A billionaire chippy’s A-list campaign to rebuild a surf club

It began when his cycling buddy and Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club vice president Marc Clavin nudged him to see if he could help lead the charge for a much-needed rebuild of their clubhouse.

Beck, whose wealth is estimated at $1.2 billion on the 2025 Financial Review Rich List, decided he wanted to make this one of his legacy projects – and “get shit done”. And with a network made up of some of the wealthiest and most influential people in Victoria, he felt like he had something to offer.

The former clubhouse was built in 2002, thanks in part to former Toll Holdings boss Paul Little offering the critical cheque to help reach an important fundraising milestone. But it was no longer fit for purpose.

“They were trying to get members with no bar or restaurant. It was lacking accommodation for out-of-town patrol kids,” Beck tells AFR Weekend.

Two weeks ago, it was demolished to make way for the new home base for the surf lifesaving club, designed by architect Steve Hofer and set to feature a restaurant and accommodation wing – a big improvement from the “big garage” the former building was described as.

The new building will mean the club’s lifeguards will no longer have to trek for more than 30 minutes to a storage shed to retrieve lifesaving equipment, nor will they have to stay off-site during the busy summer months. Visitors may not have to wait 50 minutes for one of its two showers, as one Google reviewer complained.

But even with friends like Beck’s, getting to this stage has been an illustration of the challenges facing developers, especially in Victoria.

Beck put his “running shoes on” and started talking to a network that has been growing since he became friends with trucking magnate Lindsay Fox decades ago while building a warehouse in Moorabin for Linfox.

Earlier this year, during a cocktail party at his Portsea home, Beck encouraged Melbourne’s elite to dig deep for a worthy cause all about “saving lives”.

“Everyone was convinced if I was doing it, it wasn’t for me, but for the community. So they were happy to jump in behind me,” he says.

It was a heavy-hitting guest list.

“You don’t really need to buy your grandkids Mercedes,” Beck told them. “Just give us some money for the surf club.”

Cam Walker, the late Ron Walker’s son, shared a story about how his young daughters saved his life with CPR when he had a heart attack – a skill they learned through lifesaving. TV host Eddie McGuire tuned in via video message, relaying the importance of teaching kids to swim in the surf and between the flags.

On that evening alone, Beck was able to raise about $1 million, with donors including property development king David Deague, Camilla Graves of the Baillieu Family, Just Jeans founder Craig Kimberley and Little, backing up 23 years later to chip in again. That money was on top of the half million Beck poured in.

It was joined by the Victorian government’s pledge of $3.5 million and $1 million from the Mornington Peninsula Shire.

But even with the backing of Victoria’s business and political elite, Beck and the club faced myriad issues in getting the green light to rebuild the clubhouse.

The club entered a two-year agreement with the Mornington Peninsula Shire in 2021 to receive its $1 million pledge, but it lapsed last year after it failed to get a lease with Parks Victoria. It was later extended, but the club continued to come up against planning conflicts with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, and Parks Victoria.

It was reminiscent of the struggles Ken de Heer, the driving force behind the original clubhouse, dealt with in the early 2000s. In fact, in the club’s 2000 annual report, he said Parks Victoria was the most “intransigent, frustrating bureaucrats to deal with”.

“If you want to do the hardest planning application in the world, try and build something on a beach,” Beck says. “I’ve done planning all my life, but this is probably one of the toughest planning gigs.”

Ultimately, it took a few calls to his network, including town planner Jackie Prosser and Victorian Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos, to get the process moving.

“A lot of these people that work in those departments haven’t really got a lot of skin in the game, and you’ve got to end up going up the line of it to the minister, really, and convince him that this is a worthy project,” Beck says.

“We ran around the block probably for at least nine months. You kind of need someone with the network, probably, that I’ve got, to pull it off.”

One of the club’s major donors, Paul Little says the safety of everyone using the beach is important, and his son was involved with lifesaving at the club a few years ago.

“We think it’s a very important asset for the club, for the region down there, as are most of the surf beaches on that southern side of the Mornington Peninsula,” Little says. “Portsea is our favourite, we go there, use it, love it. But we take a lot of comfort knowing it’s safe and very well patrolled and it’s a very well-managed club.” Little wants the same for Sorrento.

Little was fundamental to the development of the first lifesaving club building. Clavin says Little just about offered an open chequebook to the initial treasurers to help them raise $100,000 before they could start construction and receive a dollar-for-dollar donation from the state government.But at the time, they had only managed to raise about $15,000.

“Little just reeled off a cheque for the rest. No strings attached … I nearly died,” he says.

Clavin was also involved in building the first clubhouse. He said Ken had to basically “ambush” the Victorian premier at the time, Steve Bracks, on 3AW.

“Ken got him on the radio and said, ‘We’ve got the busiest beach in the Mornington Peninsula, we’ve got the highest drownings in any local government authority. How is it … we’ve not been able to get a surf club up?’” he said.

The public confrontation worked and just before that next summer, the toilet blocks were knocked down to make way for the first official clubhouse. While Clavin said their modest budget allowed for basically a “big garage”, the building had served its purpose.

Camilla Graves said she had been going to Sorrento all her life and her family has owned a house in the area since the 1930s.

“We have a very, very long connection with Sorrento, over 100 years,” Graves tells AFR Weekend.

“The Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club and the Portsea Surf Life Saving club are very important local institutions, and we’ve always appreciated their work.”

“[The club] is a bit undernourished, and the old clubhouse has definitely seen its useful days. So we thought it was a really important cause to connect with and to participate in the fundraising to renew the clubhouse.”

There is still work to do. Construction is set to begin in the coming weeks with a view to having the clubhouse ready to use by summer next year.

For Beck, the project is about saving lives, but also showing his word means something. “I find that so many people just talk about stuff then don’t do it,” he says. “I say my background as a chippy and a builder have helped me have that sort of mindset of getting the job done.”