Toot! Toot!” Bobby Genovese sounds the horn on his red toy train as we speed round his 40-hectare estate in Ocala, Florida. If the train is a surprise, there are even more in store: life-size elephants, hippos, crocodiles, giraffes, cowboys shooting front a cave and monkeys chattering on a tree. Not real, of course concrete and resin, tripped by electronics as we move round his “adventure park”. Genovese watches his guests’ jaws drop and rubs his hands in delight. It's fun, it's unexpected and, as I come to find out, it's very Bobby.
Genovese is a Canadian-born self-made businessman, venture capitalist and property investor. He can also add “passionate serial boat owner” to his bio – up until recently he had six boats (now reduced, he says, to a “more manageable” four). His partner (now fiancée) of 13 years, Dee Dee Taylor Eustace, is a successful Canadian architect/interior designer with a studio in Toronto and three properties of her own.
“The first time we met we played tennis. I won, of course,” Genovese tells me with a wink. “No you didn't!” laughs Eustace, turning to me. “Bobby and I are very competitive,” she whispers conspiratorially. “My mum would always say to me, ‘You don't have to win!’, but I'd always reply, ‘But why would you play?’ In that way we're so alike – like peas in a pod. Where he yins, I yang!”
BG Ocala Ranch is their eight-bedroom bolthole, midpoint between their homes in Canada and their main base in the Bahamas, and a place where the couple likes to kick back and entertain
