Billionaire spends $136m in cash on Toorak mansion and block next door

The billionaire Bastas family has splashed $136.1 million to buy Victoria’s most expensive home and a block of apartments next door.

The grand Toorak home, known as Coonac, sold in an off-market deal last year for a sale price that was not disclosed at the time and has been the subject of much speculation.

Settlement documents show the mansion has changed hands for $124 million in cash, setting a record residential price for Victoria, to buyer Georgina Bastas. There is no mortgage on the title, public records show.

Coonac is set on about 1.09 hectares, one of the largest blocks in Toorak. Georgina also spent $12.1 million to buy a block of brick apartments adjoining the boundary of Coonac, also without a mortgage, adding about another 1200 square metres to the property.

Gina and Dennis Bastas – the pharmaceutical billionaire who founded DBG Health, which owns affordable cosmetics brand MCoBeauty – this year proposed a $38.5 million renovation of Coonac to demolish some non-original features and add a double-storey extension.

Dennis Bastas’ wealth was estimated at $5.74 billion on the latest Australian Financial Review Rich List, after he sold a 25 per cent stake in the company last year for $1.6 billion.

The agents on the deal were Kay & Burton’s Ross Savas and Gerald Delany, who declined to comment when contacted. Dennis Bastas was also contacted.

The vendors are logistics boss Paul Little and wife Jane Hansen, the chancellor of the University of Melbourne, who had owned the mansion since 2002, when they paid $14.5 million. Little’s wealth is estimated at $2.12 billion, after selling trucking company Toll Holdings to Japan Post in 2015 for $6.5 billion.

He also ran a property development company, Little Projects, which he sold in 2018. Hansen is a former investment banker at Macquarie Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston.

The couple bought a South Yarra renovation project, Simonds Hall, in 2020, which could offer a future option to downsize.

Coonac’s neighbour, on a smaller but still large block of close to 4800 square metres, sold in 2023 for $40 million.

The Victorian heritage database says the Italianate-style home was built in 1866-67 for Robert Bruce Ronald, joint Victorian manager of the Australian Mercantile Land and Finance Co, who owned several pastoral stations, cattle stations and sugar plantations and mills.

Victoria’s previous house price record stood at a whisker above $80 million, set by crypto casino entrepreneur Ed Craven for a dilapidated home in St Georges Road, Toorak.

For deep-pocketed buyers, another Toorak home is still available – the Myer family estate Cranlana, at 1.14 hectares and with a price guide of $96 million to $105 million.

Australia’s residential price record is $141.55 million for a penthouse apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour.

In terms of houses, $130 million was traded each for tech billionaire Scott Farquhar’s sale of Elaine in Sydney’s Point Piper, and his purchase of the nearby Uig Lodge.