No official change of address yet, as postmaster Ahmed Fahour still to find $7 million plus Kew buyer
Australia's highest-paid public servant, the Australia Post chief, Ahmed Fahour, has yet to sell his Kew home.
The three level mansion, built on the site of a former monastery, has been marketed with reputed $7 million plus private treaty hopes through Paul Pfeiffer and Warwick Anderson at RT Edgar since mid-August.
It was built by Montage Developments with "epic space and understated opulence" throughout the "resort style" estate, complete with outdoor kitchen, self contained cottage, swimming pool, spa, steam room and north/south flood lit championship court.
The estate covers 2,027 square metres.
It's whispered Ahmed and Dionnie Fahour are the mystery buyers behind the $22 million sale of Invergowrie, the historic bluestone home in Hawthorn that was an exclusive finishing school for young women.
The off-market sale of the imposing mansion made headlines in April on Property Observer with the buyer undisclosed using solicitors, Arnold Bloch Leibler as their intermediaries
The subsequent $22 million sale documentation has been through a holding company whose address and directors are from the office of the solicitors.
Peter Hill, the skateboarding Globe International co-founder and his wife, Angela sold the colonial-gothic style mansion that sits on 1.1 hectares.
It cost $10.75 million in 2002.
The first president of the Legislative Assembly, Sir John Palmer, began building the estate in 1846 which comes with a tennis court, fountain, botanic gardens and a sweeping driveway.
There were five buildings on the estate, including a free-standing hall, an annexe, stables of convict-mined bluestone converted into a guest house when last sold.
The $24 million sale in 2010 of the former Baillieu family estate on St Georges Road, Toorak to the soft-drink magnate Harry Stamoulis remains Melbourne's record sale. The title of Victoria's most expensive residential property is held by clifftop Portsea mansion Ilyuka, which sold for $25 million in December 2010.
Invergowrie (pictured below) is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.
At one time it was owned by theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin, who is said to have tried to demolish it. The building was saved when businessman Sir William McPherson bought it. Sir William (pictured below) rose to political heights as premier of Victoria in 1928.
On his death, the property was handed over to the Association of Headmistresses of Independent Schools when it became the Invergowrie Homecraft Hostel and was later headquarters of the Victorian Post Secondary Education Commission.
It was bought by the Coogi knitwear entrepreneur Jacky Taranto in 1992 for $2.7 million who sold in 2002 to the Hills.
It was last October when The Hill's bought in St Kilda from the former TV personality Steve Vizard.
The St Kilda mansion, Clendore is one of the original three adjoining terraces, the home of Sir Graham Berry, the distinguished radical politician.
Images courtesy of the State Library of Victoria and The Invergowrie Foundation.
