Daughter of gold mining magnate Xu Hanjing buys Balmain's most expensive house

The keys to Balmain’s most expensive house have finally been handed over to the buyer who paid $11 million, revealed on title records to be the daughter of gold-mining magnate Xu Hanjing.

Cathy Xiao Xu, 33, is only the fourth owner of the historic waterfront house since it was built in the 1880s by Charles Yeend, the son of prominent innkeeper James Yeend, and comes after 60 years of Cloughessy family ownership after they bought it in 1960 from the liquidators for Mort’s Dock and Engineering Company for £3350.

Cathy’s identity has been a closely guarded secret by Cobden & Hayson’s Danny Cobden since it sold last October after just 11 days on the market, making her the largest private land-holder on the Balmain peninsula.

Despite being marketed with subdivision potential given its vast 1800-square-metre footprint, the sandstone residence with a tidal pool is expected to be Cathy’s home, replacing the historic terrace in Millers Point she sold last June for $4.37 million.

Cathy is a former director of Canadian medical cannabis producer Tilray, but it is her father whose corporate profile has made him one of the most influential in the China-Australia mining industries.

Hanjing was an executive with the Chinese state-owned enterprise China National Non Ferrous Metals in the 1990s when he met former Macquarie bankers Nick Curtis and Jake Klein on a business trip to Australia. The trio later joined forces to found Sino Gold, which became one of Australia’s biggest investment successes in China and was valued at $1.9 billion when it sold in 2009.

Killara-based Hanjing is now billed as one of the leading executives in Chinese state-owned conglomerates and internationally listed mining companies, including as a non-executive director of ASX-listed Tietto Minerals.

Balmain’s non-waterfront house record was also reset this week when the home of professional executive director Giselle Collins and her husband, ANZ head of commodity sales Luke Collins, sold for more than $8.5 million.

The result was not forthcoming from Cobden & Hayson’s Matt Hayson, but sources say it was over $1 million more than the $7.5 million guide thanks to extraordinary interest from buyers, four of whom were expats in New York, Dallas, Singapore and London.

“In the end it was an inner-west local who bought it,” Hayson said.

The property was long owned by the late Labor MP Kep Enderby, who bought it in 1955 for £4000 and sold it to the Collinses in 2010 for $3.1 million.

Balmain’s previous high was $7.5 million set in 2019 when the Victorian Italianate mansion Hexham sold to expat lawyers Evatt Tamine and Sophie Tod.

Triguboff’s tree-change plans

Fund manager Michael Triguboff​ and his arts-patron wife Eleonora​ are set to cash in on Sydney’s chronic shortage of trophy homes for sale when their Vaucluse waterfront home hits the market in coming weeks for more than $40 million.

Word is the couple plan to spend more time at their Southern Highlands retreat, which doubles as an artist’s residency for their family ARTAND​ Foundation.

It’ll no doubt be a sad farewell from the neighbourhood given Triguboff’s billionaire uncle Harry and his vast harbourfront estate is just a few doors away. That’s Harry’s vast 5200 square metre parcel that is currently one of the largest privately held estates in Vaucluse, but maybe not for long after Woollahra Council approved it for subdivision into four lots in February.

Michael and Eleonora purchased the almost 1400-square-metre property in 1998 for $5.72 million and, in 2001, won approval from the Land and Environment Court to knock down the house and rebuild a three-level residence designed by architect Kerry Hill.

The six-bedroom, seven-bathroom residence with a pool is listed with Michael Pallier of Sotheby’s International.

Byron Bay dubbed St Barts 

Byron Bay continues to earn its “St Barts” moniker thanks to the bull run on sales on Wategos Beach. Take the recent purchase by former Mitre 10 boss Mark Laidlaw and his wife Sarah, who have lodged a caveat on the title of the home of former UBS chairman and NBN Co director Brad Orgill.

The hillside house on Brownell Drive was offered to buyers on the quiet for $7.7 million by Jeremy Bennett, of Byron Bay Property Sales, and despite no comment from Bennett a local source says the Laidlaws paid close to that. The result more than doubles the $3.42 million the Orgills paid in 2005.

Also joining the Byron Bay set is former Mosmanite Brett Whitford, a one-time senior executive at education outfit Vocation.

Whitford sold his Mosman mansion last December for close to $22 million having decided the well-heeled harbourside suburb was “just not me”, and it seems his South Coast farm isn’t for him either after he was approached to sell it on the quiet for a Jamberoo high of $4.7 million.

Whitford was all set to marry his now-wife Samantha last August at the Jamberoo farm before COVID-19 restrictions scuttled the plans, forcing the couple to instead tie the knot on Wategos Beach in November.

And it looks like they have never left. The couple have purchased a six-bedroom house for $4.8 million with plans to base themselves there permanently. Indeed, Whitford has already invested in local start-up Eco Dancers and is planning a renovation of his new digs to turn it into a family compound, complete with a bar made from the wing of a plane.

Meanwhile, work is complete on the Wategos Beach mansion bought by F45 co-founder Adam Gilchrist for $18.85 million two years ago, including a slippery slide into the pool.

And if visitor numbers overwhelm the bedroom count at Gilchrist’s, perhaps he could call upon his Facebook friend Lana Fredkin, whose recently formed company Bananalana has bought a house behind his for $5.1 million.

John Curtis shelves his downsize plans

Hopes that businessman John Curtis might one day list his historic Darling Point mansion Craigholme look to have taken a back seat given his plans to sell his penthouse at The Rocks for about $6.5 million.

The former Allianz Australia chairman purchased the largest of four apartments atop a commercial building – auspiciously numbered 88 on Cumberland Street — for $1.1 million in 2002, with plans to eventually make it his three-bedroom Sydney base.

However, despite listing his Gothic-style Darling Point mansion with $20 million in 2014, a recent renovation (complete with internal lift) of the grand sandstone home has ended any plans to move on from it.

It is exclusively listed with Savills’ Martin Schiller

Curtis has enjoyed a good run from property in recent months. He and fellow business leader David Gonski and philanthropist Simon Mordant sold a Bunnings site in Alexandria last December for $70 million, well above the $16 million they paid for it in 2015.

Filmmakers list Double Bay family compound

Prominent film production designer Steven Jones-Evans (whose credits include Ned Kelly and Romper Stomper) and his wife, costume designer Joanna Mae Park (think Palm Beach and Penguin Bloom), have enlisted Joanna’s mother Judy Park to join them in cashing in on their Double Bay family compound for about $15 million.

Brad Caldwell-Eyles, of 1st City, said the 1700-square-metre holding is a classic example of Gesalt’s principle that the “whole is worth more than the sum of its parts”, given that each house would be worth less if sold separately but are worth more together given they are zoned for development and offer separate street access.

Park and Jones-Evans, whose latest film — Long Story Short — is in cinemas now, purchased the Manning Road house for $2.03 million in 2003, and mum added next door three years later for $2.6 million.

Restaurant and residential reshuffle

Coal baron and restaurateur Leigh McPherson has more on his plate than just the recent closure of his family’s Regatta restaurant in Rose Bay and the mooted launch of a new restaurant called Kalsa to replace Lucio’s in Paddington.

McPherson has also sold his Potts Point pad for $9.75 million through Richardson & Wrench’s Jason Boon a decade after he bought it for $5.5 million. He joins the likes of Westpac board member Steve Harker, retired Macquarie banker Peter Maher, and dentist Leslie Green and his wife Ginny, of the Rich List Smorgon family, in the landmark Grantham building.