Beaumaris House, a former zoo once home to Tasmanian Devils, for sale in Hobart for $4 million to $6 million

A former zoo in Hobart once home to Tasmanian devils and thylacines has come up for sale and could be yours for a price of about $4 million to $6 million.

The palatial house still has its own staff quarters and boasts 11 bedrooms and nine bathrooms on a 750-square-metre floor plan dotted with period features.

Known as Beaumaris House, the Battery Point home was originally built during 1879 and 1880 in a Gothic Revival style for accountant and wool broker Henry Llewelyn Roberts and his wife, Mary. Mr Roberts founded auctioneer business Kemp, Roberts and Co, later to become Roberts limited.

Mary Roberts was prominent in both Tasmanian and scientific history with her passion for native Tasmania fauna.

Her bird and animal collection, along with the property’s gardens, was opened to the public as the Beaumaris Zoo in 1895.

The zoo infrastructure has since gone, but the main house, servants’ quarters, coach house and cellar remain.

Their family estate played home to birds, wallabies, bandicoots, wombats, kangaroos and quolls, to name a few, as well as Tasmanian devils and thylacines, with the first, a female, arriving at the site in 1908.

Mrs Roberts is known to be the first person to breed Tasmanian devils in captivity and was admitted as a member of the Zoological Society of London in 1910 with her paper, The Keeping and Breeding of Tasmanian Devils, published in 1915.

She also assisted in setting up the Tasmanian Girl Guides Association, was a member of the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Mrs Roberts passed away at the age of 81 in 1921, with the zoo relocated to the Queens Domain in 1922 and its operation taken over by Hobart City Council.

It was there the last known thylacine died in captivity in 1936, with the entire venture itself closing the year after.

That newer, former zoo site was used in this year’s Dark Mofo festival, hosting a “digital de-extinction of the legendary Tasmanian tiger via sweeping projections, sound and light.”

Meanwhile, the Roberts’ spectacular family home was sold to the Commonwealth in 1939, to be used by the Defence Force. It was a training depot for the Army Reserve after World War II and was transferred to the RAAF in 1982.

The property was eventually put up for sale in 1998, when it was bought by a private consortium, with the 0.8 hectares of grounds surrounding the home reduced to 0.4 hectares.

Since then, says agent Jim Playsted from Knight Frank, the vendors had done some very sensitive work to keep the home in shape, and had been dedicated to returning the remaining grounds to the original garden designs of the Roberts era.

“That has been a particular passion of the vendor,” Mr Playsted said of the grounds, adding that like many older properties that had been taken on by public institutions, Beaumaris had the proper care taken with its roofing, plumbing and wiring.

“Tasmania has 25 per cent of the national heritage sites and two per cent of the population,” he said. “Beaumaris is an absolute standout because of the condition it is in.”

Going up for auction on November 30, the home’s price expectations are in the $4 million to $6 million range, he said.

The property was, and would continue to be a “gorgeous residential private home”, he said, but with the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the complex and the location on the edge of the CBD it could also make “make an absolutely cracking boutique hotel,”

“Really nothing would surprise us, because of its location,” Mr Playsted said.