Flight Centre's Geoff Harris the $12 million Hollyford, Albert Park record setter

Flight Centre's Geoff Harris the $12 million Hollyford, Albert Park record setter
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

Geoff Harris, the co-founder of Flight Centre, and former vice-president of AFL club Hawthornwho's worth an estimated $975 million on the latest BRW rich list, has bought in Albert Park.

The $12 million purchase of Hollyford, the much admired 1873 residence, nows hold the mantle of the suburb's top sale.

It is the suburb's first $10 million plus double digit million dollar sale.

David Wood's Hockingstuart is being credited as the selling agency.

Hollyford was built about 17 years after St Vincent Place was laid out, modelled on the English idea of houses clustered around its central landscaped gardens.

The heritage listed St Vincent Place home comes with rear Nicolas Murray-designed extension on its 480 square metre block.

The project involved restoring the front four rooms of an Italianate Victorian double fronted house along with a full width linear pond which marks the transition to the modern more informal living spaces which flows onto the garden and lap pool.

It last sold in 2002 at around $2.2 million.

Hollyford, which has its 1873 construction date on its gorgeous vined facade, was the home of the mariner, Thomas Mowbray Hutchinson, according to the land title documents that Property Observer has researched. He owned the holding from 1867 to 1875, there with his wife, Honora and six children. He died in 1888 in Chusan Street, St Kilda with a subsequent 1899 court case over his estate.

Then pawn broker James Healy owned Hollyford for just 14 months. The Hammond family held the property from December 1876 until its sale to the Ryan family from Tipperary in 1899. It seems they gave the house its name as Hollyford is a small village in County Tipperary. The best known family member was George Ryan, who died in 1986, and was old enough to recall the picket fence left over from St Vincent Place's days as a racecourse. The Ryans sold around 2002.

St Vincent Place's previous highest sale was $6.62 million when Rosebank sold unrenovated at its 2011 Marshall White auction. The 1866 double-fronted Victorian home was up for sale for the first time in over 52 years, and is now finally being restored.

Albert Park's prior record was Duart, the $7.25 million mansion sold in late 2009 on Beaconsfield Parade by the Salvo family to Sonia Hill, wife of Globe International founder Stephen Hill through Hockingstuart.

Harris quit full-time duties at Flight Centre in 1998, and left the board in 2008.

Gallery photos courtesy of Nick Murray Architects.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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