Scott Farquhar, one of the founders of Aussie tech success story Atlassian, has just dropped a rumoured $75 million – that’s 75 followed by six zeroes – to buy an iconic harbourside property in Point Piper.
37-year-old Farquhar (above right), started Atlassian with uni mate Mike Cannon-Brooks in 2002, putting $10,000 on a credit card. The company floated on the US stock exchange last year, and the two are now worth an estimated $4.6 billion.
The Point Piper property (known as Elaine, because the fanciest houses always have names) was built in 1863, and was purchased by media mogul Geoffrey Evan Fairfax in 1891, for £2100.
The property had remained in the Fairfax family for 126 years, but was put on the market by John Bremmer Fairfax in 2013, because nobody in the family had lived there for decades.
There had previously been talk of dividing the vast 6986-square-metre estate into four separate blocks for development, and Farquhar told Domain he is excite that it will remain intact, saying:
“We’re thrilled with the purchase and honoured to take over the Elaine estate in its entirety from the Fairfax family. It would have been a great loss to see this rare property sold to developers and carved up. When we heard of the plans, we just couldn’t let this beautiful piece of Australian history be turned into a development site. There is a certain nostalgia in knowing that multiple generations of an iconic Australian family have grown up on these lawns and we very much look forward to raising our family here.”
The moral of the story, I guess, is that the Sydney property market really isn’t so bad if you happen to be a tech titan with a spare $75 mil of chump change lying around.
Source: Domain.
Photo: Kelly Sullivan / Getty.
