“I found myself with my entire team being interrogated by the Russians, asking why the hell there were 30 Australians in Crimea during a takeover,” recalls Surawski.

He’s happy now to talk about what, usually, is a pretty secretive job.

“Most of these jobs, you’d have your hand cut off if you got caught with a camera in there, never mind anything else,” he says. “A lot of your clients don’t need publicity, or want it. You just do the job.

“But I sit back after all these years, and I’ve been working with these decorative artists and nobody knows they’re out there. I see all the publicity for fine artists or their stories all day every day everywhere and I think, ‘Oh my god, [my colleagues’] work is not recognised’. People don’t even know there’s an industry for what we do.

“We’ve gone up against Italian and French teams and done the project, and nobody would know that. Everyone [who sees the finished home] thinks it’s European fine masters, not a little old Australian.”

Much of his work is now focused on the Gold Coast, but his past client list also includes Tunku Kamariah, the eldest daughter of the king of Johor in Malaysia, the king of Bahrain, and... Clive Palmer.

“He definitely knows what he wants,” says Surawski of Palmer. “He comes in, he’s no bullshit, he races through the house, bang-bang-bang, gotta go. He tells me his vision, I show him what he says.”

Sometimes, says Surawski, Palmer will come up with a “what the?” idea. But “our clients are the sort of people that know what they want, and have pretty strong views on it,” he says. “They’ll fly in on a helicopter, say, ‘I want this, this, this’, and quite frankly they are the sort of people you don’t say no to.”

If he’s asked for a huge rock grotto around the swimming pool, he doesn’t tell the client it’s impossible, he works out a way to make one (his early days working at Warner Bros Movie World theme park helps).

Often, too, the architecture of the building will tell him what is needed to fill it: a contemporary feel, or Moroccan style, or full-on Versailles Baroque where everything is plated in gold and there are bespoke artworks on the ceiling of the gym. At this level, it’s never minimalist, he notes. “They’re not into minimalism.”

“It’s gone from me being a little oil painter to now... the whole house is my canvas.”

Loading

But just occasionally, he does wonder what it’s like to live there. One of his current clients, “we had to force them to have a kitchen – they don’t cook”.

Another client who had “the grandest house you’d ever seen” would spend most of the day out the back chatting to people.

“When you’re in the palaces you do sometimes wonder,” he chuckles. “You go to the fridge and it’s a 200-metre walk.”

A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.