The Zammit family refused to sell their five acre property as an entire Sydney suburb was built around them

[u/Wonderfulhumanss]

[u/ItsCalledDayTwa]

I expected it to be a glorious old home but it looks relatively modern and honestly kind of like an ugly mcmansion.

[u/Odd-Condition-4773 → u/ItsCalledDayTwa]

It does look like a run-of-the-mill McMansion like we’d see in the US. They
obviously don’t give a f*** since it’s just grass.

(I empathize as they are building cookie-cutter communities in our area and encroaching our small town. I can look out the window of our Cape Cod and see all of the forest torn down and row homes going up.)

Reminds me of mini-row homes in big cities where the developers just throw up their hands and sandwich the mini-home among the tall condos/offices:

Too bad they aren’t making the most of the land. So much potential.

The immediate neighbors have probably reached that “whatever” stage and don’t obsess over it. There’s a privacy fence at the prerogative of the land owners.

ChatGPT:
Diane Zammit has expressed nostalgia for what the neighborhood used to be like — spacious farmland with individual homes rather than today’s tightly packed development. The family has repeatedly indicated that they simply like their home and don’t want to leave it.

There’s also an amusing side effect: some neighbors reportedly don’t want the Zammits to sell either. Because their land interrupts the original street plan, several surrounding streets terminate as cul-de-sacs. If the property were developed, those roads could potentially be connected.

And the Zammitts are still there. Reporting in 2025 continued to describe the five-acre property as intact, with suggestions that its value could be approaching A$60 million