I don’t know how the nomads did it. The
regular uproot of livelihood, the transitional home. I’m not a mover, I tend to
lay down roots quick and let them grow deep, until the worms fester and I’m as
much a part of the ecosystem as the house I’m living in. It wasn’t always this
way – growing up, we moved around a lot. My Dad at the time had a game show
that travelled Europe, so my Mum, my sister and I, and later my baby brother,
would be whisked around from set to set, from Spain to Holland to Italy,
clambering over props and sitting in a studio audience. Our home base at the
time was a big, retired farm house in a little village in England called
Ravensden, and as my sister and I both started school, it became more a
permanent placement. My Dad would start travelling on his own, and we’d follow
only in the breaks between school terms.
House Ravensden became a total playground for
my sister and I. An acre wide, with a wall of cows surrounding us, we’d make
forts in the front yard out of old sheets and explore the abandoned apple
orchard in the neighbour’s property by clambering through the untamed
blackberry bush that existed in lieu of a fence. We’d play Xena with sticks for
swords and a Frisbee as her chakram. We had rabbits at the time too, that we’d
let escape and play chase with. I have intensely fond memories of the house,
even though I know it was far from perfect. It was understood to be haunted by
old witches by a lot of the villagers, and had a pretty bad spider problem. The
driveway was long and rambling, and our old dog, an Irish wolfhound named
Callan, would limp up and down it and scare all the mailmen off by sheer size
alone.
When I was eleven though, we moved back to
Australia, back to Brisbane, sacrificing easy travel for the stifling heat of a
continent separated by state instead of country, by dialect instead of
language. We moved to a sweet old suburban house with a swimming pool and a
conservatory, and our rabbits, who’d been left with friends, were swapped for a
bitter blue tongue lizard and an aviary full of tiny, buzzing finches. Jalanga Street wasn’t Ravensden, but it was
special in its own way. It was a home defined by proximity to family, by
highschool and by birthplace.
A year and a half ago, timed with my parents
separation, I moved out of home with my best friend, Emma, into a dinky little
house on Brenda Street. Brenda Street is a funny place, a street full of quirk,
but the house itself is shambolic, built by Emma’s grandfather who was never a
builder. It’s patchwork, complete with grey walls and pink and purple lino,
mould on the ceilings and an odd, concrete attachment as a laundry. We live on
top of each other, with two cats that love to destroy furniture, carpet and
flyscreens, which has added to the demise of the property.
About six months ago, we decided a move was
basically overdue. Like I said, I’m not the best mover, but I was keen for
this, excited, and spent hours talking about the home that I was going to have
a say in, be able to choose. I had an image in my head of my new kitchen,
bedroom, layout. A small, manageable yard, a warm interior that would be filled
with the odds and ends I’d collected throughout my life, from Kuzco the
African-inspired Giraffe statue to my ridiculous collection of teapots and geisha
inspired tea tins. Of course, this isn’t a reality in house hunting. Dream boating
quickly became guess the murder that happened in the rental. My housemate and I
work on a shoestring budget as is, but it meant having to up our stakes in a
competitive market. It was hard, and the thought of ending up somewhere that
was awful terrified me. There was a light though, and my dreamboat proved a
reality with a house at Martha Street. Spacious, sweet and old, I fell in love
with the thing, and an application later it was ours.
The last two weeks have been a fun time for
Emma and I. We’ve been packing boxes giddily, clearing out old linen and
generally being excited for our new home. Of course, our slow packing meant
that we ran out of time, and the move went from a calm, ordered thing to a mad
panic, wondering why the fuck I have so many books and culminating in me
throwing shoes in cooler bags and hoping they’d survive the trip.
We did the full move last night, and I’m
writing this with stupid, aching arms and shoulders from hauling furniture and
boxes, and I’m oddly nostalgic for Brenda Street, like the house wasn’t out to
get us. It’s like suddenly all the things that used to make me grimace or groan
are things I can laugh about. Like the time our neighbour cornered me when I was
more than a little inebriated to give me a twenty-minute history of the mower
owned by the man across the road from us, or the million times I got locked out
because the house has too many security doors or the unstoppable colonies of
ants that occupy every nook and cranny, to the point where I opened my Chupa
Chup limited edition pop art jar (shut up, it’s cool) to have a settlement of
the fuckers swarm out and up my arm.
I’m sure I’ll grow irks and groans about
Martha Street too (apparently I’m destined to live on streets named after
elderly women), but right now I just want to lie on the grass in the modest
back yard and become a part of the land, and maybe I would, if there weren’t so
many bindies.
