Landmark and legacy

Hobart is a city of heirlooms. Georgian buildings stand cheek by jowl on town squares with luminaries on stone plinths gazing thoughtfully out to sea. High up, on the slopes of the inner-city suburb of Glebe, there’s a Victorian mansion with a meticulous parterre garden that isn’t easily overlooked.

Corinda had always caught Julian Roberts’ attention but he had not the slightest clue that he was walking among the ghosts of his own family when he strode across the cobblestone courtyard six years ago. He was unknowingly about to reclaim his ancestral home. “I phoned Mum after seeing Corinda that day and said that I’d fallen for it,” he recalls. “‘Oh well’, she said, ‘it is only your family home!’”

The plan to bring Corinda back into