“Ha! That was a great drunken afternoon’s cricket,”’ laughs the purple-plumed, mohawk-capped host, eyeballing a series of photographs on the roof of his billiard room.
Words: NOEL MURPHY
Photo: TOMMY RITCHIE
“O’Toole out, caught Botham, bowled Lyons – at Lords!”
Darryn Lyons loves his cricket. The bats and caps and pictures and other paraphernalia he’s garnered down the years are solid testament to that.
Willow weapons are emblazoned with the signatures of numerous Australian Test skippers – Chappell, Lawry, Taylor, Hughes and more.
Another’s signed by the 1972 Aussie team that took on the Windies, who also have their names emblazoned across the bat.
Max Walker’s baggy green bought at auction … Lyons clearly likes snapping up sporting treasures.
It’s clear he’s pretty chuffed about the items in the treasure trove collection he calls home.
And why not? Boxing gloves signed by world heavyweight champs Norton, Holmes, Foreman, Frazier and the greatest of the lot, Ali.
A Galveston electric guitar owned by U2’s The Edge and snaffled at The Dorchester. Seventeenth-century brass beds, Napoleonic urns, leopard hides, Gallic and English antiques, zebra-skin throws, gilded chandeliers …
Lyons’ domestic enclave is a menagerie, a museum, a showcase and a wonder-world; his personal dragon’s den.
From the Trafalgar Square-like lions at the front gate to the provocative life-sized bronze nude at the back door, it’s a sensory smorgasbord.
Every turn, left, right, up or down, presents the visitor with a new curiosity. A hand-painted globe of the world, antlers and stag heads, a harking horn of Titanic metal, snowshoes, figurines, oil paintings, erotic etchings, snow shoes, massive gilded mirrors, exquisite carved chairs, thrones, tables, crystals, marble, sideboards, pedestals, polished timber, canopy beds, furs, walnut dining settings, and photographs, photographs and more photographs.
The house is a shrine to celebrity, too, with images of movie stars, rock gods, TV legends, sports heroes, supermodels, the famous and the infamous, everywhere.
They’re in the billiard room overlooking Corio Bay, in the garage housing a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, along hallways – even in the toilet.
Lyons Central is bold, brash, opulent.
