Shuttle Staffer Could Be Mr Bondi !

Mr Bondi ?

Proving age is no barrier to a beauty contest, Social Shuttle contributor Bill Ranken has made the finals of the Mr Bondi quest to be held next Saturday at the chic restaurant, Bondi Social overlooking Bondi Beach.

Having turned 80 last March, Ranken is disgustingly healthy and runs 4 miles every morning. Over the Christmas holiday period he was down on his Southern Highlands property helping build miles of fences before taking off on a dirt bike to round up sheep.

Ranken divides his time between two vast country properties. The largest one Lochersly is regarded as one of the state's most desirable estates with it's Georgian house, award winning grounds and gardens and sweeping acres of rolling green hills. It's been in the family for 4 generations of the hardy Scotsmen.

 During the week he steps out every night from a harbour side Elizabeth Bay pied-e-terre to attend parties. 

He's known as the Grey Gadabout. If something opens Ranken will be there with a camera , notebook and pen.  He moves seamlessly between all strata's of society equally at home lunching with Rupert Murdoch or at a wharf labourer's booze-up on the docks. The Shuttle first met him in London nearly 30 years ago. He arrived at a Gilbert & George  art exhibition with Princess Margaret on his arm.

"Apparently there are no qualifications to be in this quest" says Ranken, "apart from having a Bondi connection". Which he has every Friday on radio Bondi FM with his 'Peep Show' gossip segment.

"I think it would be rather nice to win something" he says. "before they put me in the ground". 

" But I still plan to be around for a lot longer" he said. " I'm having fun meeting the new generation of pretty young girls on the scene"

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" Mind you 20 years ago when I was introduced to them I was able to say I took their mother out once. Last week I ran into two 20 somethings at a party and realised I had dated their grandmothers !"

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Tania

Competing with Bill Ranken At next Saturday's Mr Bondi final will be Joker Poker TV host Mike Goldman .

Mike

Mike was ecstatic at getting through to the quest final and took a bunch of pals back to his pad to celebrate where he had a spectacular run-in with a bottle of champagne.

Goldman's pal, actress Tania Zaetta (who has become a huge star in Bollywood films) had put the bottle in Mike's freezer earlier in the evening and forgotten about it. The bottle exploded as Goldman reached into his freezer. He spent the night at Randwick hospital and says he hopes to pick up the sympathy vote on Saturday.

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Oh dear.

Just one day ago we brought readers the tale of how 2 psychics, Tom and Kevin  from The Yellow Cloud Circle of Eternal Illumination in Montcabirol, France are touting their materialisation demonstrations in Sydney next month. Their website has some glowing endorsements from past visitors to their sessions including one gentleman who was thrilled to glimpse a vision of Michael Jackson who sent the following message from the ether:

"there will be no recurrences with people who have been accused of my death. I did not commit suicide. Although I take full responsibility for my death. There should be no charges brought from anybody. I am totally responsible for my passing."

Today his medico Dr Conrad Murray was  told by an LA Superior Court judge that he must stand trial for Jackson's involuntary manslaughter.

Polo Champs Miss the Big Match



Jean-Paul & Nina Clarkin at Windsor last week



The annual Paspaley Polo takes place today in Centennial Park and with the world's largest supplier of cultured pearls celebrating it's 75th year it promises to be an extra special event.

 Sadly two of the world's great polo players will miss the day.

Carina Clarkin, the UK's top female player and her husband , the handsome and debonair Jean-Paul Clarkin have left Sydney for New Zealand after playing at the Windsor polo match last week.

Carina, known as Nina is the niece of the beef baron Lord Vestey and the Vestey family connections with Australia are deep and varied.

Lord Vestey was once the largest single land owner in Australia until 1966 when dozens of his Aboriginal stock men went on strike demanding equal pay with whites.

When Gough Whitlam was elected Prime Minister in the early 1970's he forced Vestey to hand back traditional lands to the Gurindji tribe.

Vestey also owns several cattle ranches in Venezuela-or did until President Hugo Chavez sent in troops to occupy them. In 2006 he settled a dispute with Chavez by handing over 2 of his best properties to the Venezuelan government.



Lord Vestey & The Queen

 Jean-Paul's late father Paul Clarkin was a mentor to both Princes William and Harry and Nina's mother Rosie dated their father Prince Charles and was part of his inner circle.

Nina, a good friend of William's is expected to be a guest at the wedding of William and Kate Middleton.





Lord Vestey visited Australia earlier this year on behalf of St John Ambulance ( HRH The Queen is patron). He holds the lofty title of The Lord Prior of St John. He also attended the Royal Easter Show with the Social Shuttle's resident landed gentry and contributor Bill Ranken.

And Lord Vestey and Nina Clarkin have another claim to Oz-Sam Vestey's great grandmother was the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba.

another tabloid discovers the Shuttle

The Sun Herald, Australia's second largest Sunday newspaper has paid tribute to Social Shuttle contributor Bill Ranken on his 80th birthday. Ranken has been a regular on the London , New York and Sydney social rounds for over 50 years, taking up photography for the last 20. 

Living in a pied-a-terre in Elizabeth Bay during the week, Bill spends  his weekends on his family property Lockesley in the Southern Highlands, regarded as the possibly the best in NSW. Prince Charles is a regular visitor there. Neighbours include Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. With it's magnificent sweeping valleys and Georgian house it's also often used as a film location, the latest being a horse whisperer epic staring actor Jack Thompson.

Ranken learnt how to work the land during a stint as a jackaroo in the outback in the 1950's riding with Aboriginal stockmen who he says are amongst the best horsemen he has ever encountered. A tractor accident  in his late 20's in which he lost an eye brought on a life change and although he regularly commutes between the city and his 2 country properties, for years he was spotted squiring well heeled ladies about town like Ros Packer in Sydney, Princess Margaret in London and Princess Lee Radziwill in the Hamptons.

On April 2nd-Bill's birthday, we launch his regular photo pages-15 Minutes.

UK Daily Mail on the ball again ! Well almost.

10 days after the Social Shuttle reported that actress Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are facing a battle with locals over rows of hedges and trees planted on their Bunya Hill property in Sutton Forrest in the Southern Highlands, one of Britain's top selling tabloids the Daily Mail has picked up the tale.

Bunya Hill, a Georgian mansion with 45 hectares of prime cattle land and an equestrian centre built for Lord Augustus Loftus the NSW Governor around 1887 also had a role in World War II. In 1942 it housed 60 English women and their children who had fled Hong Kong before the Japanese invasion. Kidman and Urban purchased it for about $6.5M in 2008 and set about renovating the house and lands.

Set on a hill with commanding views , part of the property runs along side a public road and the owners have bull-dozed a mound the length of the property and planted rows of trees to keep out prying eyes.

tSS correspondent Bill Ranken who owns the magnificent Lochesleigh property nearby that has been in the family for 4 generations (considered the best in the state) has long been talking of the growing grumbles amongst locals who notice the slightest change in the area when "blow-ins", as they call them set about "updating" any one of the graceful houses in the area. Incurring the wrath of long time Southern Highlands locals is considered the kiss of death in one of the most beautiful and graceful countryside areas in Australia. One can't even plant a row of poppies without the blessing of neighbours.

When Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes-who spends many months of the year at her Southern Highlands farm between acting jobs, wanted to erect a garden shed, she sensibly petitioned her neighbours to get their blessing before even contemplating putting plans into the council.

Forget the council chambers who have now taken on the matter, Nicole and Keith need to start baking tarts and cakes and hand delivering them about the area to the crusty faced locals.

## Digital Spy has also picked up the tale.

the Shuttle on the Today show..

"A grey gadabout" is how he's described but the Social Shuttle's snapper Bill Ranken takes it in his stride.

At 80 Ranken has seen it all and reckons he wouldn't be impressed :  "even if Jesus Christ walked through the Harbour Heads-unless there was a smart homecoming party for him."

Watch the Today show at ninemsn as they follow Bill on the party circuit and interview him at Graeme Goldberg's DeeBees cafe.

Television discovers the Social Shuttle

For 2 days now Channel 9's Today show has had cameras and a reporter following around chief Shuttle correspondent Bill Ranken (pictured left) as he covers Sydney's social scene on behalf of the Social Shuttle.

Ranken has been a fixture on the scene for around 50 years-ever since he rolled a tractor on his Southern Highland's property and lost an eye (yes that eye-patch is not an affectation as often assumed). After the accident Bill gave up working the land and decided life was too short and that partying and dating as many ladies as possible was the only way to go.

He still owns Lockesley-regarded as one of NSW's best sheep properties with a magnificent Georgian mansion set amongst rolling hills and surrounded by an award winning garden. But don't get us wrong-Bill loves the land and there is nothing this third generation owner of a few thousand acres doesn't know about sheep or cattle. He just prefers, as he puts it "to let the men take care of things". Presumably staff. Bill calls in once a fortnight to oversee the acreage and have his shirts washed , ironed and starched preferring to operate out of his harbourside Elizabeth Bay apartment.

In the old days Bill would have been regarded as Landed Gentry. A bachelor-but not the usual confirmed type, he is still actively dating, having moved on to former date's daughters. He does have an eye for a pretty young filly.

The Shuttle first encountered Bill 25 years ago at an exhibition in a London gallery of the British artists Gilbert & George who specialize in huge paintings of young men and excrement. Bill accompanied HRH Princess Margaret and he has become a firm Shuttle friend since.

There isn't a person of note Ranken hasn't met. He recalls the day in 1967 he was to lunch with the then Prime Minister Harold Holt after Holt went for his morning swim at Cheviot Beach in Victoria and disappeared in the swirling surf-never to be seen again. Stories and conspiracy theories flourished-a Chinese sub had picked up Holt who was a spy-aliens had abducted him and so on. Certainly Bill was most disappointed. "We had arranged to meet at a very smart new restaurant in Portsea so I never got to make what would have been an amusing lunch with Harold who always had a good line in jokes"

A few weeks later at a memorial service Bill recalls chatting to then US President Lyndon Baines Johnston as a tearful LBJ confided-"that Jimmy Holt-he was such a dear friend".

And at 79 he has been to a lot of parties-usually 2 a night.  Infuriatingly healthy, Bill runs (not jogs) 4 miles every morning at 6am and then joins the other Shuttle staff at our editorial office , Dee Bees cafe in Double Bay run by amiable host, the 6'6" ex-East Ender Graeme Goldberg. (GG promises that the mention of his name will bring an extra motza ball in our daily soup).

For the uninitiated, Dee Bees is a favourite star-spotting hangout as can be seen from Goldberg's exstensive photo-covered walls of Graeme with every known celebrity on the planet who has dined there including the latest-Bob Dylan. Goldberg is believed to be the only person to have ever got a Dylan autograph.

The cameras followed Bill Ranken around last night's Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide restaurant awards at the amazing former train repair factory, the Carriageworks.

At the awards we encountered recently returned from London, food reviewer Terry Durack who has spent the last 14 years as restaurant critic for the Independent On Sunday newspaper. Durack-contrary to reports in the Murdoch newspaper The Australian (always check the Shuttle for the real story) is to join the Sydney Morning Herald.

Also there-food critic Leo Schofield who has returned from retirement in Tasmania where he found living in a state with a population of around 250 souls a fairly boring existence.

    Terry Durack, Jill Dupleix and Leo Schofield