If Bill Gates could live anywhere in the world, he'd choose Sydney

November 18, 2014 - 10:45AM
Update 19/11/2014

Sydney fans: Bill and Melinda Gates. Photo: Reuters

If Bill and Melinda Gates could live anywhere in the world - and one suspects money would be no object - they would choose Sydney.
Melinda, wife of the Microsoft founder and co-chair of their multibillion-dollar charity foundation, told Time magazine she and Bill sometimes fantasise about their dream location.
" 'When Bill and I play that game where u can live anywhere,' Melinda Gates just told me, they'd choose...Sydney," Time editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe tweeted on Tuesday.

The three-level mansion named Portofino where Bill Gates and his family stayed in Vaucluse. Photo: Brendan Esposito

One sceptic on Twitter wondered whether "they say that to all the Aussies"; Luscombe was born in Sydney and attended the University of Sydney.
But the Gates have had ample chance to enjoy the spoils of the Emerald City. In 2011, they holidayed for a month with their children in a three-storey Vaucluse mansion that cost $25,000 a week.
Manly Pavilion proprietor John Codling remembers them leaving "a generous tip".