded by Chau Chak Wing in 2015 when he clinched a $70 million deal for the mansion of billionaire James Packer and his former wife Erica in Vaucluse. Dr Chau had previously owned in Hunters Hill, another suburb extremely popular with Sydney’s wealthy. Billionaire Lang Walker is among the six members of The List who live there, having bought a waterside home in Crescent Street for $4.2 million in 1987.
QUEENSLAND
Clive Palmer clearly loves the Gold Coast suburb of Paradise Point, which includes the luxury Sovereign and Ephraim Islands and their mansions that feature direct water frontage and boat access.
Palmer and wife Anna live in a King Arthurs Court mansion bought for $9.5 million in May 2010. The house includes at least six bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, and a 22-car basement with a wine cellar and cool room, as well as a swimming pool and a 12-person elevator.
But the billionaire mining investor has also, along with several other family members, shelled out $18.3 million for no less than 11 other Point Paradise houses in recent years.
Last year he spent $12 million on a Hamptons-inspired five-bedroom, five-bathroom property on prestigious Hedges Avenue at Mermaid Beach that also features a gym with a boxing ring and a climate-controlled wine cellar.
Hedges Avenue is considered one of the best addresses on the Gold Coast, though nearby Albatross Avenue in Mermaid Beach is also salubrious. It is there that in 2009 billionaire pokies king Bruce Mathieson bought a six-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion with a 10-car garage and direct beach access for $18 million – which was about $15 million below the asking price of the vendor, Globe International founder Stephen Hill. Albatross Avenue is also where the billionaire owner of Moose Toys Manny Stulpaid a Victorian cattle farmer $25 million for the holiday home Tidewater in 2016, though Main Beach has three members of The List in Con Makris and Tony and Christina Quinn residing there.
In Brisbane, the rich are scattered through various suburbs. Property developer Kevin Seymour and Flight Centre co-founder Graham Turner live in the same street in the historic riverside inner suburb of Teneriffe, while Scott Hutchinson paid $7.65 million for a riverside unit in Kangaroo Point in 2010.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Burnside in Adelaide’s east is the somewhat unlikely home of most South Australians found on The List – Australia’s Richest 250, though they are all from the same family.
The three brothers behind the big success that is the Peregrine Corporation – Khalil, Samer and Yasser Shahin – all reside in the suburb, having each paid less than $1 million for their respective homes bought more than 20 years ago.
Others on The List living in Adelaide’s prestige suburbs include meat baron Chris Thomas, who resides in Toorak Gardens, and shopping centre owner Nick DiMauro, in Wattle Park, while fitness duo Kayla Itsines and Tobi Pearce live in the inner-western suburb of Lockleys.
WA
Chris Ellison keeps a relatively low profile in the business world as the boss of ASX-listed Mineral Resources, a mining services company. But 10 years ago he shocked the property market when he purchased a Mosman Park mansion from the mining heiress Angela Bennett for a whopping $57.5 million.
Ellison and his wife Tia gained a 7654sq m Perth riverside property on Saunders Street, the most desirable street in what is known as Mosman Park’s “golden triangle”, which includes two nearby streets. The house was the most expensive in the country at the time of the deal, and included its own cinema, three buildings, and a private jetty and tennis court.
The Ellisons have since spent another $11.6 million buying two adjacent houses – a four-bedroom home for $6.625 million also bought from Bennett and another five-bedroom place for $5 million. The latest acquisitions bring the Ellisons’ total land holding to 9159sq m and their total outlay to just shy of $70 million, with their combined estate more than three times the size of Altona in Sydney’s Point Piper.
There are six billionaires and members of The List who live in Mosman Park. They include Rhonda Wyllie and Nigel Satterley, a property developer who also bought the historical Chiritta in Peppermint Grove, which dates from the late 1890s, for $17.5 million in 2013.
Peppermint Grove is also where mining prospector Mark Creasy lives, while billionaire Gina Rinehart lives in Dalkeith. Andrew Forrest, meanwhile, has spent $15 million on developing a new house in front of his stately Takuara mansion in beachside Cottesloe. The 21-room limestone mansion was bought for $16 million in late 2015.
ACT & TASMANIA
Tasmania’s only representative on The List, Dale Elphinstone, lives on a rural block near Burnie in the state’s north-west.
In Canberra, billionaire Terry Snow lives in Deakin, traditionally one of the national capital’s most upmarket suburbs.