More Adelaide media fun. “BRW lists Adelaide property developer Cathy Jayne Pearce as being worth $19 million, and as she prepares to move to Queensland, disenchanted investors wish she was leaving some of it behind,” veteran Alex Kennedy writes in this week’s Independent Weekly, the paper which markets itself with the slogan: “There’s more to the story in the Independent.”

Unfortunately, local goss says the lawyers have cut this one short. But there’s certainly more in The Independent Weekly than there’s been in the city’s main paper, The Advertiser.

“In Adelaide, Cathy Jayne Pearce is a high profile property star – the dream-come-true story of a young and glamorous dental nurse who taught herself the property game and learned how to remodel trash into treasure,” Kennedy writes. “The cover of her latest book on the subject lists her as the ‘million dollars property queen (who) helps build your property portfolio’. Well, that was the plan. For many of her recent investors the reality has turned out to be rather different… Those investors who have contacted The Independent Weekly have between $100,000 and $1 million invested in her SA developments. They are unsure how much they will get back.”

“And there has been such silence,” Kennedy, a former Advertiser and BRW journalist, PR worker and Adelaide business and political insider, adds. “The real estate sector has closed ranks.”

Pearce’s husband Myles, the chairman of her development company, is a former Adelaide real estate king.

One doesn’t want to offend such a sector, given all the advertising they place. Which might explain The Advertiser‘s stance on the issue.