Ex-ABC chairman Justin Milne sells Rozelle house for a high, buys $5.1m cattle farm

Former ABC chairman Justin Milne and his wife Anna Cicognani sold their $5 million Rozelle house on Thursday night just days after they settled on their newly purchased Southern Highlands cattle farm Valley View for $5.1 million.

The couple’s tree change has marked a lucrative exit from the inner-west market, setting a suburb high with the sale of their historic home Erinagh at close to $5 million.

The exact sale result remains undisclosed by Danny Cobden, of Cobden & Hayson, but he was asking $5 million throughout the campaign, and sources say it is expected to settle at close to that level.

The five-bedroom residence has long been a standout locally not only thanks to a 2007 renovation by the couple following their purchase of it in 2000 for $1.15 million, but because the 745-square-metre level block is an amalgamation of a late 1880s farmhouse and a period cottage, and comes with five car spaces.

It tops the previous Rozelle high set last year at $4.1 million when the former NSW ombudsman David Landa and his wife Valerie sold their Evans Street home.

Milne resigned as ABC chairman last September in the fallout from the sacking of former managing director Michelle Guthrie. Ita Buttrose was appointed to the top job in February.

Milne and Cicognani, a tech consultant who sits on the board of Basketball Australia, are expected to buy a Sydney bolthole following the sale.

Their purchase of the Southern Highlands property in Kangaloon, which is set on 37 hectares with a homestead designed by architect Richard Rowe, ends almost 20 years’ ownership by Lyanne and Max Weston, the financial planning consultant.

The pavilion-style property comes with an adjoining, self-contained barn, seven paddocks, steel cattle yards, hay shed, two dams and pockets of remnant rainforest.