Luxury living, Australian-style

Luxury living, Australian-style
At Tradewinds estate, walls are less integral to the home than are the sunset and warm evening breezes.
By John Garnaut Published: March 22, 2007

The Tradewinds estate is luxury tropical living Australian-style, where walls are less integral to the home than are the sunset and warm evening breezes.

"Quite a lot of the walls just fold away," the home's designer, Chris Beckingham, explained in his no-frills Queensland drawl. "The whole house is an enclosable veranda."

The house seems to be constructed from air and water, with a bit of polished hardwood timber; the view spreads over an infinity-edged pool to the azure yachting channels of the Whitsunday Islands.

Tradewinds is perched high on Hamilton Island, a bit of land 5 kilometers by 2 kilometers, or a 3.1 miles by 1.2 miles, that locals know simply as "the rock." The island, at the center of the Whitsunday archipelago, marks the southern gateway to the 2,600-kilometer string of coral known as the Great Barrier Reef.

The 848-square-meter, or 9,128-square-foot, house is expected to sell for about 7 million Australian dollars, or almost $5.5 million, which would be a record for the island's 600 private homes.

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Ken Jacobs, an agent affiliated with Christie's Great Estates, says the property has already attracted interest across Australia and from abroad, particularly in Britain. "There's really nothing comparable in the area," he said.

It is the highest property on One Tree Hill, a spot that owes its name to the stunted, lonely old fig that clings to a rock outcrop above the house. The estate's 4,360 square meters are planted with frangipani, bougainvillea, Kentia palms and old Moreton Bay figs, which are sheltered when the southeasterly winds howl overhead, because the entire complex is nestled on the western side of the ridgeline.

"On a really windy day you can open it up and sit on the veranda and it's perfect," said Beckingham, who runs an architecture firm at Arlie's Beach on the nearby mainland.

Beckingham laughed at the "award- winning" tag attached to his name in Christie's promotional material. "It's all rubbish, really," he said. He also was surprised to hear Tradewinds described as Balinese; the house's only Balinese feature is a thatched roof, he said.

The original owners "said they wanted a really good Australian tropical house. That's what they got," he said.

The dark amber floors are cut from spotted gum and hoop pine, hauled from near the New South Wales-Queensland border. The joinery is New Guinea rosewood. The feel is quintessentially Australian.

Beckingham may be modest, but he now is drawing house plans for Bob Oatley, a winemaker and yachting fanatic who recently bought the Hamilton Island management company — which brings with it, essentially, control of the island — for close to 200 million Australian dollars. The sale includes the island's resorts, yacht club, airport and all. The company was previously listed on the stock exchange .

(Technically, the owners of private homes on the island receive 99-year leases or sub-leases to their property. According to Ken Jacobs, people like Richard White, the original owner of Tradewinds who is now selling the property, have treated the land as freehold, making changes as they wished.)

Oatley is busy building roads, constructing new villas, erecting a new resort and generally capitalizing on the fact that the island has the region's only airport, with direct flights from Sydney and most Australian state capitals.

"We're upgrading the whole island," said Michelle Kenna, head of marketing at Hamilton Island Enterprises. For example, the new resort, due to open in May, "will be the most luxurious resort in Australia — bar none," she said.

Right now, the island's biggest attraction is the annual Hamilton Island Race Week, a major event that brings along with it the annual Whitehaven Beach Party, the Pirate Ship Mardi Gras and a mini-invasion of cocktail-drinking mainlanders. But Oatley wants everything to be bigger: a new marina, more world-class yacht races.

Kenna said that, despite the plans, the island will not lose its natural charm because the height of all new buildings will be restricted and 70 percent of the island will be retained as bush and rain forest.