By Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia
15:51 16 Jun 2024, updated 15:51 16 Jun 2024
Bruce Lehrmann‘s former landlady Gaenor Meakes is the mother of a rugby star and the ex-partner of a champion sailor but that does not mean she is nobility.
Ms Meakes has recently made headlines for suing the accused rapist over damage he allegedly caused to her $3.7million home and is almost always referred to as ‘Lady Gaenor Meakes’.
Where Ms Meakes got this title, which is usually bestowed upon the daughter of a duke, marquess or earl, or a woman married to a Sir or Lord, is something of a mystery.
Ms Meakes, whose Instagram username is ‘ladygaenor’, is the daughter of the late distinguished Sydney architect Paul Reid and his wife Krythia and was once married to barrister Tim Meakes.
A notice of the couple’s engagement in The Sydney Morning Herald published in October 1986 referred to the budding bride simply as Gaenor Reid.
The birth of their first child Matilda in September 1988 was announced in the same publication with the parents named as Gaenor and Timothy.
There is no Lady Gaenor Meakes listed in the two recognised guides to aristocratic families in Commonwealth nations, Debrett’s and Burke’s Peerage.
A newspaper story about real estate on Sydney’s northern beaches published in November 2001 quoted the then Manly resident simply as Gaenor Meakes.
Daily Mail Australia contacted Ms Meakes and members of her immediate family as well as her lawyer ex-husband seeking clarification about the honorific but none of them responded.
Ms Meakes has taken Lehrmann to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal seeking compensation for his year-long tenancy at her Balgowlah house on the northern beaches.
That property was bought by Ms Meakes and her then partner Mark Richards for $2.45million in 2019 and transferred into her name in September 2022.
Richards is an internationally renowned sailor and boatbuilder who has skippered Wild Oats XI to line honours nine times in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race.
He had a long a successful partnership with the late billionaire philanthropist Bob Oatley, the owner of Wild Oats XI who bought Hamilton Island in Queensland after selling his Rosemount winery in the NSW Hunter Valley.
Ms Meakes is also well-known in ocean racing circles and was named ‘godmother’ of a yacht called Crystal Spirit when it was christened in a ceremony in the Seychelles off the East African coast in 2015.
Edie Rodriguez, CEO of the boat’s owner Crystal Cruises, was delighted to be associated with Ms Meakes, who was then engaged to Richards.
‘Among many choices for Crystal Espirit’s godmother, few are so passionately devoted to the world of yachting as Lady Gaenor,’ Mr Rodriguez said.
Ms Meakes, who at the time was described as ‘a legend in the yachting world’ and is now aged in her late 50s, split with Richards only relatively recently.
One theory about Ms Meakes’s use of ‘Lady’ circulating at the Darling Point-based Cruising Yacht Club of Australia is that ‘it’s just a p***-take moniker she puts on for fun’.
A source who knows Ms Meakes said she was well-regarded in the yachting fraternity and considered ‘a really nice lady’.
That source believed the title ‘Lady’ was inadvertently bestowed upon her during an introduction to an American boatbuilder doing business with Richards ‘and she’s run with it’.
Another yachting source had heard Ms Meakes was one of the 13,500 worldwide knights and dames of the Order of Malta, which can be traced back to the 11th century.
There is nothing to legally prevent a person from informally calling themselves ‘Lady’, ‘Dame’, ”Sir’ or ‘Lord’ if they so chose.
Daily Mail Australia is not suggesting Ms Meakes has engaged in any deceptive conduct, only that she has been regularly referred to as Lady Meakes in the media.
Ms Meakes was largely unknown outside the yachting world until she became embroiled in the long-running saga which has engulfed Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins.
She was dragged into the spotlight after the Seven Network paid $2,000 a week for Lehrmann to live in her three-bedroom house as part of an exclusive interview deal.
Lehrmann had sued Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson for defamation over an episode of The Project which he claimed identified him as having raped his former colleague, Ms Higgins.
The onetime political staffer lost that Federal Court action in April when Justice Michael Lee found on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann did rape Ms Higgins at Parliament House in 2019.
By then, Lehrmann had moved out of Ms Meakes’s house, leaving behind what she claimed at NCAT was a $13,250 damages bill.
Ms Meakes has also claimed she is owed $6,000 in rent because Lehrmann vacated the property three weeks early.
A brief conciliation hearing on Wednesday at which Matilda Meakes appeared on behalf of her mother failed to resolve difference between the parties.
Matilda Meakes, who describes herself on social media as a paralegal, law student and freelance copywriter, told reporters ‘it’s been a ride’ as she left the tribunal.
Asked if her family had been aware Lehrmann was the tenant of the property, the 35-year-old said: ‘I don’t think anyone would willingly rent to him, would they?’
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Matilda’s brother Billy is a professional rugby player who spent three years with the Melbourne Rebels after stints with Perth’s Western Force and Gloucester in England.
A product of rugby nursery St Joesph’s College at Hunters Hill, Meakes was called into a Wallabies squad seven years ago but was never capped for the national team.
The 33-year-old signed with the Chicago Hounds in the United States last year and in May he welcomed his first child with partner Michelle Battersby.
Ms Battersby is an entrepreneur with 40,000 Instagram followers who isl best known for launching the Bumble dating app in Australia when she was just 25 in 2016.
The 33-year-old has since founded the Sunroom app to help women and non-binary online creators make money.
Ms Battersby was with Meakes at Coachella in 2022 when he was photographed at the California music festival alongside wheelchair tennis ace Dylan Alcott, who was then Australian of the Year.
The dispute over Lehrmann’s tenancy at Ms Meakes’s Balgowlah house returns to NCAT on June 27.
Lehrmann, who is appealing Justice Lee’s findings, is separately accused of having raped a woman in Toowoomba on Queensland’s Darling Downs in October 2021.
The 29-year-old has indicated his attention to plead not guilty and is listed to appear for a committal hearing at Toowoomba Magistrates Court on Monday.