Australian Dictionary of Biography

Nicholas George Sadilnikoff (Sadil) (1923–1999), real estate agent, was born on 10 October 1923 in Harbin, Republic of China, elder son of Russian-born parents George Sadilnikoff and his wife Maria, née Bobroff, who had fled the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. After the family moved to Shanghai in 1933, Nick was educated at a secondary school in the French concession (1933–41) and trained as an electrical engineer at L’Université l’Aurore (1943–45). Following World War II he worked for the United States Army, helping to disarm and repatriate Japanese soldiers and civilians, and then for the Shanghai Telephone Co. Like many members of the White Russian diaspora, he sought escape from the imminent creation of the People’s Republic of China. He hoped to further his education in the United States of America but instead was destined for resettlement in Australia, together with other members of his family.

Leaving China in 1949, Sadil took a job as an assistant purser with the Orient Line in the Philippines. On 1 September he disembarked in Sydney as a ‘stateless person’ and successfully applied for permanent residency. He settled in Bondi, working for Standard Telephone & Cables Pty Ltd and in several retail businesses before moving into real estate sales. On 29 April 1955 at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Bellevue Hill, he married Ngaire Jean Stubbing, a locally born editor. There followed a second ceremony at the Russian Orthodox Church of St Vladimir, Centennial Park.

A keen musician and sportsman, fluent in four languages, Sadil (as he preferred to be known) was active in the vibrant White Russian community of the Bondi area. In 1956 he sponsored the migration of several refugees from Harbin and Shanghai in association with the World Council of Churches’ Resettlement Department. Naturalised as an Australian citizen in April 1959, he formalised the contraction of his surname. Entrepreneurial drive took him to new real estate opportunities at Gwandalan, on Lake Macquarie, and at Tomakin, a subdivision opening on the south coast of New South Wales. By 1963 Canberra provided him with a lucrative base as the city expanded rapidly in the late 1960s. Beginning with the local firm Bowden and Schadel Pty Ltd, he went on to become a highly successful salesman for Lyneham, Tacheci and Whyte before establishing his own company in 1970 with Laurie Quinlan, who came from Townsville to try the Canberra market. Quinlan sold his share to Sadil in 1972 and returned north, but the firm continued to trade as Sadil Quinlan and Associates, gaining prominence as one of the city’s more dynamic agencies.

Sadil became an advocate for the wider interests of the Canberra real estate industry, and for enhancing its professionalism. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s the volatile character of the Australian Capital Territory’s leasehold property market, reactive to shifts in Commonwealth regulation and investment in the national capital project and the public service, challenged local agencies. With an eye to innovation, in 1973 he bought a franchise to sell the low-cost, kit-form housing developed by Bisley Homes, with south coast family weekenders as his target market. He brokered several of the motel developments that marked Canberra’s emergence as a tourist destination. At the other end of the market, he specialised in identifying suitable rental properties for use by the expanding diplomatic corps as chancelleries, bureaus, or residences. The purchase of the Commodore Motel, Watson, as the first provisional location for the embassy of the People’s Republic of China in 1973 was one of his more prominent deals.

A further irony in this association, given Sadil’s history, arose years later when he was drawn into an extended and misjudged investigation of whether his brother, George, a Russian-language interpreter for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation since 1968, had, with others, removed official documents with a view to passing them to agents of the Soviet Union. The Australian Federal Police arrested George in June 1993, and although charges of espionage were eventually dropped for want of sufficient evidence, the pall of suspicion enveloped Nick Sadil and the congregation at the Russian Orthodox Church of St John, Narrabundah. ASIO’s interest might have been piqued by several trips Sadil made to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, where he sought to develop contacts with businesses interested in industrialised, high-speed housing construction. The venture came to nothing, but his telephone was bugged and listening devices were placed in the ceiling of his home. He reflected that, as a ‘dedicated anti-communist,’ this treatment ‘would be funny if it were not so tragic’ (Field 1994, 1).

Sadil was tall, energetic, and highly regarded—not least as a champion snooker player—among a culturally diverse Canberra community keen for private sector growth. In 1987 the Young Women’s Christian Association of Canberra acknowledged his support by establishing a prize in his name, awarded to women who achieved the best results in the associate diploma in real estate studies at the Canberra College of Technical and Further Education. In 1995 he was among the five longest-serving agents honoured by the Real Estate Institute of the Australian Capital Territory. Remembered for a ‘restless intellect which demanded challenges’ (Cook 1999, 15), he died on 7 November 1999 and was interred in Woden cemetery. His wife predeceased him: he was survived by their sons, Greg, Marc, and Adam, who continued to run Sadil Quinlan Properties.