Billionaire Oatley wine family snaps up Kahala for the best of Balmoral's boating facilities
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Ros Oatley-Lambert, the former wife of the former Southcorp wine chief Keith Lambert, has snapped up her neighbouring Balmoral harbourfront property, Kahala, to improve her garden and boating facilities.
The 1,485-square-metre Hopetoun Avenue acquisition was sold by Albert Bertini, the flamboyant property developer. The Lamberts own the adjoining Rivendell, which is set on a 2,000-square-metre double block.
The sale price has not been revealed but it last traded for $22.5 million in pre-global financial crisis 2007 and was therefore expected to sell through Raine & Horne Mosman for less in the current subdued market. It's speculated the price was above $18 million, perhaps just shy of $19 million.
Bertini and his former wife, Heather, bought Kahala from the successful veteran property developer Phil Arnold, who'd owned it since 1980.
Arnold paid $380,000 for the estate when it was sold by Lady (Delzie) Hooker, the widow of the real estate tycoon Sir Leslie Hooker, whose ashes are buried on the foreshore rocks.
In 1940, Les Hooker paid £3,050 for the property and during the 1950s he built a three-level house and a boatshed.
Bertini started works to rebuild the house as well as two pools, garaging for eight cars and a $1 million tunnel with a lift to the boatshed.
Bertini’s boatshed, currently accessed by 160 stairs, has his boating pride and joy – a 26-foot timber boat once owned by the US's most powerful family, the Kennedys. Bertini was recently filmed aboard his luxury boat, Jasa, during the Channel 9 series The Secret Millionaire in 2009. He was raised in Paris until the age of nine when his family migrated to Australia. He initially lived in a one-bedroom flat in Fairfield with his parents and three older brothers.
The Oatley viticulture family, who sold their Rosemount wine business to Fosters in 2001 for $1.4 billion, paid a then record $15.5 million for their Balmoral residence, Rivendell, which has limited boating facilities, when it sold through Richardson & Wrench Mosman agent Robert Simeon.
