Rugby star and Murdoch exec go halves in luxe $9.5m Byron Bay retreat

Former Wallabies captain John Eales and his brother Damian Eales, one of the most senior executives in the Murdoch family’s US empire, are likely to take family holidays together after going halves on a $9.5 million Byron Bay retreat.

Or rather, their wives Tara and Lara have purchased the designer digs on Belongil Creek, paying cash while they’re at it.

Fingers crossed there are no domestic issues over which brother’s family snags the five-bedroom main residence set on the waterfront with the swimming pool, and who is relegated to the three-bedroom cottage out back.

Gold Coast Titans co-owners Rebecca and Brett Frizelle had listed the property with Sotheby’s Will Phillips a year ago amid expectations of $11 million to $13 million just as the housing boom waned.

It didn’t sell at the time and records indicate the Frizelles did a deal with the Ealeses directly.

Lara and John Eales are long-time Mosman locals, in Clifton Gardens, and John holds a seat on the boards of Loreto Kirribilli, Flight Centre and Magellan Asset Management.

Tara and Damian Eales have further to travel. Despite owning a historic house in Birchgrove, they are based in the US where Eales heads Lachlan Murdoch’s US real estate business Move.

High-end exit

Clare Mulham, daughter of billionaire Nutrimetics founder Imelda Roche, is coming back to Sydney, which means her luxury Suffolk Park estate Casbar which set a record for the North Coast just two years ago is up for grabs.

This is the 16-hectare property for which Mulham paid $26 million in 2022, just weeks before her father, Bill Roche, died unexpectedly.

Kim Jones, of her eponymous agency, is yet to set a guide for the luxury acreage with pool, cabana, media room, fire pit, spa and in-ground trampoline, but it’s worth noting the local record has since been reset by Tom and Emma Lane’s The Range at $33 million (according to settlement records) and $37 million (according to agent’s sales advisory).

Greenie digs

Businessman and environmentalist Geoff Cousins continues his year-long reshuffle of property interests, this week launching his Queenslander-style homestead in the Byron Bay hinterland for $3.8 million to $4.1 million.

Cousins and his partner, author Darleen Bungey, took to downsizing on a grand scale a year ago when they purchased a penthouse in the Paddington Green complex for a suburb high of $20 million. Then earlier this year they sold their Point Piper home for $23 million to former ASX chief Dominic Stevens and his wife Emma.

The couple have owned their getaway in Federal since 2018 when it was sold for $2.55 million by Anytime Fitness Australia co-founder Jacinta McDonell.

It is listed with First National’s Helen Huntly-Barrett.

From Vaucluse to big house

As Mark Chikarovski, the son of former NSW Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski, awaits sentencing for his part in an alleged multimillion-dollar dark web drug supply operation, his Vaucluse mansion is up for sale with a $14 million guide.

Chikarovski pleaded guilty in June to seven charges, including three related to the supply and possession of drugs.

According to agreed facts tendered to the court, police Strike Force CESTA uncovered an online handle AusCokeKing, that was controlled by Chikarovski, sold MDMA, cocaine, meth and prescription drugs via the darknet marketplace.

At the time of his arrest Chikarovski had weeks earlier settled on a six-bedroom house in Vaucluse with his wife Hannah for $11.5 million. Since renovated, there is a second mortgage on title of $1.2 million but no longer any freeze orders of the NSW Crime Commission that were in place a year ago.

It goes to auction on October 30 through Ray White’s Elliott Placks, and Chikarovski is due to be sentenced in the District Court two days later.

Lucrative flip

Sydneysiders have certainly developed a voracious appetite for a bit of bird, judging by the sale of a half-gutted house in Bellevue Hill.

Rima and Luis Fernandes, who head up the family’s Portuguese-style charcoal chicken chain Frangos, paid $15 million for the half-gutted house of property trader Phoebe Chunlan Liu.

It last traded only 18 months earlier – then in tip-top condition – for $12.46 million, offering Liu a more than $2.5 million capital gain.

More baffling given the Reserve Bank’s monetary tightening efforts is Liu didn’t buy a bargain. She paid top dollar at a heated auction, much to the financial gain of then vendor Mark Chikarovski who pocketed his own gain of $1.21 million after two years’ ownership.

That’s a jump in value of $3.75 million in three years. There must be oil under the Georgian-style manor’s recently installed, fake-timber floorboards.

Joshua Allen, who sold it, said he had strong interest despite the wires protruding from walls, lack of power and a dug-up driveway.

Luis Fernandes is a second-generation owner of the family chain, founded from one shop in Petersham in 1989, and now boasting 12 stores across Sydney.