Prestige Property: 2 Frying Pan Track, Noosa North Shore, QLD

Set in the idylls of Noosa North Shore comes this heavenly designer residence known as Eden.

It wears the name well with the 1049sqm, 4-bedroom, 3-bedroom, 7-car garaging home set on 1.61 hectares amongst the trees and botanical-like native gardens on one of the largest waterfront reserve parcels on the Noosa North Shore.

The façade boasts modernist, geometric lines, combined with a palette of strategically placed hanging gardens, natural stone, timber, glass – with the water’s edge merely an extension of the front garden.

From the portico and atrium entrance, generosity is the word that comes to mind. Inside, elevated finishes of marble flooring decorate while light pours through the home via walls of glass offering panoramic water and garden views.

Inside, the major living spaces seamlessly open out on three sides to terraces, sun decks, a gazebo and a pool with Balinese volcanic rock tiles.

The ideal entertainer, the kitchen sees an oversized butler’s pantry with a marble-topped island breakfast bar and Miele dishwasher and ovens, a double-height wine fridge, and banks of storage.

The home is split into what can be best described as suites. The ground floor sees a guest suite with sitting room, ensuite and walk-in-robe. Elsewhere, upstairs has a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom master retreat complete with its own living area – again, complete with water views.

Separate is the north wing. Here one finds the king master suite with wide views of the Noosa River mouth and Noosa Heads. The suite is complete with its own private balcony, freestanding bathtub (part of the open bathroom) walk-in robe, dressing room and dedicated office area.

Only 5-minutes by boat across the river to Noosaville’s Gympie Terrace, and a little further on is vibrant Noosa Heads and its restaurants and shopping.

The listing is with Tom Offermann Real Estate’s Nic Hunter (+61 421 785 512). Price guide: $7 million; offermann.com.au

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.

Prestige Property: 2 Frying Pan Track, Noosa North Shore, QLD

A stunning, sprawling manse where the river meets the sea.

Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.