Overlooking Cleeland Bight and the Phillip Island Bridge, Woolamai House appears on the council’s Bass Coast Planning Scheme as being suitable for residential development.

Grollo’s new application, which is being exhibited, would see the estate split into 69 blocks – the smallest, at 460 square metres. “Small high density development” would be permitted.

Across Western Port, in Sorrento, Myer family member Richard Shelmerdine was recently granted approval by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to split a historic property, The Sisters at 3080 Point Nepean Road, five ways.

In January, when the first block within that subdivision was listed for sale (and later sold for some $6 million), In April, another larger piece hit the market with price expectations of $10 million. Mr Shelmerdine paid $18.4 million for the entire 1.2 hectare block in 2008.

RT Edgar Portsea’s Warwick Anderson is marketing the headland known as The Eastern Sister. Expressions of Interest close at 5pm on Wednesday May 25.

Federal MP Greg Hunt campaigned for the state and federal Labor governments to buy the property when it was listed three years ago. The Sisters precinct is recognised by author Richard Cotter in No Place for a Colony as of significance, and the first place in Victoria to experience frontier violence between settlers and local Aborigines.

Federal MP and Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt campaigned for the Brumby and Rudd governments to buy the historic property when it hit the market three years ago, describing it as “a once-in-a-century opportunity to preserve our indigenous and European heritage and create one of Australia’s public parks.”

When neither government showed interest, however, the site sold, and after a dispute that went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal recently, has since been subdivided.

The only available allotment being offloaded by the Shelmerdine’s has a high water mark title, and is big enough to accommodate a new mansion, tennis court, swimming pool and garden.

Selling agents Liz Jensen and Gerald Delany of Kay & Burton, and Ilze Moran and Lloyd Robinson of RT Edgar are expecting the site, with an address of 3080 Point Nepean Road, to sell for about $6 million.

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Any redevelopment may also include an office component to capitalise on a lack of supply in the Mornington Peninsula area where an increasing number of Victorians are choosing to sea-change.

The Sorrento site sold to a local developer at auction last week for $2.36 million. Colliers International’s Tim Grant and Jeremy Gruzewski were the marketing agents.

The price eclipses the record paid for a Victorian home – $18 million by art dealer Rod Menzies for the historic Stonington mansion in Glenferrie Road, Malvern, last year.

It is reported the wealthy Shelmerdine family picked up the Mornington Peninsula property at auction for far less than the $20 million price promoted throughout the campaign. The reserve was $19 million however because the asset is part of an estate, it is speculated the banks accept lower bids.

The 1.2 hectare property with direct access to Sullivans Bay is expected to be developed as an individual home, or a family compound.

The ‘Sisters’ precinct was settled by Lieutenant Governor David Collins in 1803 who bought a crew of 458 convicts, soldiers and free settlers to the precinct. It is believed to be the site of Victoria’s first European settlement.

Since 1890 the land has been owned privately. The most recent owner was eccentric millionaire Peter Rand. The property was to be sold after his death in 1997 however a legal challenge by a Toorak couple over ownership dragged the matter in the courts for more than ten years.

Before the sale, the highest price paid for a beach house was set in 2006, with retirement village operator Charles Jacobsen paid $14.5 million for the former estate of Sir Reginald Ansett in Mt Eliza. That property is expected to be redeveloped into three homes for Jacobsen and his family.