Half-sister with fancy tastes claims bigger share

Olivia Mead. Photo / News Corp

Michael Wright, the son of one of Australia's legendary mining pioneers, Peter Wright, had a frugal lifestyle. He drove a Ford Falcon, considered yachts a "waste of money", and was happiest pruning roses on his vineyard estate, wearing khaki shorts and a floppy hat.

When Wright - whose father, Peter, was the business partner of Gina Rinehart's father, Lang Hancock - died in 2012, he left a fortune valued at A$750 million ($782.5 million) to his three children, Leonie, Alexandra and Myles.

Until recently, few people outside the family knew Michael had fathered a fourth child, Olivia - and she has not inherited his simple tastes.

The product of a fling he had with Elizabeth Mead, Olivia went to court this month seeking a larger slice of Michael's estate. In his will, she was left "only" A$3 million, to inherit when she turned 30.

The 19-year-old student handed the Supreme Court of Western Australia a shopping list of things she believes she needs for her "proper maintenance, support, education and advancement" until she is 96.

The list - also comprising the cost of bringing up the four children she plans to have, each two years apart - includes a A$2.5 million house in Perth, five pairs of A$5000 shoes a year, a diamond-studded bass guitar and thousands of dollars to care for her pets: a dog, a ferret, a rabbit and an axolotl, or Mexican walking fish.

Then there's the A$40,000 a year which Mead is seeking for holidays, A$10,000 a year for handbags and other accessories, A$400 a week for restaurant bills, A$300 a week for clothes and A$150 a week for fine wine, as well as two cars: an Audi A4 and a Toyota Tarago, for ferrying around the prospective kids.

The total price tag is A$12 million, which was whittled down from an initial A$20 million, after Mead agreed she could live without the guitar and a A$1.6 million crystal-encrusted Kuhn-Boesendorfer grand piano.

If her case - in which she is suing her two half-sisters, Leonie Baldock and Alexandra Burt, and her father's executor, David Lemon - is successful, it will be the biggest court-ordered pay-out from a family estate in Australian history.

Peter Wright and Hancock made their riches from the vast iron ore deposits they discovered in the 1960s in WA's remote Kimberley region. Under a deal with the Rio Tinto subsidiary Hamersley Iron, they reaped - and now their descendants reap - tens of millions of dollars a year in royalties.

Baldock and Burt run the family business, including the highly profitable Voyager Estate winery founded by Michael Wright in Margaret River. Myles Wright, a musician, receives an income of A$650,000 a year and will inherit A$15 million in 2017, the court heard.

Mead lives with her mother in a modest Perth suburb, and drives a 1993 Toyota Corolla. Her dreadlocked boyfriend, Liam, was present in court.

Her lawyer, Lindsay Ellison, SC, told the court her claim was "not excessive", and his client was not a "spoilt child". Although Michael - who saw Olivia Mead infrequently - contributed child support and other expenses, she was not indulged.

Since Peter Wright and Hancock died, in 1985 and 1992 respectively, the two families have been engaged in almost continual legal warfare with each other, and among themselves.

Michael and his sister, Angela Bennett, successfully sued Rinehart for a 25 per cent stake in a massive iron tenement. Michael - who married four times - and Bennett were sued by the children of their brother, Julian, settling for A$50 million.

And Rinehart, Australia's richest person, is embroiled in legal action brought by three of her four children.