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Nedlands Stirling 37 Office
The original house at 37 Stirling Highway was built in 1927, when the road was still called Perth-Fremantle Road and the area was known as Hollywood. The post office directories list Mrs R Barkey at No. 37 in 1928 and Raymond Andrew Bartley in 1929. By 1930, land agent Robert Montgomery Elvey was living at the house and working from No. 25 on the same road. Perth-Fremantle Road was officially renamed Stirling Highway on 23 March 1932. Robert was still recorded at No. 37 in 1958.
Robert was born in Brooklyn, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in the United States. In 1918, he was living in Luton, Bedfordshire, with his wife Annie Kate (née Smith) and their son William. By 1925, the family was living in Brighton, Victoria, where Robert worked as a bricklayer. He was recorded as a fitter in 1927. Annie died in Nedlands on 17 November 1952, aged 72. Robert died in North Perth on 23 June 1962, aged 80.
Shellabear & Son
The original house at 37 Stirling Highway was demolished sometime between July 1970 and September 1974. The site was later developed with a two-storey brick office building in mid-1979.
Ian Langdon Shellabear and his family’s real estate agency, Shellabear & Son, appear to have been the earliest occupants at 37 Stirling Highway.
Ian’s father, Samuel ‘Bert’ Shellabear, used his deferred pay from the First World War to start Shellabear & Son in 1925. A chartered accountant, Bert worked from an office on St Georges Terrace in Perth, where he helped clients with land and property matters and offered insurance and financial services. He kept the agency going through the Depression.
Shellabear & Son’s first Claremont office at 5 Bay View Terrace,
photographed after the agency bought Ferris & Forbes.
The agency moved to 14 Pier Street, Perth, in the 1960s and opened its first Claremont office after buying Ferris & Forbes.
November 2024
Ascot Capital Limited
Registered on 23 September 2004, the WA property development and investment company remains registered. Gregory ‘Greg’ King and David van der Walt founded the company, and a September 2018 report named both men and Peter Agostino as directors.
Previously based at 16 Eagle Drive, Jandakot, the company had moved to 37 Stirling Highway, Nedlands, by December 2014. It remained there until October 2025 before moving to Suite 15 at Broadway Fair Shopping Centre, 88 Broadway, Crawley.
Among the papers I photographed at 37 Stirling Highway in November 2025 were two bank letters from June and July 2011, both addressed to 16 Eagle Drive, Jandakot. One was sent to Surgicentre Trust and the other to the directors of A.C.N. 121 866 877 Pty Ltd. By December 2014, Ascot Capital was using the Nedlands address in its company material.
Barolo Investment Partners
Registered on 24 September 2020, the Perth-based fund manager remains registered. It offered passive and actively managed funds and looked for undervalued businesses, including companies listed on the stock exchange and privately held firms.
Barolo was listed at 37 Stirling Highway, Nedlands, from at least March to October 2024. Chesapeake Capital’s 2024 annual report identified Gregory ‘Greg’ King and Stephen Lauder as Barolo directors. King co-founded Ascot Capital and Lauder established Clover Capital, both of which also used the Nedlands address.
Organik Web built the company’s website, which appears to have gone offline around November 2024. A business directory still gives No. 37 as Barolo’s address.
Mouve Real Estate
Sarah Beale, a director of Fore Real Estate, and Chris Wiese, a part-owner of Burgess Rawson’s WA business, founded Mouve Real Estate in 2023 as a collaboration between the two firms. Business News listed the agency at 37 Stirling Highway, Nedlands, in 2024.
Fore Real Estate Pty Ltd was registered in 2015 and had held several business names, including Fore Sale, Bellcourt South Perth and Bellcourt Property Group Western Suburbs. It registered Mouve as a business name on 19 August 2025 and changed its company name to Mouve Pty Ltd on 18 September 2025.
Beale also founded Mouve Asset Managements, which handles property leasing and management. That business name has been registered to a separate company, Fore Lease Pty Ltd, since 2 February 2024.
Clover Capital
The company was registered on 12 December 2006 and deregistered on 16 April 2024. It was previously based on Rokeby Road in Subiaco and later used 37 Stirling Highway, Nedlands, where it was still listed in October 2023. Its sign remained on the front of the building when I photographed it in November 2025.
The name came from Steve Lauder’s grandfather, Tom Clover, who emigrated from Yorkshire and arrived in Australia aboard the Jervis Bay in January 1929. In 1948, Tom and his wife Grace settled in Bridgetown, where they bought a corner shop, renamed it Clovers Store and raised four children. Steve spent school holidays working alongside his grandfather, helping with early morning newspaper runs to nearby towns and seeing how Tom dealt with customers and ran the shop.
After selling his hospitality business in 2008, Steve set up a family office to manage his family’s investments and named it Clover Capital after his grandparents’ store. He also worked with a small number of clients on investment opportunities overseas. The Clover Capital website now describes his family office as based in Cottesloe.
Facilimate and Pacific Hotels
Stephen Lauder, who previously established AHS Hospitality Group, went on to invest in and manage hotels around Australia through Facilimate. The business worked with Ascot Capital Limited to buy hotels through syndicates that pooled money from several investors. Ascot provided investment services under its Australian Financial Services Licence, while Lauder’s team ran the hotels. Business News profile ·
In July 2015, the joint venture bought the Pacific Hotel Cairns from the Kamsler family for about $25 million. The 176-room hotel stood on a 3,570 m² freehold site on the Cairns Esplanade. In April 2016, the two businesses made their second joint purchase, paying $65 million for the 153-room Clifton Suites at 100 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra. They renamed it Pacific Suites Canberra.
The joint venture also owned and operated the Pacific Hotel Brisbane at 345 Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill. The 179-room hotel underwent an $8 million refurbishment in 2019–20 and went on the market in September 2023 with an asking price of about $52 million. It later sold for $45 million.
A Pacific Hotels sign was displayed at 37 Stirling Highway, where Lauder was based. The Pacific Hotels Australia Support Office was listed at 43 Stirling Highway, Nedlands.
November 2025
The two office units
The building at 37 Stirling Highway contained two separately titled office units. Unit 1 had 107 m² of floor space and was identified as Lot 3 on Strata Plan 7181. Its first recorded sale was on 12 December 2006, when Ian Shellabear sold it to Charrington Pty Ltd for $360,000.
Unit 2 had 117 m² of floor space and was identified as Lot 4 on Strata Plan 7181. Its earliest recorded owner was the Western Australian Basketball Federation, which registered Basketball WA as a business name on 5 December 1991. The federation sold the unit to Charrington Pty Ltd for $265,000 on 9 August 2002. Charrington was listed at 4/37 Stirling Highway at the time.
Western Australian Basketball Federation
The federation began as the Western Australian Basketball Association on 3 April 1946, when a small group of basketball enthusiasts met at the Perth YMCA on Murray Street. Basketball had been played in WA for about 35 years by then, but there was no official body to organise or promote it. Perth businessman and two-time Sandover medallist John Leonard helped organise the meeting. The association went on to run a winter competition at the Claremont Showground, where men’s teams competed for the John Leonard Perpetual Shield. The Women’s Amateur Basketball Association of Western Australia was formed in 1957.
Charrington Pty Ltd
Charrington was registered on 20 January 1981 and remains registered, with its registered office listed in the Perth CBD. A 2021 planning report listed Charrington Pty Ltd as the owner of a residence and shop at 13 Gill Street, Mosman Park. The company still owns the property. The shop was leased to a café at the time.
Sale of the combined site
On 31 January 2014, Charrington sold both office units to Hot Sand Capital Pty Ltd in a single transaction for $2.09 million. Hot Sand Capital had been registered on 26 June 2013 and remains registered, with its registered office listed in the Perth CBD.
In September 2025, Business News reported that ASIC records showed the company was controlled by Gregory ‘Greg’ King, David van der Walt and Stephen Lauder. King and van der Walt co-founded Ascot Capital, which had its offices at No. 37.
On 12 June 2025, Hot Sand Capital sold the combined 2,123 m² site at 37-43 Stirling Highway for $8.8 million. The sale included both office units at No. 37. The selling agent identified Centurion as the buyer, while the property records for both units list Stirling Highway Development Pty Ltd as the owner following the sale.
From offices to student accommodation
In May 2022, Element lodged plans on behalf of Hot Sand Capital for William Stirling, an 18-storey apartment tower at 37-43 Stirling Highway, on the corner of Williams Road. The $22.8 million proposal included 75 apartments, 162 parking bays and seven commercial tenancies for offices, shops, a restaurant or café and an art gallery. The plans showed a landscaped plaza at street level, with the tower’s lower floors designed to complement the heritage-listed former Nedlands Post Office next door at No. 35. The post office sat outside the development site. Revised plans were lodged later that year but the apartment project never went ahead.
Centurion later put forward plans for student accommodation within walking distance of UWA’s Crawley campus. The 2024 planning material names DMG Architecture and the Western Australian Planning Commission’s Statutory Planning Committee approved the $60 million development on 7 May 2025. In November 2025, a subsidiary of Centurion Corporation agreed to invest A$6 million for a 25 per cent stake in the project company. Centurion Properties Australia Investments Pty Ltd held the remaining 75 per cent.
Demolition was underway by 4 February 2026. The construction management plan names Multiplex as the builder of EPIISOD Stirling, the student accommodation building replacing the offices. A tower crane was erected on the site on 10 August 2026.
Centurion and EPIISOD
Centurion Corporation Limited is a Singapore-listed company that owns and operates student accommodation and worker housing internationally. Its Australian student accommodation properties include Dwell East End Adelaide, with 300 beds near Adelaide University, and Dwell Village Melbourne City, with 611 beds near RMIT University and the University of Melbourne.
Centurion launched its EPIISOD student accommodation brand in July 2025, with Macquarie Park in Sydney as its first property under the brand. Its first Perth investment under EPIISOD was the Stirling Highway project, followed by EPIISOD Fairway at 55-57 Fairway in Crawley.
Centurion’s September 2026 investor update listed about 472 beds for EPIISOD Stirling and gave an opening target of early 2028. The state planning register lists a separate amendment under assessment that would increase the capacity in the plans from 482 to 513 beds.
November 2025
