Isolate With the Whole Family at This $10.4 Million Mountaintop Compound

(Bloomberg) -- In 1999, John Howard-Smith set out to find a plot of land for a compound in North Queensland, Australia, that would house himself, his wife Jade, and his parents.

At that time, Howard-Smith was a commercial helicopter pilot for a mining company, so he fired up a chopper and made passes up and down the coast, photographing areas that struck his fancy.

“We found one piece of property that was fantastic and available,” he says. “There was nothing here, just some old tracks— there’d never been a dwelling on the land, ever, which is very unusual.”

That could have been because the land that Howard-Smith settled on was a 200 acre plot at the top of a mountain, with views of the Keppel Islands and the Coral Sea. “There was no water, no power, nothing,” he says. “We had to build everything from scratch.”

Howard-Smith and his father Ian, a mining executive, closed on the property in 2002 and embarked on a five-year building project that removed nearly 26 feet of mountaintop in order to construct a pair of three-bedroom houses surrounded by lush gardens.

The result is a family compound built to withstand extreme weather events—with its own power source, water, and mechanical systems—at which the family has lived for more than a decade.

In 2016, Howard-Smith and his wife decided they needed to sell. “I suppose age ends up being a problem,” he says. “My parents were well and truly into their 70s, and my daughter was becoming a teenager. We weren’t in a rush, but we started down the road of selling it.”

They listed it for a few months that year, then took it off the market; they did the same thing in 2018.

Now, they’re listing it in earnest with Carol Carter from Queensland Sotheby's International Realty for A$15 million ($10.4 million). “Without a doubt, it’s unique,” he says. “You can’t recreate this anywhere.”

The Origins

The decision to live on the property with his parents, Howard-Smith says, “was mostly a lifestyle choice.” That said, he knew that he wanted some measure of distance between his house and his parents’ house. After they chose the land, they began to plan out how the houses would be arranged.

In order to create enough acreage for two homes to coexist peacefully, engineers not only removed 26 feet of mountaintop, they used that soil to create a large, flat plane. The houses would straddle each side of the property, with a bunker-like structure for mechanical systems between them. 

Howard-Smith next hired an architect to help design the houses, and in 2004, he and his wife rented a home nearby to oversee the actual construction process. All told, it took about two years of planning and three years of work to create the compound.

The Land

Though the property is isolated, it’s not hard to access, Howard-Smith says. “The amazing thing with this property is that’s two kilometers from a few small towns, and there’s a subdivision half a kilometer away.” The town of Rockhampton, which has an airport, is a 40-minute drive.

Visitors approach the houses through a gate and up a lush, tree-lined road; only at the top, once visitors approach the peak, are they exposed to the sweeping views of the ocean. The property itself abuts the beach; it just takes a 330-foot descent to get there.

Most of the land has been left wild. Initially, they had manicured gardens that led “right up to the natural land,” Howard-Smith says, “but over time we’ve removed some of our gardens and have been promoting the original plants. We’ve learned they’re much more hardy, and it all looks—and blends in—much nicer.”

The Houses

All rooms in both houses were designed around the view. “Each room has a picture window of a specific island or a specific mountain,” Howard-Smith says. “We were trying to pick up specific landmarks through the windows.”

The houses were designed with a midcentury modern aesthetic, using construction more commonly found in military bunkers. Even the roofs are concrete. “They’ve been designed for a windy and stormy location. On a windy night, you don’t hear anything inside,” he says. The structures were built to withstand a cyclone, with high-strength glass windows.

What Howard-Smith calls the “main house,” roughly 10,700 square feet, is oriented around a large, open living room, kitchen, and dining room. (More isolated rooms include a library and meditation room.) The house has two main bedrooms, as well as a detached, two-bedroom guest house with its own kitchen and laundry. That house has two full baths and two half baths in total.

The second house, which is about 5,400 square feet, is designed with the same aesthetic in mind—open kitchen, minimal interior, floor to ceiling windows—but it has three bedrooms and a gymnasium.

The houses are hooked up to a municipal water supply, but they’ve also got water tanks for storage and irrigation. There’s a backup generator that turns on automatically in the event of a power outage.

Howard-Smith says that “we definitely spent a lot of money to make it very, very nice, and we can safely say that we spent more than we’re asking to sell it for.”

Paying Off

In his mind, the investment paid off. “My wife and I were fortunate enough to have a child, and my parents were fortunate enough to live next-door,” he says. “That was one of the highlights of the whole thing. It was our intention to live in a beautiful location and to enjoy life.”

Now though, Howard-Smith says that that enjoyment means moving on.

“It’s not something we want to sell,” he says, “it’s just the timing in life.” Even now though, the family has spent the last few months on the land; at a time when many people are self-isolating, the property has proven a refuge.

“Potentially,” he says, “we’ve built something ahead of its time.”

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