Power couple buy up paradise

High rollers buy into a bohemian slice of heaven. Tim Newman and Warwick Rasmussen report.

A British aristocrat and an Australian business mogul have snapped up a multimillion-dollar slice of rural Takaka near tourism hot-spot Golden Bay.

Lady Katie Percy and Mark Carnegie’s 89-hectare property between Golden Bay and Kahurangi National Park has bay views and a river running through it.

Carnegie has a background in venture capital, predominantly in Australia, and philanthropy. Percy, a gunsmith and mechanic, is the daughter of the 12th Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. She grew up in Alnwick Castle – which was Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.

Carnegie told The Australian they had been eyeing the site since 2014.

‘‘We went from Queenstown in the south up to Lake Taupo¯ in the north four years ago searching for a place. This is a workable compromise for us.’’ Carnegie was approached for comment.

Most Golden Bay locals were still in the dark about the sale.

Newly-elected Tasman District Council Golden Bay ward representative Celia Butler was unsurprised. The bohemian Takaka community would welcome them, she said.

‘‘To me, it’s like, ‘here’s another interesting person’.’’

Golden Bay had a lot of highend properties ‘‘and these tend to change hands quite a bit’’.

‘‘It makes it for a really interesting place,’’ Butler said. ‘‘A lot of people who move in, who are recent arrivals, have a shared vision for environmental welfare. They’re not coming over to exploit the environment that you might get from people moving to Queenstown or something like that – they’ve got a kind of conservation focus.’’

The arrival of such people was ‘‘fabulous for Golden Bay because it means we’ve got this wonderful energy and resources, which contribute to it being a special place.’’

However, wealthy buyers did