Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin list Darlo's Iona

Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin list Darlo's Iona
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

The film makers Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin now have $16 million-plus hopes for Iona, the 1880s Darlinghurst mansion listed two years ago with $15 million hopes.

And while the couple then wanted to buy a family home with a garden in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, they are now busy living in the USA. 

The couple paid $10 million for the grand Victorian building (pictured below) in 2006 having previously rented the Italianate mansion, for almost the prior decade.

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This image courtesy of My Darling Darlinghurst.

The creative duo had an initial weekly asking price rent in 1995 around a hefty $6,400.

It sits on a 2700 square metre block reduced over the years since built in the late 1880s as the residence for the pastoralist Edward Chisholm.

It next sold in 1908 to Adela Taylor, wife of Sir Allen Taylor, the then timber merchant and former lord mayor of Sydney who'd been in office in 1905 and 1906 and again between 1909 and 1912.


With most mansions around Darlinghurst demolished between the 1920s and 1960s, the extended use of Iona as a hospital saved it from this fate.

The National Trust and other conservationists fought to protect Iona before and after its purchase by Jesseme Pty Ltd, the company was owned by John Rutherford who prepared plans for the conversion of the building into 15 flats but the proposal did not proceed.

The 1880s oasis was sold for $2.04 million in 1993 by John Rutherford to Ian Gowrie-Smith, the London-based entreprenuer who sold to the Luhrmann-Martin couple.

It has the best rose corniches Title Tattle has seen. The Wentworth Courier reports the $16 million hopes are held by the listing agency, Sothebys with the pair looking for a smaller property to use as a Sydney base.

 

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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