Never mind the poor. In Cottesloe, the gap is widening between the rich and super-rich
The affluent coastal enclave of Cottesloe has been crowned the country’s most concentrated area of wealth, with new data revealing the mega-rich top 1 per cent control half the suburb’s total income.
Cottesloe had the highest average annual income of any postcode in Western Australia at $282,743, with its 5606 earners raking in a whopping $1.58 billion in 2020/21, analysis of personal income by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found.
Cottesloe: a stunning Perth beach just 15 minutes from the CBD.Credit: Getty Images
And the gap between the rich and super-rich who declare the suburb their primary place of residency widened, with the top 1 per cent taking home 50.2 per cent of the total income, up from 20 per cent a decade earlier.
This enabled Cottesloe to take the title of Australia’s most unequal suburb, followed by Eastwood in Sydney’s inner-north, where 35.5 per cent of the income went to the top 1 per cent.
The data also showed wealth remained concentrated in Perth’s western suburbs and along the coast.
The top income earners in Cottesloe’s neighbouring suburbs, Mosman Park and Peppermint Grove — home to mining billionaires Chris Ellison and Tim Goyder, property developer Nigel Satterley and philanthropist Janet Holmes a Court— snared almost one-third of the total earnings.
In Nedlands, Crawley and Dalkeith, where Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart and media mogul Kerry Stokes own sprawling riverfront estates, the top earners rake in 22.6 per cent.
In greater Perth, the top 1 per cent of earners clinched 10 per cent of the $99 billion made that year.
In Melbourne, that figure was slightly higher at 10.3 per cent, while in Sydney it reached 12.2 per cent.
Perth’s average personal income reached $77,531 — more than $7000 higher than that recorded nationally.
But the data demonstrated the income inequality across the city’s sprawl, with residents in the best-paid suburbs making more than five times those in the lowest paid.
Girrawheen in Perth’s north had the lowest average personal income at $51,969, followed closely by Balga/Mirrabooka ($52,950), Gosnells ($55,350) and Cannington/Queens Park ($56,653).
Who lives in Cottesloe?
While the riverside suburb of Dalkeith is home to Jutland Parade, also known as “millionaire’s row”, many of the state’s wealthiest people prefer the coast.
Cottesloe’s most high-profile resident is billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest, whose residential landholding in the tightly held suburb has grown to span more than 8000 square metres over the past decade.
In 2015 he bought for $16 million ‘Tukurua’, the 1890s summer house of former WA attorney-general Septimus Burt, which sits on more than 5000 square metres of oceanside land on the corner of Rosendo Street and Marine Parade.
Seven years later, he snapped up neighbouring property ‘Le Fanu’, now named ‘Banksia’ for $15.6 million: a 130-year-old, 17-room Federation Queen Anne-style home on 1492 square metres.
It was named ‘Le Fanu’ after Archbishop Henry Le Fanu following its sale to the Anglican Church in the 1940s, before an Esperance farmer’s failed plans to restore it saw it fall into ruin.
WA mining billionaire Chris Ellison’s business partner-turned-rival Steve Wyatt bought it in 2009 for $4.25 million and spent $11 million on restorations.
Forrest is among Cottesloe’s most prominent residents, with several adjoining properties.Credit: Nine (composite image)
It later spent more than three years on the market before high profile western suburbs real estate agent Vivien Yap sold it to Forrest in 2022.
After securing council approvals for a revamp of his own, Forrest forked out more than $12.6 million to acquire the townhouses behind it and the two-storey property separating it from his Rosendo Street compound.
The council approval was aided by letters of support from his neighbours — John Bond, the eldest son of late businessman Alan Bond, and philanthropist Annie Fogarty.
A short drive north along Cottesloe’s foreshore, where Forrest also owns the lease over the landmark Indiana Teahouse, is the property of another WA billionaire — Multiplex heir Tim Roberts.
Roberts purchased a home on Margaret Street for $8.5 million in 2020 before buying the neighbouring property for $3.6 million in April the following year.
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