Fifty-four Alfred Road bills itself as a once-in-a-generation 10-acre holding, and on paper that’s exactly right: a seven-bedroom double-brick main residence, plus a separate three-bedroom house, a two-bedroom house, and two self-contained one-bedroom units, all behind electric gates and a full security camera system. There’s a four-bay garage, a horse shed, paddocks, a limestone lake, and an industrial laundry with four commercial washers and four dryers, because apparently somewhere on this property there is enough laundry to require commercial equipment. We have not located the source of that laundry. We have theories.
What the agent’s copy does not mention, anywhere, in any of the dot points, is the dolls. Hundreds of them. Shelved floor to ceiling around two full walls of a cathedral-ceilinged games room, standing in tiered ranks above the beds in what we can only assume used to be a bedroom and is now a doll dormitory, and — our personal favourite — propped on the kitchen bench in matching outfits, directly supervising whoever is making coffee. There is a second kitchen downstairs, also brick, also home to at least one more jukebox, because if the first games room jukebox wasn’t enough jukebox, the house simply built another room and put a second one in it.
The bones of the place are genuinely substantial: cathedral ceilings, a skylit main living zone, multiple separate living areas, full air-conditioning, computerised irrigation, 14kW solar with battery storage. This is a serious piece of acreage infrastructure that happens to also be staffed, entirely, by dolls. Multi-generational living, the agent suggests. We’d agree, provided every generation is comfortable being watched while they sleep.
How many jukeboxes is too many jukeboxes? We genuinely don’t know. We do know the answer is at least one more than this house currently has, because apparently there is always room for one more. Same goes for the dolls. Valley Of The Dolls earns its name and then some — we counted until we lost count, then we left, and we are still thinking about it.
