An Award-Winning Riverside Queensland Home Is For Sale
Tropical styling meets brutalist design in Sanctuary Cove.
By Terry Christodoulou
Sun, Dec 6, 2020 6:16am
2 min
2 min
On the banks of the Coomera River in Queensland’s tightly held Sanctuary Cove, the award-winning ‘Cove House’ by architect Justin Humphrey is sprawled across a 966sqm block.
Located an hour from Brisbane CBD, or 30-minutes from the Gold Coast at 7366 Marine Drive East, Sanctuary Cove in Queensland, the 3-bedroom, 4-bathroom and 3-car garage home takes its cues from both brutalist architecture and tropical modernism. The heady combination sees an intriguing melding of materials and details – such as off-form concrete and curving timber battens – throughout the home that follows an unconventional layout revolving around lush, open-air tropical garden atriums.
Dark tones set against timber is a theme that is reflected throughout the home – including in the kitchen – which sees a charcoal hued benchtop, European appliances and a hidden wine cellar.
From here, the space flows towards the dining and living areas where timber panelling adorns the ceiling and floor-to-ceiling glass windows give views to the aforementioned central tropical gardens and out to the river.
From the main living area and kitchen, the outdoor entertaining terrace is accessed. The luxurious space is fitted with an in-built barbeque and fireplace, kitchenette with bar fridges, sunken lounge and a pool while an attached mooring allows homeowners to lap up their watery surrounds.
Elsewhere, the home’s master suite sees curved architectural features, glass Venetian-style shutters, a walk-in robe and an ‘indoors-outdoors’ ensuite that offers privacy through the residences central gardens (while still feeling like you’re outside). A further two bedrooms and study are found throughout the home as well as a private laundry courtyard.
Beyond the Cove House’s considered finishes, it holds a submerged rainwater tank, a solar photovoltaic system capable of 15kW alongside three Tesla energy storage batteries furthering its green cred.
The listing is with Matt Gates (+61 404 444 439) of Ray White Sanctuary Cove; POA.
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Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.
By CHAVA GOURARIE
Mon, May 11, 2026 2 min
2 min
A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.
The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.
“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”
The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.
It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.
In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.
“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.
The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.
“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.
He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.
The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.
“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.
His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.
“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.
When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.
They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.
The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.
For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.
“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”
As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.
“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”
Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.
