In order to create enough acreage for two homes to coexist peacefully, engineers not only removed 26 feet of mountaintop, they used that soil to create a large, flat plane. The houses would straddle each side of the property, with a bunker-like structure for mechanical systems between them.

Howard-Smith next hired an architect to help design the houses, and in 2004, he and his wife rented a home nearby to oversee the actual construction process. All told, it took about two years of planning and three years of work to create the compound.

The Land
Though the property is isolated, it’s not hard to access, Howard-Smith says. “The amazing thing with this property is that’s two kilometers from a few small towns, and there’s a subdivision half a kilometer away.” The town of Rockhampton, which has an airport, is a 40-minute drive.

Visitors approach the houses through a gate and up a lush, tree-lined road; only at the top, once visitors approach the peak, are they exposed to the sweeping views of the ocean. The property itself abuts the beach; it just takes a 330-foot descent to get there.

Most of the land has been left wild. Initially, they had manicured gardens that led “right up to the natural land,” Howard-Smith says, “but over time we’ve removed some of our gardens and have been promoting the original plants. We’ve learned they’re much more hardy, and it all looks—and blends in—much nicer.”

The Houses
All rooms in both houses were designed around the view. “Each room has a picture window of a specific island or a specific mountain,” Howard-Smith says. “We were trying to pick up specific landmarks through the windows.”

The houses were designed with a midcentury modern aesthetic, using construction more commonly found in military bunkers. Even the roofs are concrete. “They’ve been designed for a windy and stormy location. On a windy night, you don’t hear anything inside,” he says. The structures were built to withstand a cyclone, with high-strength glass windows.

What Howard-Smith calls the “main house,” roughly 10,700 square feet, is oriented around a large, open living room, kitchen, and dining room. (More isolated rooms include a library and meditation room.) The house has two main bedrooms, as well as a detached, two-bedroom guest house with its own kitchen and laundry. That house has two full baths and two half baths in total.

The second house, which is about 5,400 square feet, is designed with the same aesthetic in mind—open kitchen, minimal interior, floor to ceiling windows—but it has three bedrooms and a gymnasium.

The houses are hooked up to a municipal water supply, but they’ve also got water tanks for storage and irrigation. There’s a backup generator that turns on automatically in the event of a power outage.