Film director Stephan Elliott lists his Bondi Beach digs for $1.3 million

As director and writer Stephan Elliott wraps filming on his latest Australian movie classic, Flammable Children, he’s also called time on the Bondi Beach pad where the film first took shape.

Elliott penned the comedy-drama set in 1975 Australia from the Lamrock Avenue apartment he bought with his long-term partner Wil Bevolley in 2011 for $930,000.

The film, starring Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Radha Mitchell, is due for release later this year.

It’s a fitting time to sell, Elliott told Domain. “My new film started – and will end – under this very roof. It’s been a massive six-year haul and [it’s] time to move on.”

The two-bedroom apartment – one of six in an art deco block with a north-facing sunroom, a lock-up garage and a second car space – has been renovated in recent years by Bevolley, of Latitude Designs, with ​his trademark attention to lighting, including perimeter LED lighting in the picture rails.

“Wil’s work is taking him everywhere, so I’m hanging up my loud hailer and will go with the flow for a few years,” Elliott said.

Where that work takes the couple remains unknown, but the “house-like” apartment with a shared rooftop terrace goes to auction on May 13 for more than $1.3 million through Mary Anne Cronin, of Phillips Pantzer Donnelley.

Flammable Children isn’t the first movie to take shape on Bondi Beach’s Lamrock Avenue.

Elliott’s hit of two decades ago, The Adventures Of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, was written from his former apartment across the road.

Inside Stephan Elliot’s Bondi Beach pad.
Photo: Supplied

Bellevue Hill’s star turn

The Spanish Mission home of commercial property developer Nick Harding and his wife Adelicia, from the Dawson-Damer family, heads up this week’s top listings.

Bellevue Hill’s El Mio was built in 1930 and is best known from its 2009 sales campaign when sold by Toni Collette and her musician husband David Galafassi for $6.35 million.

If the Hollywood star thought that sale was headline grabbing, it was low-brow compared with the media attention that followed her property deal of just two years later when in 2009 she agreed to pay $6.35 million for a Paddington terrace, but later reneged on the deal, scoring her a messy court case and eventual orders to pay more than $800,000 in damages for the failed transaction.

But back to El Mio, Collette wasn’t the first acclaimed actor to own the property. New Zealand’s Sarah Peirse​ and her husband, former Brambles director Emmet Hobbs, owned it in the 1990s, and sold it in 1998 for $2,655,000 when they returned home from their Sydney sojourn.

Extensively renovated in recent years, it is on offer for $8 million through Elliott Placks and Evan Williams, of Ray White Double Bay.

El Mio, Bellevue Hill.
Photo: Supplied

Nelson Meers takes to Point Piper

Former City of Sydney lord mayor Nelson Meers and his wife Carole have downsized to Point Piper for more than $15 million.

The purchase, through LJ Hooker Double Bay’s Bill Malouf, was meant to be a downsize (in terms of home size but not price) for the philanthropic couple, who sold their Bayview home six months ago for $4.55 million.

Set on Buckhurst Avenue, the harbour front apartment was an investment for Darling Point-based property magnate John Roth and his wife Jillian Segal, who bought it new in 2011 for $11.6 million.

Hair today, gone …

The Sylvesters’ Woollahra terrace is up for grabs.
Photo: Supplied

In Paddington’s heyday in the late 1980s, everyone who strutted Oxford Street knew that the best place to get your hair done was Sloanes.

And Title Deeds wasn’t the only teenager at the time forced to set aside precious cigarette money for that blunt-cut bob that was shaved underneath.

And so it is with much excitement to hear that Sloanes’ co-owners Barbara and Graham Sylvester are selling their corner terrace in Woollahra.

Adding to the nostalgia are records that show the couple bought the Ocean Street property for $865,000 from Harvey Shore, who produced that other classic from the 1980s, the television hit Simon Townsend’s Wonder World.

At the time Shore had inherited it from his mother, artist Ivy Shore, who painted some of her award-winning works in the studio above the garage.

That’s the same studio where the Sylvesters have continued their own fine work in hair in recent years, including the sharp cuts of Di Jones selling agents Gary Sands and Jane Schumann.

As the Sylvesters plan their return to England, a May 17 auction has been set with a guide of $3.25 million.

Country calling Rabo Bank’s Bill Gurry​

The Darling Point property boasts striking city skyline views.
Photo: Mitch Cameron Photography

Rabo Bank chairman Bill Gurry, AO, is selling his Sydney bolthole for $4 million amid talk the South Yarra local has bought a retreat in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

The four-bedroom apartment is one of seven in the 1940s-built Storrington building in Daring Point, and was bought in 2005 for $2.15 million from John and Kathryn Heffernan as his Sydney base.

In late 2015 Gurry sold his Victorian country property Larnoo for about $12 million.

The 173-square-metre spread, with parquetry floors and front-row views of the Harbour Bridge, is on offer through Paul Kantor, of Richardson & Wrench Double Bay.