He and his wife, Lady Barbara Hickey, owned Lady Barbara, a 35 m (115 ft) superyacht built in 1983, now known as Emerald Lady. Their home was Bartinon, a mansion standing on 2,325 m2 (0.575 acres) of land, once Queensland's most expensive home, located on Marseille Court in the exclusive Sorrento area of Australia's Gold Coast. It was built for about $8 million in the 1980s and sold in 1998.[2]
Hickey, a sailor and raconteur who staunchly supported the Australian National Party, told an ABC Four Corners program in 1982 that he was knighted after giving $100,000 towards the construction of a senior citizens' hospice in Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's electorate. Hickey replied to a question regarding the confluence of the contribution and the knighthood by saying "I paid the hundred thousand before I received the knighthood."[3]