From the street, you get the overture: a double-storey façade in cream and burgundy brick, an upstairs balcony with enough turned balustrade to furnish a small cathedral, and a wrought-iron gate flanked by stone lions who have clearly been guarding this property since the Fraser government. It is, by any measure, a lot of house. It has not finished making its point.
Inside, the formal lounge opens on teal-and-gold patterned carpet and gold-flecked mirrored doors, which is merely the entrée. The dining room is the main event: timber-lined ceiling, a wagon-wheel chandelier, and — the genuine showstopper — a full home bar backed by a hand-painted matador mural, mid-flourish, cape and all. We have toured a great many houses. None of them have had a bullfighter.
Upstairs runs a private retreat with its own bathroom and a “sleep out,” because apparently even the spare rooms in this house wanted their own wing. Downstairs, a wood-panelled rec room houses a full-size pool table under a skylight, and the ensuite commits fully to a matching yellow suite — toilet, basin, the lot — with not one ounce of apology.
The agent, reasonably, wants to talk to you about the 759sqm block, the 19-metre frontage and the R40 zoning — and fair enough, this is a genuinely rare landholding with real subdivision upside. We just want twenty minutes alone with the bar.
