House deal on historic beach

A SORRENTO beach that was the site of Victoria’s first European settlement in 1803 is set to become a millionaire’s playground, with new houses to be built along the foreshore.

The first of five allotments allowed by a controversial subdivision of the 1.2-hectare Sisters estate fronting Sullivan Bay has sold for more than $6.5 million.

Residents, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and federal MP Greg Hunt fought against subdividing the estate, with its famous wooden pier, on the grounds it was part of the colonial settlement by British lieutenant-governor David Collins and home to the state’s first hospital and newspaper.

It is also recognised by author Richard Cotter in No Place for a Colony as an area of immense Aboriginal significance ”and the first place in Victoria to experience frontier violence between settlers and local Aborigines”.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal approved the subdivision in December. A campaign for either the state or federal government to buy the first allotment was unsuccessful.

Mr Hunt said it was ”a once-in-a-century opportunity to preserve our indigenous and European heritage and create one of Australia’s public parks”.

Agents Kay and Burton said the new owners, who declined to be identified, would build a house on their 1915-square-metre slice of beachfront land, which has a boundary that extends to the high-tide water’s edge.

The agents said the site was big enough to accommodate a mansion, tennis court, swimming pool and garden.

A small part of the land will be handed over for a public walkway around the Eastern Sister headland to Sullivan Bay. Kay and Burton chairman Gerald Delany said another block might be put to market soon.

Owner of The Sisters estate Richard Shelmerdine, a fourth-generation member of the Myer clan, bought it for $18.4 million in 2008 – a record price at the time – from millionaire Peter Rand.