VENUE REVIEW: 9 ROBSON ROAD, KENTHURST. Sold, but some venues demand a write-up regardless. Real Studio 54, for the uninitiated, ran in Manhattan from 1977 to 1980 — seventeen hundred people a night, a clientele that ran from Bianca Jagger to Andy Warhol, and an ending delivered not by fire code or noise complaint but by a very thorough tax evasion charge against its owners. This Kenthurst version has none of that scandal on the books yet. Give it time.
The room. Nine Robson Road sits on 5 arable acres with dual road frontage, about 45 minutes out of Sydney in the Hills District’s acreage belt — the kind of pocket built for equestrian properties and large families, not, historically, nightclubs. This one does not care. Seven double bedrooms, full brick, entered through a round portico held up by columns you could genuinely hug, under a Juliet-style balcony wrapping the entire upper level. The driveway alone is wide enough to function as an actual car park, which, as it turns out, is exactly the point.
The décor. Twin curving staircases descend under not one but three crystal chandeliers hung low enough to graze a tall guest’s head on the way to the bar, the whole run carpeted wall-to-wall in crimson. Some windows are red. Some walls are red. There is, at a rough count, more red carpet in this house than in most actual cinemas. Score: five stars, zero restraint.
The main room. Past the grand stairs, the venue proper: a sprung dance floor, mirror ball, exposed brick, and its own red-carpeted stairwell up to a private bar. Next door, because apparently a disco alone doesn’t cover the entertaining, a fully fitted recording studio with a soundproofed booth — for the nights that need a live album to remember them by.
The amenities. Bathrooms here read like they were decorated by committee, and possibly a committee that had already had a big night downstairs. One goes bronze mirror tile with a floral motif and a sunken spa; the other commits fully to crimson, with a red hexagonal jacuzzi that looks poached from a wedding cake. The kitchen, meanwhile, is doing its most sincere 1988 impression — cream cabinetry, biscuit tile — and there’s a second one downstairs for when the main one gets busy. Further down the floor plan: a squash court, a full tennis court with its own pavilion, a cricket practice wicket, and an entertaining deck measuring a genuinely absurd 15 metres by 15, easily large enough to double as a go-kart track on a slow weekend.
The crowd. Unconfirmed, but judging by the setup — three chandeliers, a live recording booth, a spa built for two — we’re guessing this was never a quiet-night-in kind of house.
The verdict. It last sold under the description “iconic property,” which, unusually for real estate copy, actually tracks. It’s since changed hands, so somewhere out past that Blue Mountains view there’s a new owner deciding whether the disco stays, whether the recording studio gets first dibs on a reno, or whether the whole thing gets preserved exactly as is, out of sheer respect. Whoever grew up filming a 21st down that red staircase has lived a childhood the rest of us can only aspire to. How decadent can one house get? Turns out: exactly this decadent. Four stars. Would attend again.
