Clyde Cottage, once home to Dame Joan Sutherland, sells for $4 million to Singaporean buyers: Title Tattle

By Jonathan Chancellor
Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Clyde Cottage, the one-time Queen Street, Woollahra childhood home of Dame Joan Sutherland, has been sold for $4 million. The much-admired yet dilapidated, house in a prime position on the cafe strip had last sold for $6.45 million in late 2007.

The 803-square-metre property that comes with Stephen Dunkley-secured development approved plans will have its restoration and extension undertaken by Singaporean businessman Ronald Ooi, who in January 2011 oversaw the sale of his 40-year-old family company the securities and investment broker, Kim Eng, for a sum of S$1.8 billion ($A1.35 billion) to Maybank.

Ooi, who had a 15% stake, has assumed a new role as executive advisor at Maybank Kim Eng, which has adopted the tiger symbol as its corporate logo. Clyde Cottage has been bought by Ooi and his wife, Erica.

Clyde Cottage had been listed through Damien Bickmore-Hutt at Bickmore-Hutt Realty, who was initially seeking $6 million-plus buyers. Buyers were advised that the costs of repair and extensions were at least $3.75 million before landscaping based on a Heymann Cohen quantity surveyor report. A $5 million total project cost was forecast by the valuer Jason Smith who in 2009 envisaged a $15 million completion value.

The two-level, four-bedroom house became Sutherland’s home after her father died suddenly on her sixth birthday in the early 1930s. It was the home of her grandfather, Alexander Alston, a master builder who built the upper storey and extensions at the back. It currently has 270 square metres of space on both levels.

It was her home for 19 years – where she was inspired by listening to the voices of Dame Nellie Melba and Enrico Caruso on a borrowed gramophone.

Its been reported Sutherland, as a child, sang to the birds from a swing under a camphor laurel tree in the backyard of Clyde Cottage, which is National Trust classified because of its historic importance and its architectural interest.

Several years before her death Sutherland noted: "Unfortunately, from the time my family gave up the house, the deterioration set in.”