Paul Espie's Darling Point trophy home, Callooa listed

Paul Espie's Darling Point trophy home, Callooa listed
Title TattleDecember 8, 2020

Investment banker Paul Espie and his librarian wife, Roslyn have their Victorian Gothic-style trophy home, Callooa in Darling Point listed for sale.

There are no price indications just so-called industry expectations to speculate a very, very wide range of between $25 million and $30 million.

The 1850s-built home was designed by architect Francis Clarke.

Its notable owners have included the first mayor of Sydney, John Hosking.

It was politician and barrister Harold Mason who changed the name to Callooa in the 1920s.

The property developer Rod Petricevic owned it in the mid-1980s.

Espie, the founder of Pacific Road Capital, bought it in late 1988 for $5.25 million.

Now forgotten or overlooked, there was high drama when a retaining wall was washed away in a landslide in 1998, followed by a dispute which was documented by the then independent local paper, the SMH.

Paul Espie's Darling Point trophy home, Callooa listed

Its Sauce columnist Kate McClymont called it a spat of "stupendous proportions erupting in the normally sedate Darling Point after his garden fence collapsed in the Great Darling Point Landslide of '98." 

Craigholme, another 1850s home on the Darling Point ridge line, failed to give price guidance when it didn't sell a few years back.

It was listed by the Allianz Australia chairman John Curtis who has since renovated again.

One of Darling Point's most beautiful homes, the Victorian Gothic Craigholme residence was designed by colonial architect Edmund Blacket seemingly for the family of then NSW Surveyor General, Sir Thomas Mitchell.

It last traded in 1993 for $1,615,000 when bought by the Curtis family from the Punch family.

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