The owners of one of Western Australia’s top tourist attractions have put their award-winning remote accommodation business up for sale so they can retire, but they don’t want just anybody taking over.
Faraway Bay, a 28-hectare bush camp built 14 years ago in the Kimberley wilderness by its owners, Bruce and Robyn Ellison, has been put out to tender for the next eight weeks although Mr Ellison said he will happily hang onto the property if the right price or sale conditions are not met.
“There’s no precedence set on a place like this,” Mr Ellison said.
“We’ll let the market decide it (sale price), if we decide ‘bugger that, it’s not enough’, then we’ll come back again.
“Hopefully it’ll go but I’ll be sad if it does.”
Both Mr and Mrs Ellison hoped that a family akin to themselves would take over the property as opposed to a multi-national snapping it up.
“If a corporation gets hold of it, who knows,” Mr Ellison said.
The property, which hosted some of the crew during filming of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’, was built by Mr Ellison himself in the late 1990s and overlooks a magnificent bay about 30 kilometres from the popular King George Falls.
He spent about $300,000 constructing the chalets, using 98 tonnes of material shipped in by barge, which was only possible because of the experience he gained running logistics and doing remote area work in the north west for junior diamond miners.
The chalets were rebuilt after Cyclone Ingrid flattened the camp in March 2005.
The company, having won three national tourism awards and six state tourism awards, turns over about $1.3 million annually and employs five full-time staff in the peak season.
If Faraway Bay is sold, the couple hopes to travel around Australia including a visit to Mr Ellison’s 91-year-old mother in Sydney.
