Real estate news – Bell sells … Recycling the College of Law and old Sydney law buildings … Bookwork – law librarian movements … Celebrity report – more news about Charles Waterstreet
THE High Court’s Virginia Bell has sold her Redfern digs ahead of the August 1 auction.
Ben Forsyth from McGraths is staying schtum about the sale price, but seasoned observers say it fetched around $2.6 million.
Bell and Water Rats actor Pete Bensley purchased the property in 1984 for $81,000. After she was appointed an SC in 1997 Bell bought out Bensley’s share for $325,000.
The house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a cobbled courtyard, is on the original estate of Dr William Redfern. Sadly, unlike the marketing for Michael Kirby’s harbourfront at Rose Bay, there were no bedroom shots.
In recent times Bell J has been spotted scouting for an apartment in the city’s east, but jesters tell me the judge’s new gaff is in leafy Turramurra.
Onwards and upwards.
The College of Law’s HQ in St Leonards is still on the market, with expectations of a sale in the low $20 millions.
Nev Carter, the CEO of the college, said, “We continue to be approached by developers for our building and we believe a sale in the current market will be the best course of action for the college”.
That was a couple of months ago, and a sale has yet to be closed.
Jon Chomley from Colliers is handling the property and says after a bit of rezoning it is an ideal spot to be turned into nifty little apartments.
In recent years the College of Knowledge has felt the competitive squeeze from universities, the Law Society and large law shops – who are providing PLT and CLE courses galore.
In the good old days (before 2010) the college was owned lock stock and barrel by the Law Society. The society still has preferred ordinary foundation membership status on the board and theoretically can veto things – but there’s been no sign of a veto to stop the sale of what once was part of the family jewels.
The transfer of ownership was not the proudest day for the Law Society and it’s now a sad thing for the countless lawyers, nurtured in the halls of learning at Chandos Street, to see this mighty law factory on the block.
Once it’s gone, what next?
Meanwhile, plans to turn the old Sydney Uni law school in Phillip Street into “luxury apartments” are well in hand.
The university sold the property for around $45 million in January to funds outfit Galileo Group and Industry Superannuation Property Trust.
Described as a 13-story example of the Brutalist style, it has been home to seekers of legal understanding since 1969, when it replaced the old-old law school building on the same site.
In 2009 the law faculty moved back to the main campus and into a $95 million timber and glass temple, where the Brutalist induction tradition continues.
Galileo did the redevelopment in College Street of the old Police HQ, now called The Residence, where an apartment last changed hands for $17 million.
The developers want to knock over the old Phillip Street building and replace it with 140 units over 26 stories. Stage one of the DA has been priced at $61 million.
This will mean the removal of tribes of homeless citizens camped undercover on the side of the building.
On the other hand, it will be perfect for cashed-up briefs who can now live, have their chambers and go to court without having to move out of the Street of Shame.
How’s old Robert (Potato Head) McClelland, going as a Family Court judge?
Soapy Brandis gave him the gig in May and he was sworn in last month.
Maybe it was a reward for setting the hounds running against Julia Gillard over her role as a solicitor for the Victorian branch of the AWU.
In a speech to parliament in 2012, after he was replaced as attorney general by Nicola Roxon, McClelland raised Gillard’s role in doing legal work for a union slush fund, run by her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson.
Thanks Robert. Later, the Gillard-AWU-slush snafu went nowhere at the Heydon Royal Commission, despite the best efforts of Hedless Thomas, Dr Andreas Bolt and other hacks.
More recently Potato prepared a fairly lame report for the NSW government on the oversight of police critical incidents.
Of course, a job as a Family Court judge might turn out to be more of a punishment than a promotion.
Great changes afoot in the world of law librarianship. After more than six-and-a-half years as manager of the law courts library in Sydney, Debbie Bennett has been poached to take over as the NSW Parliamentary Librarian.
She took up her new gig last week. In 2013 she did a four-month secondment at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, studying library service and technology.
Bennett’s old job at the Lubyanka is to be advertised shortly. The law courts’ loss is the Bear Pit’s gain.
Last month Gayle Davies retired from her post as the long serving NSW DPP librarian.
She’s been in the game for 35 years, 19 of which were with the DPP and before that at the Family Court.
The DPP is taking its time finding a replacement – the job has yet to be advertised.
In a sense Charles Waterstreet’s whole life has been building to the moment when a portrait of himself would win the Archibald Prize.
With the artist Nigel Milsom, Charles attended the announcement at the NSW Art Gallery last week wearing a fresh hair colour and an Alice band – a reminder that celebrities are expected to be a little skew-whiff in their turn-out.
Milsom, who Waterstreet had defended on an armed robbery charge, described the subject of his portrait as, “Part man part mythical creature with hands that appear other-worldly”.
Of necessity a celebrity has to be a self-promoter, and Charles is no failure on that score.
He was one of the earlier co-creators of the Rake TV series, but the show has moved on with the current writers-directors-producers now putting distance between the series and Charles.
Then there’s the carefully cultivated notion of the professional lothario, women begging to be bedded by the ageing rake. This falls into the “mythical creature” category. The pills and liquor, however, were real.
Who can forget Charles’ advice to writer Bob Ellis, as recorded by Justinian’s Flatulence columnist:
“Really, Bob, women have sex because they like it. Bob, you need to get out of the beanbag and go to bars where women are having sex in toilets, cars, parks, alcoves and park seats all over town, while Midsomer Murders is playing on your television.”
Or this bit from an interview he gave Good Weekend:
“I think there has only been one time that he’s [son Harry Waterstreet] been really annoyed. It was when he was at school and I made a pass at one of his classmates. I mean how was I to know? I thought she was one of the mothers. She had breasts like Anna Nicole.”
Or this inside tip from Fairfax’s Sydney Magazine (now defunct):
“It’s true that Charles Waterstreet, a committed womaniser, is known for turning both the practice of law and the dissolute life into an art form … He has written desolately about much younger women turning down his advances. But you can’t keep a good rake down.”
Stand-by for the next book, another autobiography. With any luck it could also be a full-length feature film.