Eye-watering sex paraphernalia on offer at brothel fire sale

Lawsons is an esteemed auctioneer house favoured by high society, so the auction items currently on sale from Temple 22 have raised some eyebrows. Read about the catalogue here.

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It’s the go-to auction site for Sydney’s celebrity and social set — with clients including Baz Lurhmann, Roxy Jacenko, developer John Boyd and wife Marly, and Dr John Hewson — so Confidential was surprised to see an impressive S&M collection on the historic Lawsons auctioneers website.

This black latex hood with mohawk and red trim, teamed with a latex codpiece G-string, has an estimate of $40-$60.

There — between the Aboriginal art and the mid-century design furniture — was a remarkable collection of explicit costumes and tools that would make Christian Grey blush.

The four-page collection starts out tamely enough: coloured ropes, masks, wooden and leather paddles, whips, a dunce’s hat, dog bowl, pleather sleep suit, leather and ankle restraints, strap-ons — just your regular mainstream S&M collection.

These whips feature rabbit pelt and horsehair.

Leather and latex abound.

But then one finds oneself on page three, among the proctoscopes (which are inserted into the rectum), urethral ditl sounds (to increase the diameter of the urethra), ball crushers (exactly what you would expect), speculums, ball weights, electrical shock wands and mattress protectors — and the prospective purveyor realises they’re not in Kansas any more.

There is a mind-boggling array of surgical instruments up for grabs.

Initially Confidential reached for the old contact book to call a few members of Sydney’s esteemed upper-class society whose sexual appetites are rumoured to run to such things, to see if they were having a clean-out of their basement.

But then we discovered the owner of the property is Darlinghurst’s Temple 22, which describes itself as a “leading BDSM” (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) location.

Confidential isn’t even sure what these items are.

At least it was, until the brothel shut up shop in February, prompting the fire sale.

Some of the items look to have seen better days — the dunce’s hat for one — but with the bidding on the timber stock at just $120 yesterday, there are some great bargains to be had.

If that kind of thing floats your boat.