End of a fairytale as Karin Upton Baker and Gary Baker split up

Once the envy of Sydney society, Karin Upton Baker and Gary Baker’s fairytale life came crashing down with his bankruptcy in 2011. Now the glamorous former magazine editor and property developer have called it quits after 37 years together.

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One of Sydney’s most glamorous and formerly upwardly mobile couples, ex-Harper’s Bazaar magazine editor Karin Upton Baker and her property developer husband Gary Baker, have separated after 37 rollercoaster years.

The statuesque one-time women’s magazine editor — whose blunt-cut Joh Bailey fringe was once a compass-point for Sydney’s A-list — and her cowboy-styled husband spent 20 years as the envy of Sydney society.

Karin Upton Baker and husband Gary Baker have separated after 37 years together.

At the height of their success — in the ’90s and noughties — the couple owned an extravagant three-level penthouse in Elizabeth Bay featuring a lap pool, rooftop garden, Roman-styled bathhouse, private beauty salon, expansive subterranean wardrobe accessible via private one-person lift, and fleet garage with turntable for Baker’s collection of imported cars, among which was a 1960s Mercedes Pagoda and Rolls Royce Phantom.

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But that was before Baker was bankrupted in 2011 following his ­failure to repay two loans — for $17.8 million — secured in 2006 against the couple’s apartment with financial services companies Challenger and Perpetual for a series of properties he had in development. 

The case saw Upton Baker, then MD of French luxury brand Hermes’ Australian operation, brought to tears in the Supreme Court in 2011 as she told the court her husband “enjoyed such an ascendancy over” her she tearily signed mortgage documents “under threat that, if she did not do so, the family would ‘lose everything’”.

The couple with Maggie Joye (left).

Despite the rude and inevitable change of circumstance that followed the pair’s insolvency and the ordered sale of the Billyard Ave apartment for less than $6 million in 2014 — which at its lowest ebb saw Upton Baker quietly sell off items from her extravagant wardrobe to buyers allegedly including Roxy Jacenko, and Baker inform the bankruptcy trustee the family had “no fixed address” — the couple remained stoically together, jointly committed to raising their two teenage sons.

Yesterday, sources for the couple refused to comment about the split, saying only that both were still “fragile and raw”.

ADLER MARRIAGE KEEPS KEEPING ON

Meanwhile, further east in the broad tree-lined avenues of swank Vaucluse, the marriage of Rodney and Lyndi Adler miraculously endures, or so said Rodney yesterday, responding to our call to his wife who apparently still demurs to her husband.

He denied having moved out of the pair’s for-sale/not-for-sale home and into a North Bondi apartment with a colleague.

Former HIH director Rodney Adler with his wife Lyndi.

“That is absolutely untrue. I continue to live at home,” said Rodney, words echoed shortly after by spokesman Mark Westfield, a one-time investigative reporter at The Australian who won a Walkley in 2001 after covering the collapse of HIH, the company Adler helmed at the time.

Strange? This writer thought so until Westfield, who wrote a book on the corporate collapse, explained he was a friend of Adler’s. Not an employee, he added, though he was once.

It is 15 years since Adler was sentenced to four years’ jail, serving two, over the $5.3 billion collapse of HIH Insurance in March 2001.

It’s only two, however, since Adler was photographed kissing an attractive and leggy young woman in the CBD following a long lunch. He insists they’re just good friends.

In June, Adler was in the headlines again after turning witness for the prosecution in the case against undischarged bankrupt Stanley Kaftel who borrowed $25,000 from Adler who, having been banned by the court from running a company for 20 years, has been working as a financier.

That same year the Adlers listed their Olola St, Vaucluse, property with agent Bill Malouf for a reported $16 million. They later pulled the house from the market and lodged plans to undertake a $5 million reno.

YACHT SET ADRIFT IN THE DOLDRUMS

THE cancellation of Hamilton Island Race Week brought a collective groan from some of Sydney’s snappiest dressers, many of whom flock to the Oatley-owned Qualia resort this time of year to scoff Heidsieck champagne and admire (and plug) Paspaley pearls and put the winter chills behind them.

Prince Frederick at Hamilton Island Race Week in 2017.

Rashion influencer Nadia Fairfax at the event last year.

In previous years attendants have included Prince Frederik of Denmark, Francesca Packer, Collette Dinnigan, Vogue editor Edwina McCann, fashion influencer Nadia Fairfax, Ned O’Neil and Deborah Symond, and Ian Thorpe and his then model partner Ryan Channing.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MITTAGONG

Champion horse trainer Gai Waterhouse and husband Robbie traditionally spend the summer season in Europe, mixing it with the royal family at Ascot in June before flying to Italy to fan the embers of their ­remarkable romance.

This year, following the cancellation of Royal Ascot and general pandemic mayhem, the couple have swapped the picturesque splendour of Taormina, Sicily, for their weekender, Dunsinea, at Mittagong in the Southern Highlands.

COVID has grounded Gai and Robbie Waterhouse.

“It’s the first time in 42 years we haven’t been to Europe for the northern summer,” Robbie said. “We would have loved to have flown out in June, but it simply wasn’t an option.

“We were going to go to Ascot, as we always do, and this year to Siena for the Palio (horse race), but we’ve had to cancel this year but we will be back next I’m sure.”

Originally published as End of a fairytale as Karin Upton Baker and Gary Baker split up