 The depression, these debts, the capital he had outlaid on the house and garden, the expenses of his various country properties and the loss of his large official salary brought about by early retirement meant that by the early 1840s he was in financial difficulties.William Sharp Macleay in 1839 was in London and ordered furnishings for the drawing room of Elizabeth Bay House.Six years later in 1845 in the midst of a colonial financial crisis, he sold them to the newly completed Government House, Sydney, where three of the original rosewood veneer tables still have pride of place.