Eagle rocksGail Williams, writing in STM

Eagle rocksGail Williams, writing in STM

April 19, 2007 10:00pm
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EAGLE Bay is WA's most exclusive holiday enclave. You've got to have millions to get in, but it's low-key once you have.

Ralph Sarich has one. Warren Anderson used to have one. Adam Gilchrist and Damien Martyn have each got one. The Aherns have one, maybe two. And everyone else desperately wants one.

What we are talking about is an Eagle Bay address.

And those who are in the "haves" camp enjoy the sparkling message delivered by the pristine clear waters as they sit on their decks up on the hill.

"If you’re up there drinking gins and tonic you have definitely made it," is the signal it flashes to those in this dress circle of prime South West real estate. But the owners knew that anyway.
They’ve long been ribbed by the "have nots" about their houses in "Ego Bay" or "Legal Bay", as the millionaires’ row of beach shacks is commonly referred to.

And just to emphasise their good fortune, a migrating whale will occasionally leap out of the ocean on its path to the Antarctic or a yacht will silently glide into view. A well known judge will wander past in his boardies and on the right day you might even spot Adam Gilchrist playing cricket on the beach.

Of course, there are other indicators of one’s arrival at the pointy end of the corporate and professional world the Aston Martin DB9, the Oyster Perpetual Rolex watch and membership at Peppermint Grove Tennis Club.

But when it comes to holiday homes or what used to be beach houses escaping to coastal retreats like Lancelin, Horrocks Beach, Miami, Rockingham, Safety Bay and Cowaramup doesn’t cut it with the movers and shakers.

What does have enormous social cache is the casual mention of chilling out in the hammock in Eagle Bay where one also does a spot of fishing, boating, catching up with friends, playing a round of golf or a couple of sets of tennis. Maybe visit a winery or two.

Yes, of course you can do that stuff anywhere along the West Australian coast. But Eagle Bay is to Perth what Portsea is to Melbourne and Whale Beach is to Sydney. And doing it in Eagle Bay, the heavenly holiday hamlet three hours’ drive from Perth, means you’re part of an elite club.


To join, it helps if you enlist a top notch designer like Dane Richardson to design an opulent luxury home with about five bedrooms, three bathrooms, undercover parking, tennis court, games rooms, maybe two kitchens and a satellite dish. Some are equipped with home theatres, marble floors, DVD libraries, swimming pool and spa.

One Jo and Michael Ahern’s place was even designed around a Jos Myers’ painting.

All that doesn’t come cheap but to some cashed up megamillionaires nothing is too high a price to pay. Local real estate agent Peter de Chiera has been known to knock on the door of Eagle Bay homes with a message for the owner: "My client will pay whatever you’re asking."

Interestingly, the answer from those who long ago made this exclusive 95ha pocket their second home is often a polite, but firm, "no".

The few who have muscled their way into one of the 280 prime positions, averaging 2000sq?m, on this short stretch of coastline, or have perched themselves in the rolling wooded hills are not about to budge for anyone.

Why would they when their deluxe homes are sitting on Meelup Regional Park, which offers numerous walk trails with wildflowers, marri and jarrah trees, bird watching (sea eagles, ospreys and kestrels among others) and spectacular coastal scenery?

The 20 properties with absolute beachfront have at their front doorstep a ribbon of white sandy beach which even at Christmas and Easter holidays is so laid back that kayaks, dinghies and fishing nets stay on the beach.

In winter, it’s wood fires and long walks; in summer, the beach and scarlet sunsets.
Add to this the bonus of the West Australian rarity of an east facing beach offering shelter from the harsh sea breezes and you can see why the latest parcel of beachfront land on the market has the potential to set a WA record.

And to prove that despite some owners’ reluctance to sell there is a buoyant market.

A north-facing beachfront block of 2657sq m recently sold for a rumoured $10 million, the highest price paid for a single residential lot in WA.

The block owned by inventor Chris Heyring, who founded Kinetic Pty Ltd is one of only six north-facing absolute beachfront properties in Eagle Bay.

The successful tenderer will be thrust into some illustrious company anaesthetists, orthopedic surgeons, judges, stockbrokers, sportsmen, mining executives, businessmen and lawyers.

Robin Forbes (former chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange Perth), Ralph Sarich (Orbital Engine Corp), Ken Vidler (surf sports retailer), Rob Black (stockbroker), Terry O’Connor (former chief of the Anti Corruption Commission and former AFL Commissioner), Darryl Black, Glenn Wheeler (Wentworth Holdings) and cricketers Damien Martyn and Adam Gilchrist are just some of the big names who retreat to the privacy of the bay.

Then there are those who are just known by their family names the Chaneys, the Aherns and the Zampattis, who are, in a sense, pioneers of the Eagle Bay holiday home set.

Lloyd Zampatti, the former managing director of Swan Brewery and CEO of Castlemaine Tooheys, snapped up the family’s beachfront block in 1980. His daughter, Heather, who is in residence when we call, is head of wealth management at Bell Potter Securities and was a teenager when her parents went south on a weekend to look at the land.

The Zampattis rattled into Eagle Bay, which was then known more for its flies and power blackouts than anything else, and saw a vacant block right on the beach the only one available at the time.
"There were only two or three other houses in the Eagle Bay settlement then," Heather says.
"What appealed to us straight away was being able to build right on the beach, especially an east facing beach where you can see the sun come up over the ocean."

She is reluctant to say what price they paid for the 2000sq m block, but she remembers it as being expensive for the time.

Local real estate agent Peter de Chiera, who has been selling properties in the region since the 1970s, says Eagle Bay land has always been more expensive than other areas in the South West with beachfront properties going for about $28,000 to $32,000 in the early 1980s.

"In Dunsborough at that time you could have bought one for $16,000," he says.

Today the cheapest property on the market is a villa for $1. 7 million and even a block with a small shack on it will cost you $1.5 million.

Claire Guinness and her husband, who now live in Dunsborough, paid $60,000 in 1973 for 5.
5ha, which included the parcel currently up for tender, bought by Chris Heyring in 2000.

If that parcel does sell for $10 million, it puts the nearby property of the Zampattis at about $8 million not a bad profit for a 26-year property investment.

But to the Zampattis, their hideaway is more about friendships and family get togethers than counting their profit and they are certainly not about to sell. When they built their two storey Zincalume clad home there were only a few other families the Bontempos, the Hammonds, the Aherns and the Guinnesses. There was no scheme water - still isn’t.

"We have stayed good friends with all the original families," says Heather.
"Because there were so few of us, we were all really close and we’ve stayed close. "

Like many of the Eagle Bay holidaymakers there are only 29 families who are permanent residents the Zampattis make a pilgrimage there every Boxing Day.

And though they only spend about six weekends a year there, they love the relaxed life that comes with the address.

"The things we love doing as a family are very beachy," she says.

"Going for strolls, going for swims you don’t have to get in your car to go anywhere.
There’s great walks to Rocky Point, Meelup Beach, just seeing the wildlife is lovely. "

The Zampattis have a farm within walking distance of the beach, which butts on to national park.
Heather says a lot more houses have gone up since they moved in but it is still secluded.

"We go into Dunsborough most days to have a coffee," she says. "The beach has become a bit more crowded but only at busy times. The surfers walk through our property to go to Rocky Point, so we use them as an indicator of where to swim that day."

She says a lot of the socialising is done on the spur of the moment.

"If you happen to see people on the beach and it’s all very relaxed, you might ask them up for a drink or a barbecue," she says.

Up on the hill at Seaview Rise are permanent residents Carmel and Colin Sanderson, a retired couple who moved there from Kalgoorlie eight years ago. They are astonished at the prices being paid for homes and blocks in the area.

"We’re not about to move, though," says Carmel. "We love the fact that there are no streetlights and we have rainwater tanks." Colin, who begins every day with a swim and a walk, says now the general store has been demolished to make way for townhouses (because it’s more economically viable) he’s learnt to do without reading the daily newspaper.

"There is a bit of a gap between the permanent residents and the holidaymakers because you just tend to socialise more with the people you see more often," he says. "You occasionally see someone famous down on the beach, but everybody respects each other’s privacy."

Issues that unite the permanent residents are the rapidly mushrooming boat moorings now numbering 80 spoiling the aesthetics of their bay, as well as having an impact on seagrass, and the building of a boat ramp which will put pressure on the beach car park and allow access for bigger boats. The number of moorings will be controlled once the area is designated a marine park, but currently anyone can put in a mooring and many of them are too close together.

Those who own holiday homes prefer to maintain a low profile and few would be named for this article.

A stroll around the peaceful borough reveals a grab bag of architecture. Among the palatial mansions made from a variety of building materials limestone, timber, steel and mud brick there are some modest dwellings. Some huge homes look like bunkers, others have spacious balconies and some draw their inspiration from provincial France.

On this Sunday morning there are a few with cars in the garage, one has a pizza oven recently delivered sitting in the driveway, others have aluminium dinghies. But, in most, the curtains are drawn and the outdoor furniture put away.

Continuing down a bush path to the beach, one passes tennis courts and water tanks and a group discussing the ecology of the bay. A man in sunnies and boardies walks along the beach and offers a cheery "good morning" summing up the urbane nature of the population.

According to Andrew Hopkins, who as an agent with Jennings Hopkins has sold 15 properties in Eagle Bay in the past 12 months, the bulk of buyers are West Australians professional people in the 40 plus age bracket. Mining executives, doctors, lawyers and sportsmen figure strongly.

"There are a few overseas buyers and a few from interstate," he says. "With each sale, the prices are going up and up. I just sold one in Gypsy St for $1.85 million. It sold 12 months earlier for $1.06 (million). "

One part time resident, who bought a house 23 years ago for $40,000, said the much lauded Eagle Bay lifestyle was anything but glamorous.

"Some days I stay in my pyjamas till lunchtime," she says. "People have this feeling that it’s all very privileged down here. We are as casual as you’ll get. Most of us spend our nights going from house to house saying ‘You’re cooking tonight’. There’s a real community feel. Everybody looks out for everybody else’s property. You’ll get people taking kids out for a ride on the boat.

"If I’m going into Dunsborough, I’ll drop into everyone’s house on the way and ask if they want something brought back."

But there is always the opportunity to taste the luxury for a week or so. If you log on to the Private Properties Booking Agency website on www.privateprop.com you can choose from a number of homes available for rent at a price.

At the upper end of the scale is the famous Dane Richardson-designed mansion which is described as arguably the most opulent luxury property in the area. For $10,000 a week you can enjoy the hillside location offering spectacular views and marble floors and an infinity pool overlooking the ocean.

Richardson, who grew up in Yallingup, has designed four homes in Eagle Bay, has two under construction and two more on the drawing board. He is protective of his clients’ privacy, but says most of them are expats based in Singapore and Hong Kong who have fallen in love with this part of the world.

"It’s close (to Singapore and Hong Kong) and it’s clean and safe," he says. "That’s what they love about it."

Richardson’s designs are eclectic, sometimes geometric, sometimes turreted, sometimes textured, sometimes modernist, but always interesting and he is passionate about every project.

"We are contributing to the landscape of Eagle Bay to the best of our ability.
It is one of those great places where people can express themselves," he says.

Former resident Jerry Guinness - Claire’s ex-husband - expressed his feelings about the place by securing personalised numberplates saying "EAGLE BAY".

Claire has donated the numberplates to the Naturaliste Volunteer Sea Rescue Group which is offering them up for tender.

Now, there’s an option for those who don’t have a spare $10 million to spend on a block of land.