Palm Beach v Portsea: Jonathan Chancellor and Margie Blok offer 30-plus insights
Our contrarian commentators have collaborated to come up with a list of everything you might need to know about Palm Beach and Portsea, the NSW and Victorian holiday havens of the rich.
The localities appear to have plenty in common, and not just pricey properties.
Closer scrutiny, by Jonathan Chancellor and Margie Blok, reveals not just the similarities but also the distinct differences between the two prestige seaside localities and their social set.
They even give their preference at the conclusion.
Occupying prime peninsula positions, both Palm Beach and Portsea offer choice - the ocean and Pittwater at PB, while Portsea has the bay and back beach, immortalised in the Australian Crawl song. There are around 1500 properties at Portsea across 92 streets and 1100 at Palm Beach over 31 streets. Portsea has about 80 current listings with 50 at Palm Beach.
PB is about one hour’s drive from the city (outside peak hour), but the drive to and from Portsea can be a trip taking up to two hours, and with toll costs that can total about $20 each way. Portsea has dirt roads.
Just after Christmas, both PB and Portsea are invaded with scores of holidaymakers in search of summertime fun. For many weeks, across December and January, these usually sleepy seaside havens transform into a playground for rich and famous, renters and daytrippers, as well as wannabes and wannabeseens.
Portsea has one of The Real Housewifes of Melbourne, Andrea Moss, premiering soon on Foxtel Arena.
Palm Beach already has international television recognition from its long association as the Summer Bay set of Home & Away, the Channel 7 soap.
It's limestone at Portsea; sandstone at Palmie typically incorporated into the new Hamptons-style houses.
With around 25, Portsea easily has more a private jetties on the foreshore than PB.
Portsea also has far more tennis courts than PB. There are 30 just on the Port Philip Bay stretch. The epicentre is the five adjoining Point Nepean Road homes - on the bayside - all with courts.
During the summer season, parties and social gatherings are de rigueur at PB and Portsea - this year both precincts were awash in a sea of champagne, chardonnay and cocktails.
Among high profile stockbroking types entertaining friends at PB during January was Russell Aboud who threw a lunch party that was flashed across social media platforms (including Flipagram) by guest, Mark Coppleson.
Everyone recalls Sam Gazal’s annual summer party at PB as always a highlight, as was Judy Joye’s cocktail party, while Portsea’s Battler’s Cup tennis weekend, led by legendary estate agent and developer Johnno Edgar, was an institution.
Among the peripatetic stalwarts who straddle both social spheres are timber heiress Janet Alstergren and her partner, Graham Webb.
Architect designed houses are the go in both PB and Portsea. Peter Muller designed a swag of amazing homes, including Kumale for the Richardson Victa mower family, in the 1950s at Palm Beach. Among PB’s recently preferred architects are Susan Rothwell and Walter Barda, who both own holiday houses there. Kookoomgiligai, Rothwell’s substantial residence, in a prime position on Sunrise Hill, has northerly views across the beach and Barrenjoey headland. She designed last year's top seller.
While Barda’s well hidden waterfront abode is on the peninsula’s Pittwater side. Last year the Chenchow Little-designed house on Bynya Road was sold for $2.6 million.
Sydney architect Philip Cox got the commission for the Portsea home Mandalay, built by Rothschild's Peter Griffith whose folk held the nearby Griffin estate, Riptide, on almost 0.2 of a hectare clifftop, for 42 years until 2002. The family made its fortune through the White's Shoes business. Peter's mother, Marie Griffin had lived there with long-time partner Winton Gillespie, father of the late architect Wayne Gillespie, after the death of her husband. Wayne Gillespie enjoyed a headstart on many local commisions because he lived at Portsea all his life until his 2002 death.
Hassell Architects, Nicholas Day, Gregory Burgess's Nagari at 21-23 Blair Road, BBP Architects and Robert Robertson are among the other architects who've designed homes. A Guilford Bell-designed, two-storey property at 3840 Point Nepean Road, set on about 2023 square metres with its own beach walkway, fetched $5.6 million in 2011.
Both PB and Portsea have double-digit millions trophy beach houses. PB’s most expensive house sale was Kalua, which retired car-dealer, Laurie Sutton, bought for $22 million in 2012 from the Joye family.
Best known previously as having been the prestige Christmas holiday rental for international luminaries including Nicole Kidman, John Cleese and James Murdoch, the circa 1920s plantation-style beachfront trophy home (with a separate three-bedroom guesthouse and studio cabana) stands on a 5,500-square-metre dress circle block with a pool, tennis court and views of Cabbage Tree Boat Harbour.
Sutton is the third owner of the 1920s beach bungalow which previously was sold by the Hordern retailing family to the Joyes for $330,000 in 1978.
Portsea’s most expensive mansion is Ilyuka which former Computershare director Michele O'Halloran sold for $26 million in 2010 to John Higgins, a Victorian house record. The Spanish Mission-style home was built in 1928-29 for oil executive Harry Conforth.
Both PB and Portsea notched up just the two sales above $8 million last year. Portsea's highest price was $8.3 million for Noorah on Point Nepean Road sold to company director Neville Bertalli by John Halstead, the Singapore-based former partner of Simone Semmens. PB’s highest sale was $10.6 million for Paul Nankervis family’s house on Sunrise Road.
The cheapest entry point for houses is around $750,000 at both localities, although older style Palm Beach flats can be picked up for around $450,000. Portsea's apartments start at around $750,000 although much pricier at Delgany, the former Harold Desbrowe-Annear-designed Celtic castle property of the Armytage family, and legendary Hermann Schneider, which dominates the suburb's apartment offering which tally around 60. The Buxton Group had architects McGauran Giannini Soon undertake the project.
The glamourous Amanda Nankervis, former wife of the advertising executive John Nankervis, is missed by both summer crowds, since she spends her time these days at Curl Curl. They had been on-and-off owners at Palm Beach since selling their Portsea place in the mid-1990s.
Jenny Brash, the wife of the late record-store pioneer Geoff Brash, once joked that she married him for the cliff-top holiday house. Overlooking Shelly Beach, the Knoll was owned by the Brash family for nearly 80 years, until sold in 2003 for $5.7 million in response to rising land tax bills, and they bought another house in the area.
There are no bathing boxes at PB, but Portsea has dozens of bathing boxes which sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The last known Portsea bathing box sale made January 2013 headlines after selling for $440,000 at RT Edgar auction. But in January 2011 a Portsea box set a record $585,000 when five bidders fought for the property at its RT Edgar auction. Another fetched $455,000 in January 2010. There had been a record $362,500 sale in January 2008. box number 28, a single garage-sized building made of concrete blocks, sold in 1999 at $132,000 on Shelly Beach through Kay & Burton agent Liz Jensen. It's among the row of 45 boxes, near Campbells Road, at the base of the walking track down to the beach. Another box in the same row had sold also in 1999 for $160,000 and the box two doors down from number 28 sold for $75,000 in 1996.
While the 2013 listing was among the prized Shelly Beach boxes, it is set well back from the water and a bit far up the beach too, so more of interest to just the immediate surrounding properties than the higher prices ones sold in recent years.
Land tax hurts property owners at PB and Portsea – empty nesters with a city residence often opt to buy a holiday house in the less expensive precincts with lower annual land tax bills. The cost saving measure would be making the beach property as the principle place of residence, but bewarned that involves more than changing over the billing address.
Owners at both get annoyed when the daytrippers park on their front lawns, especially if, as Valerie Lawson once noted, they set up with deck chairs and Eskies full of beer and aromatic lunch dishes.
The Baillieus have been at Point King at Portsea since the 1930s. The Yencken's have also been holidaying at Portsea for 80 plus years. The Pratten's are among Palm Beach's longtimers.
Many Palm Beach residents who spend all or part of the year at home flee overseas when Christmas looms near, with the proceeds of their summer rental income.
Both PB and Portsea attract wealthy semi-retired buyers aged in their 50s and 60s – many prefer houses on level land rather than hillside or clifftop sites with steep access. Inclinators, like the one at the Portsea retreat of Craig and Connie Kimberley of Just Jeans fortune, just don't appeal to many buyers.
Both PB and Portsea have a profusion of 60-something property owners and holidaymakers who drive expensive imported vehicles ranging from Porsche four-wheel-drives to sleek Aston Martins.
Helicopters aren't welcomed by most residents unless you are in it. Over three weeks in January, 2002, Kate Baillieu counted more than 90 trips in and out of the Fox and Roux residences.
Neither PB or Portsea attracts Asian buyers in any bigway, but both are popular with expats.
The homes of mistresses are few and far between these days.
Neither are immune from severe price downturns, with distress sales periodic. Hotel developer Bernard Roux was Portsea's last high profile casualty, although he had actually sold up by the time things publicly turned for the poorer. His wealth included his personal polo team based in the Gold Coast hinterland, a private helicopter and a cliff-top home, next to that of the transport magnate Lindsay Fox. In the mid-1990s attention was on Portsea when the Commonwealth Bank of Australia commenced legal action against tax lawyer Garrick Lewis Gray to try to get possession of a property. Even further back there was James O'Connor's 1983 sale of the Rovina estate at 3808 Point Nepean Road after his Kew mercedes dealership hit some financing issues in the recession.
Portsea's 3944 was declared Australia's richest earning postcode in 2012, but in 2013 to Sydney's harbourside postcode of 2027, which takes in Darling Point, Edgecliff, Rushcutters Bay and Point Piper. The average salary for residents of Portsea sits at $180,000 and Darling Point, $203,000.
Artist Bruce Goold captured the Palm Beach ambience in his linocuts of magpies and frangipani.
Artist Rick Matear, of the family who bought Ilukya from Vacuum Oil boss Harry Cornforth, captures the Portsea sun and sand, as did the Penleigh Boyd beachscapes.
Both still retain traces of the casual holiday, but are more corporate now. The arrival of advisers and corporate types began at Palm Beach when Jim Dominguez bought a double block in Florida Road in 1988. The then Hunters Hill merchant banker and his wife, Suzanne, snapped up their double block for just $215,000. It's currently for sale with $8 million plus hopes for Mandalay.
In 1980, Portsea recorded its first house sale of more than $1 million when property developer, David Deague, bought the Federation-era house, Colwyn, once owned by the Baillieu family. At PB, it was 1981 when the late Kerry Packer bought his Palm Beach oceanfront, breaking the suburb's million-dollar threshold with his $1 million purchase from the MacCormick family.
Portsea has the strongest prime ministerial connection. Harold Holt and his wife Zara had a beach house at Portsea from the late 1950s when he was Treasurer in the Menzies Government.
In 1967, when Holt was prime minister, the nation was shaken after his disappearance while swimming off Cheviot Beach. The Weeroona Avenue home was bulldozed in the early 1990s. Lady Sonia McMahon only bought at PB in 1993, five years after the death of her husband, Sir William McMahon.
These days PB makes do with the occasional appearance of Tony Abbott at the annual summer season soiree which Charles Curran and his wife Eva, hold at their Bynya Road holiday home. But Tony Abbott was overseas this year.
Portsea is much more conservative. The Palm Beach polling booth posted a 67% first preference vote for the Liberal's Bronwyn Bishop at the last federal election in the Mackellar electorate, followed by Jonathan King of the Greens on 17% and Labor at 10% of the 912 votes. In the Flinders electorate, Federal environment minister Greg Hunt secured 83% of the 256 votes cast at the Portsea polling booth, with Labor on 7% and The Greens on 6%.
Ocean swims are popular fixtures on the summer calendar at Portsea and PB. The Portsea Swim Classic, held on January 25, is a major fundraiser for the Portsea Surf Life Saving Club. And the Pier to Perignon, a four kilomere swim from Sorrento Pier to Portsea Pier, is scheduled for March 8 - it follows the route of two friends who, many years ago, raced each other over the course for a bottle of Dom Perignon. PB has the Big Swim, a 2.5 kilometre swim from Palm Beach to Whale Beach, held annually on Australia Day - this year’s was the 40th of the event.
The Portsea Hotel, owned by tourism entreprenuer Chris Morris, is a magnet for many of the young folk, while PB is all about its private beachfront clubs: the Cabbage Tree and Pacific clubs. No self-respecting socialite would be seen at the Palm Beach RSL on Barrenjoey Road. Many PB dinners this season were down at Avalon's restaurant, Starfish.
They still talk at Palm Beach about the home built by grocery tycoon Jim Fleming and his wife, Angela after they paid $3.65 million in 1995 for the Iluka Road property.
The Flemings constructed an expansively lavish house that came with a second-floor see-through glass bathtub, which was suspended above the ground-floor living area. It is not known what Doug Shears, the $15 million buyer in 2007, has done with Anakela, which sits on a 1947 square metre holding. Doug Shears is the Uncle Tobys founder.
Singalongs around the pianola at the Packer family bungalow are pretty much a thing of the past.
The caged enclosure where Kerry Packer once practised his polo swings on a wooden horse at the rear of his bungalow has gone. The Sydney polo set must head to Centennial Park, Windsor, or this March to the McGrath Polo in the Paddock at Bunnamagoo Estate Wines, Mudgee, while the Melbourne set certainly love their Jeep Portsea Polo at Point Nepean. Hamish McLachlan, a polo player and sports commentator, helped secured its first sell-out in 2007 when he was the organiser of what was then known as The Age Portsea Polo.
When it comes to golf courses, Portsea beats PB hands down, for Portsea has an 18-hole golf course and about 10 other courses spread across the Mornington Peninsula. The club dates back to 1923 and founder Arthur W. Relph. The course was extended to eighteen holes in 1965. In June last year the new clubhouse, the Mercure Portsea Golf Club & Resort was opened. PB has a modest 9-hole course, albeit with pretty seaside views.
Palm Beach has a rockpool 50 metre swimming pool where Jack 'Johnny' Carter has taught three generations to swim. He's known across the world given articles through the years in the New York Times and the Guardian.
Socialite Maria Bockmann, the wife of the former director of Morgan Stanley, Bruce is possibly the only person to have owned at both Palm Beaches. Now based in Southampton, New York, they sold at the other Palm Beach in the USA in 2010 for $US7.2 million after paying $US7.77 million in 2007 for the Florida retreat. At one time, Zillow.com, the website that tracks real estate values, estimated the house at 200 Jungle Road, Palm Beach, FL 33480 to be worth about an absurd $22 million estimate. The couple's Palm Beach, Sydney foray also involved a loss. The Whale Beach Road property was sold in 1992 to fashion designer Peter Weiss for $740,000, having cost $1 million in 1988.
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Both Portsea and PB have veteran agents who have sold properties in the area for yonks. Portsea’s longtime agent is Liz Jensen who’s spearheaded Kay & Burton’s Portsea office since it was launched in 1994. The agency had been selling at Portsea for a good decade before. PB’s longtime sales agent is David Edwards, principal of LJ Hooker Palm Beach, who’s worked in the area for well over two decades.
It's not all fun in the sun. Portsea had its only known shark tragedy in 1956. It was a blue pointer. Its rips are pretty dangerous too. Beware of the Palm Beach tick outbreak on land and the bluebottle jellyfish offshore.
Compiled as the 2014 summer season draws to a close, Margie has been going to "Palmie", as it is affectionately known since her childhood.
Jonathan first went to Portsea as a teenager, and to Palm Beach in 1986 when he recalls bunking down amid the cooling sandstone foundations of a hillside house as a guest of a north shore lawyer, now a justice in the Supreme Court Appeal Court, and his journalist wife.
THE CONCLUSION:
