'My Christmas present to everybody'

Australian brightens home, holiday with elaborate lights

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ADELAIDE, Australia (CNN) -- If you felt frustrated trying to untangle your Christmas lights this year, consider what one Australia man goes through to decorate his home.

Each year, tens of thousands of visitors come to see Len Doof's 52,000 blinking, spinning, twinkling lights, all synchronized to Christmas carols. He hand paints about 30,000 of the tiny globes.

It takes more than 10.5 miles (17 km) of cable and wire to hook it all up, along with 23 computers.

Doof, an electrical engineer, says his vision for the high-tech display was ahead of its time.

"I actually had a dream about it a long time ago, and dreamt up the chips to put in the computers to make it work, and you know, that was 20 years ago, before chips were anything other than fish and chips," he said.

Over the past 20 years, the display has gotten bigger and brighter, and Doof says this one -- which he turns on for two hours each night -- is the biggest yet.

He spends long hours on his elaborate display, having started work on the 2000 edition in March, and pays careful attention to all the fine details.

Doof says he goes to such extremes for one reason.

"It's my Christmas present to everybody; it's my Christmas present to myself. And by people coming to see it, that makes me very happy, and I hope I make them very happy," he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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