Port Lincoln sits at the bottom of Eyre Peninsula on Spencer Gulf, and from an elevated position on the Lincoln Highway you get panoramic harbour views that would sell a garden shed. What 78 Lincoln Highway has chosen to do with that view is considerably more ambitious than a garden shed. It has chosen to build two entirely separate houses, stacked vertically, with an ornate staircase between them featuring a golden nude figure on the newel post who watches everything.
The upper levels operate in gold and marble. The formal dining room has a chandelier — a crystal one — above a tufted red velvet dining setting on cream carpet beneath a ceiling painted in what can only be described as Venetian Gold. The fireplace is marble. The arches into the staircase hall are marble. The staircase itself is white carpet with gilded rope balustrades and stained glass windows casting coloured light over the proceedings. The master ensuite has a spa bath raised on a two-step marble podium with gold tapware, mirrored on three sides, with a crystal pendant overhead. This is a house that asked ‘how much is too much?’ and then decided that was the wrong question entirely.
The curved bar is a particular highlight: walnut joinery in a full semicircle, mirrored walls multiplying the crystal decanters into apparent infinity, harbour views through curved windows. The kitchen has an arched porthole framing a palm tree and the water beyond, and a yellow ceiling with a brass chandelier, because why not. One bedroom is entirely peach — quilted wallpaper, hand-painted French armoire, rococo bed frame apparently rescued from a minor Versailles antechamber.
Then you go downstairs, and the house changes its mind completely. The lower level is brick. Full brick, floor to ceiling, timber-lined above, patterned terracotta tile below. A circular brick fireplace anchors the rumpus room. The kitchen down here has avocado green cabinetry, harvest gold and olive mosaic tiles, and a brick arch framing the servery. There is also a blue bathroom — hand-painted floral tiles, gold accessories, a sauna behind a timber door — that belongs to a completely different aesthetic universe than the marble spa bath two floors up.
The listing describes it as ‘immediately liveable.’ We would say it is immediately a lot of things. The harbour views are genuinely spectacular, the bones are substantial, and whoever built this swung for something. Whether they connected is a matter of personal calibration. We’re charmed. We had questions about the staircase figure. We still have questions. Some things Port Lincoln keeps to itself.
