Prestige Property: 282 Skinners Shoot Road, Skinners Shoot, NSW
Byron’s grand old dame hits the market.
By Terry Christodoulou
Fri, Apr 2, 2021 6:30am
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While Byron Bay has carved a name for itself as the sunny celebrity hideaway that homes the Hemsworths amongst other Hollywood A-listers, it isn’t yet devoid of all its tranquil charm.
Enter Koreelah, a grand, stone gated, 100-year-old pile decorated with towering pines and old-growth forest only four minutes from Byron town.
The 5-bedroom, 3-bathroom, 6-car home is set on 3.88-hectares neighbouring the likes of Australian businessman and Celebrity Apprentice boss Mark Bouris, singer Angus Stone and former Nine boss David Gyngell.
Through the sandstone foyer, the elegant old dame boasts four-metre-high ceilings a central stone fireplace and open-plan living spaces. It’s here the caterer’s sized kitchen – replete with stainless-steel appliances and temperature-controlled wine storage – living and dining area spills towards the outdoor space.
Ideal for outdoor entertaining, the home is replete with a 16-metre outdoor mineral pool, five-person spa and full-sized pizza oven that soaks all while soaking in views from Mt. Warning to the coast.
Elsewhere the five bedrooms all open out to the wraparound veranda while the main has access to its own, private covered deck, ensuite and outdoor bathtub.
Further, a section of the home – complete with kitchen and living area – can easily transform into a secondary accommodation, nanny zone or home office with separate entrance and courtyard.
Moreover, the home offers an 80-tree olive grove, irrigated with town water, a 20-tree citrus orchard alongside mano, apple, guava and jackfruit trees. Keeping its green appeal, the residence has solar panels and a 75000L rainwater stores.
Pacifico Property’s Christian Sergiacomi takes the home to auction on April 16 with a guide of $9-$9.5 million.
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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
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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.
