ROCKED BY STAR SECRETS
From a bowling alley to one of the city’s most famous ‘bomb sites’, INXS singer Michael Hutchence had it all.
MICHAEL Hutchence lived fast, died young and left behind an incredible legacy.
It’s been 25 years since the lead singer of INXS was found dead in a Sydney hotel room in late 1997.
The musician and father of one’s death was later ruled by the NSW Coroner to be a suicide by hanging.
It was a devastating blow to family, friends and music fans worldwide.
But beyond his musical legacy, Hutchence also left behind a large and surprising Gold Coast property portfolio which included some of the city’s best-known locations of yesteryear and the modern day.
Hutchence was a frequent visitor to the city in the 1980s and 1990s through INXS’S prime years, often staying on the Gold Coast while the band performed in Brisbane.
It played several Gold Coast gigs including Tallebudgera’s The Playroom (1981 and 1984), Coolangatta’s Cabbage Patch (1982), Surfers Paradise’s Jet Club (1983) and Fishermans Wharf (1994).
By 1993, Hutchence’s mother Patricia Glassop was living in a unit at Main Beach
The same year, the city went wild when the singer was spotted on the Isle of Capri, while Hutchence spent Christmas that year with his mum and then-girlfriend, model Helena Christensen, staying at the Marriott. They escaped the heat of the coast on Boxing Day by taking a drive to Mount Tamborine where they dined at Songbirds in the Forest in North Tamborine.
Hutchence spent Christmas in 1995 at the Main Beach unit, this time with his final partner, Paula Yates.
Following his death two years later, the rock star’s cremated ashes were divided in three, with one third kept on the Gold Coast.
In 1998, months after his death, Hutchence’s secret multimillion-dollar Gold Coast property portfolio became public after an investigation revealed the singer was technically bankrupt at the time of his death.
The investigation revealed Hutchence had initially been believed to have spent $2.25m in January, 1994, to buy 378 Marine Parade, Labrador, the home of the area’s longstanding XXX bowling alley.
The rock star had lunch there on the day the contracts were signed and decided to keep its existing tenants in place.
However, it was later revealed he was not the outright owner, with the site actually owned by Nexcess, a company whose directors included Gold Coast lawyer Colin Diamond, who later served as an executor of Hutchence’s will, and his accountant Tony Alford.
Hutchence secretly bought
a 2281sq m, four-bedroom house – 13-17 La Spezia Court on the Isle of Capri in August, 1995, through Sin-can-can, a management company he had close links with.
Hutchence was thought by family and friends to be the outright owner. When the house was bought, Hutchence told his mother, father and several friends and family members that it was his.
However, title searches after the singer’s death revealed that the sprawling bungalow in La Sprezia Court was actually owned by SinCan-can Pty Ltd on behalf of the Isle of Capri Development Trust.
Mr Diamond was listed as the director of the company.
Among the neighbours was international conman Peter Foster, though the pair never met.
Despite it being listed on statutory declarations as his primary address, Hutchence only stayed in the house twice but never with his family.
The house’s former gardener told News Corp in 1998:
“He was here twice, but he never brought Paula (Yates) and the kids,” he said.
“He never got the chance. “It’s like a palace inside. “I don’t know what will happen to it now.”
The investigation found
Hutchence was also linked to a giant development site on the corner of Southport’s Garden and Young streets – today known as the Cienna site – as well as a Bentley car which had previously been owned by famous Gold Coast hotelier Stan Elson.
The Isle of Capri house was put on the market but was passed in at auction.
Five weeks later it was withdrawn from sale entirely in a dispute over the singer’s estate.
The legal battle stretched on for nearly a decade.
Hutchence’s Gold Coast holdings were valued as being worth more than $5m at the
time of his death, though its value by the time of his estate being settled in 2005 was more than $10m.
Mrs Glassop told The Age that year that she had received almost nothing from the estate. “I got a couple of small bowls, some awards, and a big poster of Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman,” she said.
The bowling alley site was later redeveloped into a residential tower, while the Southport land still remains undeveloped today.