Properties that
didn't make the
A-list.
But should have.
For SaleFort Knox, But Damp
Made the list because somewhere in the design process, someone looked at a two-storey void running through the middle of a castle and thought 'yes, that's where the pool goes' and nobody in the room disagreed.
AuctionMoon Base Karalee
Made the list for being a cluster of concrete domes on a riverfront block that reads less like a floor plan and more like a lunar landing that decided to stay and start a cult.
Under ContractThe House That Started At The Bar
Made the list for a built-in red bar so confidently placed that we're fairly sure the rest of the house was designed backwards from it, probably after a few too many.
For saleThe House The Jungle Ate
Made the list for presenting real estate's three great questions all at once: demolish, renovate, or hand the keys straight to a disaster-movie location scout.
SoldThe Round Disco House
Made the list for being a genuine roller-skating house: a circular floor plan, a helical floating ramp instead of a staircase, and a mirrored disco-ball column running straight up the middle of it, all wrapped in enough silver birch wallpaper to relocate an entire Scandinavian forest indoors.
For saleThe Long Way Home: Elevated Plains
Made the list for being a 110-metre certified Passivhaus that also runs as a working farm, a greenhouse and a cooking school for 120 people — a concept so ambitious the marketing copy needed the phrase 'architecture of enduring significance' just to keep a straight face.
SoldStudio 54: Kenthurst
Made the list for being an actual functioning nightclub that also happens to come with 5 acres, a tennis court and a cricket practice wicket.
Keep Scrolling, We Dare You
SoldThe Toilet's Right There: Glebe
Made the list for winning the 2020 Wilkinson Award for Residential Architecture, a prize we can only assume is judged by people who have never needed the toilet at 2am next to someone else's boyfriend.
For SaleThe Chouse Of Greendale
Made the list for being an actual 1849 church, designed by the same architect as St Andrew's Cathedral, converted into a house without anyone bothering to tone down the vibe.
SoldAre These Homeowners Doomsday Preppers?
Made the list for a 12.8kW solar system running 32 panels, a 20kW battery bank, floodlights and security cameras bolted to every shed on the property, and not one but several fully self-contained outbuildings with their own plumbing, power, and living space.
Not for saleJesus Take The Wheel: Oran Park
Made the list for a spiral staircase so dramatic it needed a compass rose inlaid into the marble floor beneath it, a ceiling that appears to have been designed by someone who had just discovered what a computer could do, a life-size Jesus statue standing vigil in the master bedroom, and a crucifix mounted directly behind the dining table so that every family dinner is technically a Last Supper.
Not for saleThe Cannon-Ball Estate
Made the list for an indoor rock pool with a waterfall, under a glass rotunda dome, overlooked by a second-storey balcony strung entirely in coloured fairy lights, which is either the greatest thing we have ever seen in a private residence or the second greatest thing, depending on how you feel about wagon wheel furniture.
SoldSave Moonya: Burwood's Stained-Glass Time Capsule
Made the list for stained-glass doors that belong in a cathedral, a kitchen frozen somewhere between 1955 and the invention of wallpaper, and the fact that a developer wants to knock the whole thing down and build something beige.
Deeper Into The List
For SaleGidget Goes to Palm Springs
Made the list for two bars (one with a keg, one with banana-leaf wallpaper), a yellow water slide off the upper deck, brolgas painted across every wall of the kitchen, and an open-plan ensuite arrangement that assumes a lot about your relationship.
For SaleThe Randwick Royale
Made the list for an upstairs landing dressed in full gold leaf and marble columns, a blue bathroom going head to head with a rust bathroom for supremacy, and a basement bar with its own five-stool lineup and granite wet bar.
For SaleValley Of The Dolls
Made the list for a doll collection so large it has its own floor-to-ceiling shelving system in not one but two rooms, a doll perched on the kitchen bench supervising breakfast, and at least two jukeboxes we counted before we stopped being able to focus on anything except the eyes.
SoldThe F.A.C. Manor: Beverly Hills, NSW (Not That One)
Made the list for a living room where the wallpaper and the carpet are both doing maximalist florals simultaneously and somehow neither one blinked first, a home office that appears to have been designed for a Victorian-era villain, and an exterior that promises Beverly Hills California and delivers Beverly Hills NSW, which is its own very specific thing.
For SaleLion Around: Geelong's Lion-Statue Mansion
Made the list for fourteen lion statues, a billiard room where the photos have colonised the ceiling, a garage named The Stables with a coat of arms above the door, and a wine cellar with a porthole window looking up through the floor of the pool.
SoldThe 3.4 Metre Wonder
Made the list for being so narrow a tape measure is the most alarming thing about the listing — and for hiding a clawfoot bath in the side passage that no plumber could fully explain.
Certified Unhinged Territory
Not currently for saleKnights of the Yellow Kitchen Table
Made the list for a fully themed Crusader meeting room — armour, banners and a round table built for chivalry — and that's before you even reach the private theatre.
For SaleWA's Retro Wonder
Made the list for a matador mural behind the home bar and roughly half an acre of teal-and-gold carpet that has no intention of going anywhere.
SoldPOV: It's 1975 and You Just Got Home
Made the list for amber cathedral-glass doors, a powder-blue bathroom suite, and a real estate blurb that name-checks Yiayia, Nonna and Pappous before it gets to the floor plan.
SoldStep Into 1980: Jamboree Heights' Wallpaper Wonderland
Made the list for a mustard-yellow kitchen, a gold shag-pile study, and not a single fitting that's been touched since the Hawke government.
For SaleSix Ensuites and a Climbing Wall
Made the list for a staircase that spirals through three storeys like a piece of sculpture, a bedroom with its own indoor climbing wall, and a “wellness retreat” tucked inside the garage.
For SalePretty in Pink: Nambucca Heads' Daggiest Beach Pad
Made the list for being three bedrooms with three completely different colour philosophies — and not one of them is white.
Still With Us? Good.
For SaleThe Earth Castle
Made the list for having functional drawbridges, a cascading indoor waterfall, a secret room behind the wine cellar, and a living grass roof you can do yoga on while overlooking the valley.
For SaleWhat Was I Thinking?: Port Lincoln's Gold-And-Marble Fever Dream
Made the list for being two completely different houses stacked on top of each other: a gold-and-marble chandelier palace upstairs, and a full 1970s brick entertainment bunker downstairs, united only by a staircase with a golden nude on the newel post.
For saleBaltimore: The Gold Coast's Only Home Casino
Made the list for having a fully operational casino in the living room — roulette wheel, card tables, custom bar stools embroidered with 'Baltimore Casino' in gold, and a carpet that could only have been chosen by someone who had just returned from a very good time at Star City.
For saleQuambone Castle: A Fixer-Upper With Delusions of Grandeur
Made the list for a 1022sqm Gold Coast mansion that the listing calls 'a canvas for your dreams' and the photos call 'a very large project.' The pool is brown.
For SaleThis House Comes With A Bonus Western Town
Made the list for an entire hand-built Wild West town — saloon, jail, church, courthouse, general store, theatre and brothel included — sitting on 12.5 acres behind a perfectly normal modern three-bedroom home.
SoldThe Sandcastle House
Made the list for a hand-corbelled limestone turret nobody wanted to build, a moat you cross on stepping stones because apparently the drawbridge budget ran out, gothic light fittings the owner spotted at Disneyland and simply had to have, and a cheetah-skin runner laid down the spiral stair for reasons the listing does not attempt to explain.
The Plot Thickens
SoldThe Time Machine On Park Street
Made the list for a swirling green-and-gold carpet that runs uninterrupted from the front hallway clean through to the formal lounge, a built-in red leather bar still standing at attention for guests who stopped arriving decades ago, a bathroom committed head to toe in peach floral tile with gold tapware and a bidet on standby, and a backyard so vast the agent had to mention the rear laneway just to give it an exit.
For SaleSydney's Pink Palace
Made the list for looking exactly like a tin of Taubman's Canyon Pink fell off a high shelf, rolled through every room of a Harry Seidler high-rise, and nobody was handed a rag in time.
SoldOne Conversation Pit Short Of Perfect
Made the list for a lounge room in dusty coral velvet facing a full sandstone fireplace wall, a kitchen wallpapered in orange florals bold enough to read from the rooftop three storeys up, a powder room committed entirely to red damask and a gold-rimmed orange sink basin, and a rooftop terrace over Diamond Bay Reserve so good the agent needed four different words for ‘view.’ Every original surface in this apartment has survived completely intact.
SoldLiving In Freakin' Disney World
Made the list for being inside Golden Oak, the only residential neighbourhood Disney has ever let anyone actually live in, complete with a home cinema built as a full-scale Millennium Falcon cockpit, an exact replica of the marble fireplace from Cinderella's Castle apartment, and an outdoor pizza oven shaped like Toothless.
SoldIvy League: Darling Point
Made the list for being a genuine c1920s Darling Point trophy home, renovated by a celebrity interior designer and sold for $21 million, that still found room for a rooster portrait hung with pride in the one room dedicated to eating things that used to have feathers, a kitchen bench that looks like the marble ran out halfway through the pour, and a staircase runner striped enough to double as a field sobriety test.
Buy stuff from the houses.
We found the houses. We tracked down the vibe. We did the hard work so you can impulse-buy a cheetah-print cushion at 11pm and call it interior design.