By MICK ROBERTS.

JUST what Bulli pioneer real estate agent Henry Cotterell would think of today’s property prices in the controversial Sandon Point residential estate is hard to imagine.

Cotterell, known as “Cottie” to friends, was one time editor of the Bulli Times newspaper, but more interestingly he was the agent who sold the original Sandon Point Estate on Boxing Day 1913.

A model farm, owned by George Adams, proprietor of the Bulli Colliery and later of Tattersall’s Lottery fame, was subdivided and auctioned by Cotterell on behalf of the trustees of the deceased estate.

In extreme contrast to the remaining former Bulli Colliery land to the selling almost a century later for around a million dollars, 60ft (18m) beach frontages were sold by Cotterell for around 60 pounds ($120) in 1913. Also in disparity, not an eyebrow was raised when 102 blocks east of Southview Street at Sandon Point were subdivided in 1913.

Born in Bath, England in 1861 Henry Fowler Cotterell was apprenticed to his father as a midshipman before embarking on a new life as a journalist in Sydney. He worked on the Macleay Argus at Kempsey on the NSW north coast in the 1880s before writing for a Campbelltown newspaper in the early 1890s. It was at Campbelltown he married Elizabeth Thompson in 1892 later taking the role as editor of the Singleton Argus.

Cottie arrived at Bulli in 1895 after purchasing the Bulli Times from founding publisher FW Wilson.

Read the full story at the Looking Back website.