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This house in Sydney that commands the harbour like a fortress commands a valley. Perched at the highest point of Point Piper — already the most expensive postcode in Australia — Uig Lodge is not merely a residence. It is a statement of dominance, a Scottish baronial castle dropped onto a peninsula where the median house price sits in the eight-figure range and a single sale can reset the nation’s entire property compass. When Scott Farquhar, the co-founder of Atlassian, and his wife Kim Jackson paid $130 million for Uig Lodge in late 2022, they did not just buy Australia’s most expensive house. They bought the best view in the country’s most coveted suburb, a piece of architectural theatre that has been turning heads for more than a century.
A Castle on the Hill
Uig Lodge sits at 29 Wentworth Street, Point Piper, on a substantial double block of approximately 3,300 square metres. But it is not the land size that defines this property — it is the elevation. From its position at the apex of the Point Piper peninsula, Uig Lodge looks down on Sydney Harbour with a vantage that is arguably unmatched anywhere in the city. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and the glittering spine of the central business district are not distant landmarks here; they are part of the daily panorama, arranged beneath the property like a living diorama.
The house was built around 1900 in the style of a Scottish baronial castle, a design choice that makes it one of the most architecturally distinctive homes in Australia. Its imposing stone façade, steep rooflines, and castle-like silhouette stand in deliberate contrast to the Italianate villas and contemporary mansions that dominate Sydney’s eastern suburbs. This is not a beach house. It is not a glass box with an infinity pool. It is a fortress of taste, a building that announces its permanence before you ever step through the gate.
A Century of Notable Owners
The story of Uig Lodge begins with Lachlan Beaton, a founding member of the Royal Sydney Golf Club and the inaugural commissioner of the 1901 Sydney Harbour Trust. Beaton purchased the site for £3,925 in 1901 and built the mansion that would become one of Sydney’s most recognisable residences. From its earliest days, Uig Lodge was designed for men who shaped the city — a pattern that would continue for more than a century.
In 1916, the property sold for £5,650 to Dr. Alexander Rutherford and his wife Marcia, members of the Cobb & Co. coach family, who owned and occupied the house for more than four decades. Then came Ezra Norton, the newspaper baron behind the now-defunct Truth and The Daily Mirror, who held the property from 1961 to 1976. Norton sold it for $500,000 to Aldur Kaljo, the Consul-General of Estonia and a steel pipe manufacturing tycoon whose lavish parties became the stuff of Sydney legend until his sudden death in 1994.
The next chapter began in 1996, when Steven and Carol Moss, founders of the Katie’s fashion retail empire, purchased Uig Lodge for $9.2 million — a non-waterfront record at the time. The Mosses understood what they had. They commissioned a three-year renovation by architects Stephen Gergely and New York-based Alan Wanzenberg, transforming the heritage-listed residence into one of Sydney’s most sought-after trophy homes. The renovation included the restoration of the gatekeeper’s cottage and a meticulous updating of the interiors while preserving the baronial character that makes the house unique.
The Record-Breaking Purchase
By 2022, Uig Lodge had become the white whale of Australian real estate. Buyers had approached the Moss family for years, only to be turned away. The house was not officially on the market when Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson made their move. But Farquhar, who had been renting the Bellevue Hill estate Barford after his ambitious renovation plans for Elaine collapsed under neighbour objections, was in the market for a family home that was move-in ready.
The deal was done privately, just days before Christmas 2022. At $130 million, it shattered the previous Australian house price record of $100 million set by Farquhar’s own Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, for the neighbouring Fairwater estate in 2018. What made the purchase even more remarkable was that Farquhar and Jackson paid in cash, with no mortgage required. In an era of rising interest rates and tightening credit, the transaction was a blunt demonstration of the liquidity available to Australia’s tech elite. “We’re excited to have found a family home ready to move into,” a spokeswoman for the couple said at the time. It was expected to settle in the first half of 2023.
Inside the Castle
Uig Lodge is not a sprawling waterfront estate in the mould of Elaine or Fairwater. At approximately 3,300 square metres, its landholding is roughly half the size of Elaine’s nearly 7,000 square metres. But what Uig Lodge lacks in waterfront frontage, it more than compensates for in elevation and presence.
The house features four or five large bedrooms and six bathrooms, a formal living room with marble floors, a gourmet kitchen, and open-plan living and dining areas. A private internal lift services each level, and the property includes a four-car garage, generous entertainment areas, and a substantial swimming pool. The gatekeeper’s cottage, added during the Moss renovation, provides additional accommodation or staff quarters.
But the true luxury of Uig Lodge is not found in its room count or its amenities. It is found in the 270-degree panoramic views that unfold from its elevated position. While Elaine and Fairwater sit on the water’s edge, Uig Lodge towers above them, looking down on the harbour with the detached superiority of a monarch surveying a kingdom. As Sydney Sotheby’s International Realty principal Michael Pallier noted, “[I]t’s a fantastic property that sits on a hill with its own private driveway and gatehouse. It’s a billionaire’s trophy home if ever there was one.”
The Symmetry of $130 Million
There is a peculiar symmetry to Farquhar’s Point Piper property story. In 2022, he paid $130 million for Uig Lodge. In 2024, he sold Elaine for exactly $130 million. The two transactions, separated by two years and a few hundred metres of Wentworth Street, created a perfect equilibrium: one record-breaking purchase, one record-breaking sale, both at the same extraordinary price.
The symmetry underscores how firmly entrenched Farquhar has become in Sydney’s most prestigious postcode. Between Uig Lodge and the former Elaine estate, he and Jackson have owned more than $200 million worth of real estate in a suburb of just eleven streets. And while Elaine sat deteriorating during his ownership — its renovation plans abandoned, its interiors crumbling, its asbestos issues mounting — Uig Lodge offered something Farquhar had been seeking all along: a finished product, a home that required no council approvals, no neighbour negotiations, no architectural compromises.
Beyond the Castle Walls
Uig Lodge is not Farquhar’s only property play. In July 2022, he and Jackson purchased an Avoca Beach holiday home for $10.85 million, adding a coastal retreat to their harbourfront fortress. More significantly, Farquhar is involved in Atlassian Central, a roughly $1 billion hybrid-timber office tower under development in central Sydney alongside Cannon-Brookes. Set for completion in 2027, the 40-storey structure is expected to become Sydney’s tallest hybrid timber building, extending Farquhar’s imprint on the city’s skyline well beyond the baronial turrets of Uig Lodge.
The View from the Top
Uig Lodge is more than a house. It is a monument to the concentration of Australian wealth at the apex of the technology boom, a Scottish castle that has watched over Sydney Harbour as the city transformed from a colonial outpost to a global tech hub.
The $130 million price tag may seem absurd by ordinary standards. But in the context of Point Piper, where land is finite, views are irreproducible, and the cachet of ownership transcends any financial metric, Uig Lodge represents something closer to a sovereign asset. It cannot be replicated. It cannot be subdivided. It can only be inherited, bought, or sold by those who operate in the rarefied air of nine-figure transactions.
As the sun sets over Sydney Harbour and the lights of the bridge begin to glow, the silhouette of Uig Lodge stands dark against the sky — a castle on the hill, watching over a city that continues to reshape itself beneath it. The view has not changed in over a century. The price of standing at the window has.
