listen to the audio of this article
Few properties in Australia carry the weight of history, prestige, and pure real estate spectacle quite like Elaine, the heritage-listed harbourside estate in Point Piper, Sydney. Perched on one of the most exclusive stretches of waterfront in the country, Elaine has passed through generations of one of Australia’s most influential media dynasties before becoming the subject of a headline-making purchase by tech billionaire Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Atlassian. Its story is a rare blend of colonial-era heritage, media history, modern tech wealth, and the kind of price tags that regularly rewrite Australian property records.
In this article, we explore the full history of Elaine, from its 19th-century origins through the Fairfax family era, its sale to Scott Farquhar, and its eventual record-breaking resale — along with what the story of this single property reveals about Sydney’s ultra-luxury real estate market.
The Origins of Elaine: A 19th-Century Harbourside Estate
Elaine’s story begins in 1863, when the original residence was constructed on a sprawling parcel of land in Point Piper, one of Sydney’s most desirable and geographically privileged suburbs. Point Piper occupies a peninsula jutting into Sydney Harbour, offering unobstructed water views, private beach frontage, and a level of seclusion that has made it a magnet for Australia’s wealthiest families for well over a century.
The estate takes its name, Elaine, from this original build, and it quickly became known as one of the crown jewels of Sydney’s harbourside real estate. Set on a substantial 7,000-square-metre landholding, the property stretches down to its own private harbour beach — an almost unheard-of feature in a city where waterfront access is fiercely coveted and increasingly rare.
Architecturally, Elaine reflects the grandeur of its era, featuring expansive gardens, heritage detailing, and amenities that were considered the height of luxury at the time of construction, including horse stables, a private tennis court, and a full ballroom suited to the lavish entertaining style of Sydney’s colonial elite.
The Fairfax Family Era: More Than a Century of Media Dynasty Ownership
Elaine’s most defining chapter of ownership belongs to the Fairfax family, the publishing dynasty behind the Sydney Morning Herald and one of the most powerful media empires in Australian history. The Fairfax family acquired the Elaine estate in 1891, purchasing the property for just £2,100 — a figure that, adjusted against the eventual nine-figure sale prices the estate would later command, illustrates just how dramatically Sydney’s harbourside property values have transformed over more than a century.
For generations, Elaine remained a Fairfax family stronghold, standing alongside the equally famous neighbouring estate, Fairwater — another Fairfax property that would later make its own headlines when it was purchased by Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes for $100 million. Together, Elaine and Fairwater formed a kind of dynastic compound on the Point Piper waterfront, symbolising the Fairfax family’s enduring presence at the top of Australian society, media, and real estate.
By the time the Fairfax family made the decision to part with Elaine in the 2010s, the property had been in their hands for over 125 years — a rare feat of multi-generational continuity in a market where trophy properties often change hands far more frequently.
Scott Farquhar’s Record-Breaking Purchase
In 2017, Elaine changed hands in a transaction that sent shockwaves through the Australian property market. Scott Farquhar, then just 37 years old and riding the success of Atlassian’s meteoric rise as a global software company, purchased Elaine from John Brehmer Fairfax for approximately AUD $71 million (around US$56 million at the time).
At the time, this was the most expensive residential property purchase in Australian history — a title that reflected not just the value of the land and heritage architecture, but the extraordinary scarcity of harbourfront estates of this scale coming onto the Sydney market. Farquhar reportedly described the acquisition as an honour, telling local media he was thrilled to take over the Elaine estate in its entirety from the Fairfax family — a nod to the significance of continuing the property’s storied legacy.
The purchase also had a symbolic dimension: it placed Farquhar directly beside his Atlassian co-founder and long-time business partner Mike Cannon-Brookes, who a year later purchased the neighbouring Fairwater estate for a reported $100 million, once again resetting the record for the country’s most expensive home. The two tech billionaires, who first met as students at the University of New South Wales in 1998 and went on to build a software company worth tens of billions of dollars, had effectively become harbourside neighbours.
Renovation Plans That Never Materialised
Following his purchase, Farquhar reportedly drew up ambitious renovation plans for Elaine, with a proposed budget in the region of $37 million. According to reporting from the Australian Financial Review, these plans were described by former owner John B. Fairfax as “pretty exotic,” and the designs are understood to have drawn objections from the neighbouring Fairwater estate, complicating the approval process.
In 2020, Farquhar and his wife, venture capitalist Kim Jackson, lodged plans with Woollahra Council for a radical overhaul designed by Rome-based Australian architect Carl Pickering and his partner Claudio Lazzarini. The proposal envisioned a three-level residence with a distinctive curved and translucent façade, a rooftop tennis court, a 20-metre lap pool, and a basement gym. A key heritage element — the formal double sitting room with ornate leadlight windows — was to be retained and encased in glass.
Ultimately, the renovation never went ahead. Reports suggest that objections from the Cannon-Brookes family at Fairwater played a significant role in the plans being withdrawn before public comment. Over the following seven years, Elaine sat largely unused, and the property’s condition deteriorated significantly. Reports indicate the house became half-demolished, developed asbestos issues, and became increasingly overgrown as the years passed without construction resuming — an unusual fate for one of the country’s most historically significant residential properties.
The 2024 Sale: Another Australian Record
In October 2024, just a month after stepping down from his role as Atlassian’s co-CEO, Scott Farquhar sold Elaine for AUD $130 million — once again setting a new record for the most expensive residential sale in Australian history, and delivering a substantial return on his original 2017 purchase price.
The sale represented a profit of roughly $59 million in just seven years, even though the mansion had never been inhabited by its tech-billionaire owners and had deteriorated significantly during their ownership. The $130 million price tag also generated approximately $9 million in stamp duty for the NSW government — a windfall fueled directly by the success of Australia’s technology sector.
Interestingly, the $130 million sale price of Elaine exactly matched the amount Farquhar and his wife had separately paid in 2022 for their new primary residence, Uig Lodge, a Scottish baronial-style castle mansion also located in Point Piper. The symmetry underscored just how firmly entrenched Farquhar had become in Sydney’s most prestigious postcode, cycling through some of the country’s most valuable properties within the span of a few years.
Initially, the buyer’s identity was not publicly disclosed, described in reporting only as an unnamed local. However, subsequent reports in early 2025 revealed that the buyer was an investment consortium led by Acce Investments CEO Patrick Shi, who had initially sought to purchase the property for $100 million before joining forces with other investors to secure the deal. The consortium’s plans for the estate remain uncertain, though speculation has centred on the possibility of subdivision or redevelopment given the site’s zoning and the deteriorated state of the mansion. More recent reports have even suggested the historic mansion could face demolition to make way for a retirement home or luxury apartments.
Why Point Piper Commands Such Extraordinary Prices
Elaine’s sale history cannot be fully understood without context on Point Piper itself. This small harbourside suburb consistently ranks among the most expensive postcodes not just in Australia, but globally. According to CoreLogic data, the median house price for Point Piper sits in the eight-figure range, with some recent analyses placing it as high as $17 million. Several factors converge to create this scarcity-driven pricing:
- Direct, unobstructed Sydney Harbour frontage, including rare private beach access
- Extremely limited land supply, with most large estates locked within a handful of long-standing family holdings
- Proximity to Sydney’s central business district while maintaining a secluded, low-density residential character
- A concentration of ultra-high-net-worth residents, which reinforces the suburb’s prestige and further limits turnover
As one real estate figure put it when marketing the neighbouring Fairwater estate, money can buy construction and modern features, but that scale of harbourfront land holding is simply not available elsewhere in Sydney. This dynamic is precisely why properties like Elaine and Fairwater continue to reset Australian real estate records even in a market already accustomed to extraordinary luxury pricing.
Elaine in the Context of Scott Farquhar’s Broader Property Portfolio
Elaine represents just one chapter in Scott Farquhar’s expanding real estate footprint. Since selling Elaine, Farquhar’s primary residence has been Uig Lodge, the $130 million Point Piper mansion he purchased with his wife in 2022. Originally built in the early 1900s in the style of a Scottish baronial castle, Uig Lodge sits at the highest point of Point Piper and offers what is widely regarded as one of the best vantage points over Sydney Harbour available anywhere in the city.
Beyond residential real estate, Farquhar is also involved in Atlassian Central, a roughly $1 billion hybrid-timber office tower under development in central Sydney alongside co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. Set for completion in 2027, the 40-storey structure is expected to become the tallest hybrid timber building in Sydney, extending Farquhar’s imprint on the city’s skyline well beyond the harbourside mansions for which he has become known.
Conclusion: A Property That Mirrors Sydney’s Changing Fortunes
The story of Elaine, Point Piper, is more than a real estate transaction — it is a window into more than 160 years of Sydney’s social, media, and economic history. From its origins as a colonial-era estate, through generations of Fairfax family ownership, to its transformation into a tech-wealth trophy asset under Scott Farquhar, Elaine encapsulates the evolution of Australian wealth itself, from media dynasties to software billionaires.
With its record-setting sale price of $130 million in 2024, Elaine once again cemented its place in Australian real estate history — a reminder that in Sydney’s most exclusive harbourside enclaves, scarcity, heritage, and location will likely continue to command prices few other property markets in the world can match.
