Can’t afford your dream house? Neither could Colonial Secretary, Alexander Macleay. He had the vision to develop the site from 1826 onwards as a fine landscape garden and build Elizabeth Bay House – then dubbed ‘the finest house in colony’– but his children asked 'where was the money to come from?' Macleay’s life long obsession with entomology plus the loss of his government post in 1837 required him to seek numerous loans from his eldest son William.