The Block 2018: Ex-Gatwick owners Rose Banks, Yvette Kelly buy Hans and Courtney's pad

For Rose Banks and Yvette Kelly, Saturday was a homecoming of sorts.

The sisters, who sold St Kilda’s Gatwick Hotel to Channel Nine in March last year in a highly publicised and much talked about $10 million deal, secured themselves one of the five apartments auctioned at the weekend in the final episode of The Block. They paid $2.77 million.

They said they would use the second-floor pad, renovated by Hans Baumgartner and Courtney Brown, for their retirement, having run the Gatwick for many decades before its closure.

The sisters said they were forced to sell, neither by Channel Nine nor The Block’s producers, but by fellow Fitzroy Street traders, police and the Port Phillip Council.

“We terribly missed the place,” Ms Banks told Domain after the auctions. “We wanted to turn it into apartments but they served us such a severe ultimatum that we couldn’t. Luckily, The Block came in.”

They said while they had returned to the same building, the new Gatwick wasn’t home.

“We can look at the walls and look at the windows and remember each person who lived here,” Ms Banks said, adding they had “cried every day” since selling.

Ms Banks and Ms Kelly secured the keys to the three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on the 68th bid of the final auction of the day.

How much did The Block apartments sell for?

• Sara and Hayden: 3/34 Fitzroy Street sold for $3.02 million  (prize money $645,000)
• Kerrie and Spence:  1/34 Fitzroy Street sold for $2.85 million (prize money $415,000)
• Courtney and Hans: 2/34 Fitzroy Street  sold for $2,770,000 (prize money$410,000)
• Bianca and Carla: 5/34 Fitzroy Street sold for $2,991,000 (prize money $301,000)
• Norm and Jess: 4/34 Fitzroy Street sold for $2,859,000 (prize money $209,000)

For Courtney Brown, who was $410,000 richer after the auction, the result was sweeter for selling to them.

“I’m looking at the sisters, and I’m so happy that they got this apartment. I really am,” she said. “In the few minutes that I’ve spoken to them, they’ve been telling me all these stories about the Gatwick and what it means to them, and I know they’re passionate.

“We were like ‘an investor is probably going to buy our apartment’, but we’ve actually sold it to probably the most passionate people here in St Kilda,” Brown said.

“Every time I saw the sisters on TV, I thought, they’re such strong women; what they’ve done for the community, I just absolutely loved, and it’s come almost full circle – like we’ve renovated it again for them, the original owners. And, they’ve bought our apartment. I was absolutely stoked.”

The Gatwick, opened in 1937, was bought by Ms Banks and Ms Kelly’s mother, Vittoria Carbone, and, in 1998, they bought it from her estate after her death for $3.04 million. Now in their 60s, the sisters worked at the hotel from the age of 14.

Buyer’s advocate Greville Pabst, who bought four of the five apartments on Saturday, bid on behalf of the sisters. He said they had an enormous emotional attachment to the building.

“That’s the one I really wanted to buy, for them. So, it was great,” he said. “I thought we might be able to get it for a bit less.

“They liked the fact that it faced Fitzroy Street. They liked the fact that it was the only one that had a sunroom; it didn’t have a balcony. Apparently, they’re scared of heights.

“This was the one that was the real Gatwick for them. That’s why they didn’t want the penthouses, because they’re new.”

Ms Kelly said while she had not wanted to watch any of the TV show, she was compelled to because she felt “it was a part of me”. She said it was hard to watch the contestants ripping the building apart because she and her sister could remember people who had stayed there – and that many who had stayed there were now sleeping rough.

Ms Banks said she and her sister felt that what they had provided at the Gatwick was misunderstood by many, “but we’re used to it”.

“We were happy doing what we were doing,” she said. “We loved it.

“We were doing it before it became fashionable. We didn’t ask anyone for any help. We hoped they would leave us alone and let us do what we did best, and look after people.”

With Allison Worrall