ISLAND’S LONG HISTORY
Cronin Island became ultra exclusive but it was also home to some of the city’s best-known figures.
WATERFRONT property on the Gold Coast has always come at a premium and Cronin Island has long been at the centre.
While less heralded than its most colourful neighbours – Chevron Island and Paradise Waters – the small enclave’s single street has less than 40 properties, making its mansions highly sought-after.
Some of the Gold Coast’s best-known figures have lived on the island in its 53 years.
Last week the Bulletin brought you the early days of the island, from its creation in the 1960s until its 1980s boom.
Today we look at its twists and turns from the 1990s and some of those who called it home.
Cronin Island had made history in 1985 as the location of the city’s first $1m sale.
The so-called “recession we had to have” hit in the early 1990s but the suburb’s large houses continued to secure price tags of more than $1m on the rare occasions they came on the market.
Among its residents during the 1990s were former Channel 9 game show hostess Joan Waters, industrialist George Stratigo and prominent property developer and surf lifesaving legend Peter Lacey.
Mr Lacey was acclaimed as one of the 25 greatest surf lifesaving figures of all time and had worked with high-profile development companies Raptis and Sunland Group and sat on the board of Indycar.
He died in his sleep at his Cronin Ave home in early 1997.
The same year brought another Gold Coast property record, this time by prominent Japanese developer Shuji Yokoyama. Mr Yokoyama had bought into the island in 1985 after spending $1.35m for the former mansion of businessman John Bartlett.
In the late 1980s he demolished the Bartlett house to make way for an $8m, 2314sq m, eight-bedroom mega mansion which he planned to live in during the three months he spent on the Gold Coast each year.
By 1997 he was ready to move on and put the house on the market. It sold for $6.5m to computer software magnate Masafumi Miyamoto, just shy of the then-queensland house record of $6.8m.
“By any standards, that’s a great price,” PRD Realty joint managing director Gordon Douglas said at the time. “People have made a lot of money in the stockmarket; we’ve seen a lot of sales above $1m in the last few weeks.”
Ms Waters sold her Cronin Island mansion for $4m in 1998.
By 2000, Hedges Ave had overtaken Cronin Island as the record-breaking strip but it continued to attract big-name buyers and guests, including Mark Mcivor and automotive group head James Frizelle.
During the early 2000s, Hollywood stars Rowan Atkinson and Buffy The Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar both stayed there while filming the 2002 film Scooby Doo.
Perhaps the biggest name to take up residence on Cronin Island in the early 2000s was then-30-year-old Billabong boss Matthew Perrin and his family, who lived in a mansion neighbouring the former Yokoyama home.
The home sat across two lots, includes seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a 2000-bottle
temperature-controlled wine cellar, and garaging for 12 cars.
The Yokoyama home, used as a filming location for Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, also went back on the market in 2003 for $13m but failed to secure a buyer. The price dropped first to $10m before selling for $7m to David and Marion Baird.
By the late 2000s, the global financial crisis hit.
Perrin, who had exited Billabong in 2002, declared bankruptcy in 2009 with debts of more than $28m after invest
ing heavily in China. It was soon discovered he had taken out two mortgages worth about $13.5m against his Cronin Island home.
The Commonwealth Bank sought to seize the property in a bid to recover the lost funds, but Perrin’s former wife Nicole won in court arguing that her then-husband had forged her name on loan documents.
It sold for $6.1m to Terry Gavan, head of EMACS Electrical, in 2012 while Perrin was sentenced in 2017 to
eight years in jail. He was released in 2019 after serving two years.
The mansion went on the market and set a Cronin Island record in 2020 when it sold for $12.45m to a Chinese buyer from Sydney who intends to use it as a permanent home.
Perrin’s ex-wife, who lived in a neighbouring house built in 2016 four years after their divorce, sold that mansion for $7.3m in mid-2021.