Matt Handbury sells Southern Highlands trophy Wattle Ridge for $8.25 million

The Southern Highlands holiday retreat Wattle Ridge owned by publisher Matt Handbury and his wife Clare Strang sold late on Friday.

The exact sale price remained undisclosed by Michael Pallier of Sotheby’s International who would only confirm that it had sold. However on Chinese social media site WeChat a sale price of $8.25 million was touted.

Given strong local buyer interest in the property, local sources speculate an Australian buyer has bought the holiday retreat, ending a year-long sale campaign by the executive chairman of Murdoch Media and nephew of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The home was originally listed with $10 million hopes and was viewed as a test of the strength of the Southern Highlands trophy market since its bull run of a decade ago when the late Reg Grundy set the region’s record when he paid $15 million for the 200-hectare property Comfort Hill at Sutton Forest.

The result is the highest luxury rural-residential sale in the Southern Highlands region this year, topping the $8,075,000 sale in May of a 668-hectare cattle farm in Canyonleigh to pastoralists Ben and Kimberley Cottle.

Handbury’s 258-hectare holding in Nattai is an amalgamation of land purchases, the first of which was bought by Handbury in 1994 for $920,000 as a getaway when he and his former wife Fiona Campbell were renovating their Point Piper trophy home Altona.

Handbury’s American Georgian-style homestead designed by architect William Zuccon was completed in 1998, with interiors by Thomas Hamel, and eight hectares of landscaped gardens with input from big name landscape gardeners Miles Baldwin and Paul Bangay.

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The six-bedroom property overlooks four ornamental lakes, pasture land, a dressage arena and two stables and has a dedicated native forest with private riding trails backing onto Nattai National Park.

There is also a three-bedroom guesthouse, a separate manager’s residence, tennis court and heated pool. .