Voices in the front yard alerted us to the arrivees. My heart quickened. I checked that the feature wall was intact, rearranged the papers on the table and headed for the front door.
There were two broad inquisitive faces on the second step of the front porch. Both were blonde, one much younger than the other and both sporting broad smiles displaying Sunday teeth and hungry eyes. At the same time male voices boomed from the driveway, then from under the house. It was a pincer attack. The women were at the front door, the men circling around to take us unexpectedly from the back.
I had a moment of resentment. How dare they presume to go under the house without my permission or me as an escort. The comments of an older voice were sharply critical, fault finding. He was already building his armoury of negotiating points.
He’d found the front stump which stood unattached to the house. He observed that the driveway, with its concrete strips leading down from the front gate, kinked at the last moment before it found its way under the house. There were concrete gaps beside the concrete stumps. Gaps never repaired after the old timber stumps had been replaced. I hadn’t yet sighted him, but already I didn’t like him.
The hungry eyes and smiles full of teeth stepped towards the sun room reaching out hands as if they were old friends. I extended my hand, clasped theirs, one then the other, and smiled with my mouth. Behind my eyes, wariness whispered stories to me of caution - beware of blustering blondes.
I was acutely aware of the fact that the last time, to my knowledge, that the timber veneer walls of the room had been French polished was in the mid sixties by Uncle Phil, who was not my uncle, but a relative of my fathers and as I recall not his uncle either. The smell of linseed oil and a fog of toxic fumes leapfrogged over more relevant thoughts into the front of my consciousness. Luckily the fumes had dissipated after forty odd years.
The louvres, which had a habit of rasping and sticking at the half open stage, had been preset to avoid the need to demonstrate their finer points. The sun streamed into this aptly named room and I began to relax.
Joyce, the older blonde, had eyes like a hawk and the nose of a spaniel. Everything visible and invisible was captured on her radar. Yes, the two fat, flame shaped chandeliers were indeed original, and yes the plaster wall had been recently repaired. I breathed a sigh of relief as all six bulbs came to life as she flicked the light switch at each end of the room – testing testing testing!
The lounge room looked good. The recently added wooden blinds framed the old casement windows nicely and the room, which had a north-easterly aspect, felt clear and light and cool. The afternoon sea breeze had kicked in, having arrived after its journey from Moreton Bay, up the river, and then slipping over and around the gentle hills of Murarrie and Cannon Hill. The atmosphere was thawing.
I began to shift my attention back to the task at hand. Get a sale. Get a good price. Split the money with my brother. Retire early.
Motivation returned. The younger woman, the daughter, Jackie, was the prospective buyer. She was married to one of the male invaders. He was lurking below us somewhere, but in some convoluted way she was intending to invest independently in, extend, and live in a cottage very similar to this. Perhaps even this very one. Her husband, ‘invader the younger’s’ story remained a mystery.
I was tempted to share the image of my mother on her knees waxing the floorboards each week by hand, her skirt tucked high into her large nylon undies, showing off her jelly thighs, but decided to relegate that story to the vault with Uncle Phil.
Today the floor gleamed, all thanks to a coat of two part epoxy, a bucket of water and a dash of methylated spirits. My mother would be turning in her grave. Twenty years on her hands and knees polishing, followed by twenty years of carpet to avoid polishing and now we’d gone and ripped up the carpet and returned to the beginning – minus the wax.
The male war party was now at the bottom of the back stairs engrossed in talk of structures, bearers, beams and concrete cancer. They’d discovered the concrete stump which had chosen this year to start to pop and fart.
We’d begun to win the war upstairs but we hadn’t even begun the battle below.
Monday, 22 June 2009
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Moffat Beach photos
Moffat headland
Sunset over moffat Beach -Young Endeavour sailing north
Moon over Moffat
Creek meets moon
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Caloundra long weekend
Just had a four day break at Maleny and Caloundra with our friends the Wards. Saw Neil Murray (My Island Home/Warumpi Band) at Finbars in Maleny. Great venue - intimate friendly great pizzas. Mooched around maleny and district on Friday.
Spent Sat Sun Mon at the beach, with a short half day foray to Mapleton and the pub where Andrea spent an excruciating few adolescent years in the 60s.
The Wards are from the deep south so this was new territory for Ian in particular.
The water was great. Love winter water. So calm and clear - and everyone assumes its cold so I have the ocean to myself. Bliss.
That Ordinary House 11 Dawn
One o’clock came and went. The street was empty. The sun beamed down its February rays from a clear sky. Neighbourhood motor mowers sputtered and roared in the distance. The giant eucalypt stood silently in the backyard waiting for an unsuspecting victim to stand too ong under one of its over-extended branches. No breeze. No voices. No visitors.
Tired of guarding the front louvres, my brother joined me in the kitchen. We stood surrounded by ghosts.
The neighbourhood was changing. On the surface things gave the appearance of being the same. Only one of the neighbours bordering this sixteen perch block remained. As if to reward my patience Mrs Balcock made an appearance at her rotary clothesline. I had an urge to make my way to the back fence to resume a twenty year long conversation between she and my mother, but I hadn’t spoken to her in thirty-five years and the once bare fence was now overgrown with creepers and wild undergrowth. What once had been a connecting point between neighbours had become a barrier.
She looked the same and I could hear her strange nasally voice repeating familiar phrases in my head. And then she disappeared.
The Hebleys and the Bubblers had gone. As had my beloved Dawn, the blonde girl of my childhood dreams. Dawn, my siren. Dawn who had seduced me at the age of five with a game of ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ in her mother’s bed one night during a sleepover while my parents went to a wedding.
That was my one and only sleepover. But it had worked its magic. Perhaps my parents saw something different in my preschool eyes the next morning and knew that I was hooked. For it was then I suspect that they put in place a subtle management plan for I rarely ever ventured over that side fence again -though I hurdled the back fence to wrestle with the Balcock boys every day for the next decade.
Dawn, my blonde siren, representing all women, had me mesmerised. My sexual orientation was defined. My secret ten year infatuation had begun.
From time to time I would find an excuse to play with her in her backyard. Occasionally on a lay day in our backyard test series cricket there she’d be bouncing a tennis ball off the side of the house nearest ours, clapping once, twice, three, times and so on between each throw and catch; her bouncing pony tail flicking and challenging me to match her skill.
Invisibly, silently, I’d climb the fence and join in. Words were not necessary. The mere sharing of a concrete path and a mouldy tennis ball satisfied my longing.
Of course eventually my brother or the Balcock boys would emerge calling for me to come and play. Sometimes, hidden from their view, I would guiltily choose Dawn ahead of the bike ride and momentarily be overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and then one of immense pleasure at the audacity of my choice.
It was the beginning of my fascination with women. Still fifty years later I reluctantly admit that no game of cricket, no bike ride, no wrestling match has ever quite measured up to that game of catch and clap.
Dawn was older by eighteen months and as time passed she showed no interest in my puppy love, no acknowledgement of our almost consummated night as five and six year olds. She was always a step ahead. Just out of reach.
She grew to be a tall blonde beauty who fell pregnant (much to the shock of the neighbourhood) at the age of seventeen and disappeared from my world. Sadly I knew that, deep down, my love for her could have saved her from teenage parenthood. My love, while carnal, was ultimately of a much higher order.
Abruptly my brother interrupted my dream. ‘Someone’s here’ he said.
The invaders had arrived.
Tired of guarding the front louvres, my brother joined me in the kitchen. We stood surrounded by ghosts.
The neighbourhood was changing. On the surface things gave the appearance of being the same. Only one of the neighbours bordering this sixteen perch block remained. As if to reward my patience Mrs Balcock made an appearance at her rotary clothesline. I had an urge to make my way to the back fence to resume a twenty year long conversation between she and my mother, but I hadn’t spoken to her in thirty-five years and the once bare fence was now overgrown with creepers and wild undergrowth. What once had been a connecting point between neighbours had become a barrier.
She looked the same and I could hear her strange nasally voice repeating familiar phrases in my head. And then she disappeared.
The Hebleys and the Bubblers had gone. As had my beloved Dawn, the blonde girl of my childhood dreams. Dawn, my siren. Dawn who had seduced me at the age of five with a game of ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ in her mother’s bed one night during a sleepover while my parents went to a wedding.
That was my one and only sleepover. But it had worked its magic. Perhaps my parents saw something different in my preschool eyes the next morning and knew that I was hooked. For it was then I suspect that they put in place a subtle management plan for I rarely ever ventured over that side fence again -though I hurdled the back fence to wrestle with the Balcock boys every day for the next decade.
Dawn, my blonde siren, representing all women, had me mesmerised. My sexual orientation was defined. My secret ten year infatuation had begun.
From time to time I would find an excuse to play with her in her backyard. Occasionally on a lay day in our backyard test series cricket there she’d be bouncing a tennis ball off the side of the house nearest ours, clapping once, twice, three, times and so on between each throw and catch; her bouncing pony tail flicking and challenging me to match her skill.
Invisibly, silently, I’d climb the fence and join in. Words were not necessary. The mere sharing of a concrete path and a mouldy tennis ball satisfied my longing.
Of course eventually my brother or the Balcock boys would emerge calling for me to come and play. Sometimes, hidden from their view, I would guiltily choose Dawn ahead of the bike ride and momentarily be overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and then one of immense pleasure at the audacity of my choice.
It was the beginning of my fascination with women. Still fifty years later I reluctantly admit that no game of cricket, no bike ride, no wrestling match has ever quite measured up to that game of catch and clap.
Dawn was older by eighteen months and as time passed she showed no interest in my puppy love, no acknowledgement of our almost consummated night as five and six year olds. She was always a step ahead. Just out of reach.
She grew to be a tall blonde beauty who fell pregnant (much to the shock of the neighbourhood) at the age of seventeen and disappeared from my world. Sadly I knew that, deep down, my love for her could have saved her from teenage parenthood. My love, while carnal, was ultimately of a much higher order.
Abruptly my brother interrupted my dream. ‘Someone’s here’ he said.
The invaders had arrived.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
That Ordinary House 10 Open House
After months of research, conversations, phone calls to the public trustee, mail-boxfuls of real estate agents glossy offerings we bit the bullet and made a decision.
We’d sell the house and we’d do it ourselves. Capelin and Capelin Real Estate Rookies - Come see us and if we like you, we might sell the family home to you for a song.
We put a notice in the Courier Mail advertising an open house for the following Sunday (1-3pm). With our extensive experience we chose to ignore the fact that everyone else was having their open days on the Saturday. We’ll have ours on a Sunday we decided. We figured that the market would be less crowded and we’d be able to spend the Saturday doing what we loved – sailing our 14 foot dingy on the Brisbane River at South Brisbane. It was February after all. No point in wasting the best month of the year.
Sunday reminded me of the drives we used to take as a family in the 1960s, when a great afternoon out was driving around the city visiting the Mater Prize Home and staring at brand new houses in suburbs we never knew existed. We were not inconspicuous in Dad’s latest toy, a brand new canary yellow Vdub.
Surely people still did that.
On the Sunday we agreed to meet at 12:00. We needed to put a sign on the fence and check that all the little repair jobs we’d made were still holding together. They were only minor. We weren’t going to try and fleece anyone. We didn’t want to be real real estate agents.
My brother was late. I was nervous. He had the sign, newly printed from his work computer. A3 and wrapped in a storm proof plastic sleeve. Inside in the kitchen I’d blutacked some information about the house to the feature wall – the flimsy masonite wall behind which lurked the bedroom my brother and I had shared for sixteen years. This wall had always elicited the liveliest debate between my parents when kitchen repainting time came around. Unfortunately my mother always won and had a terrible sense of colour. Today one of her worst design decisions stared at me and challenged my imagination as to how I was going to put a positive ‘real estate’ spin on a tiny cream kitchen with a dozen out of proportion orange door knobs which screamed HELLLLP! LOOK AT ME! ‘Original condition’, ‘renovate to your tast’ were the best I would be able to do.
Today the wall featured a display of maps and property details, recent sales in the area and a description of the house inviting offers around the $400 000 mark.
I’d opened all the blinds and windows. Light flooded into the living room where the Grundig stereo and minimalist record collection had held pride of place for twenty years. My parents had reaped the benefits of the post-war economic boom in terms of full employment and rising living conditions but they still lived as if they were in the thirties. There were no frivolous purchases in that house. The record collection was a symbol of that. It was all of ten records. About one purchase every two years. The Beatles and Tijuana Brass sat beside Paul Robertson and blues singer Juanita Hall, a little known but original Bloody Mary character from the musical South Pacific. My father’s fascination with ‘Bloody Mary” totally flummoxed me. What he saw in this raging version of Gimme A Pig Foot which he played at every opportunity I could never understand.
Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beerSend me a gate I don't carefeel just like I wanna clownGive the piano player a drinkBecause he's bringing me downHe's got rhythm yeah, when he stomps his feet.
Despite my father’s love of opera and southern American 1930s blues he never owned more than one record in any genre.
Back in the kitchen I tried to relax. I became acutely aware of how small this room was. I could almost stretch out my arms and span the room from wall to wall in either direction. Apart from the orange orbs staring at me it was original. Every element was in the identical position they had been in 1949 when my parents moved in. The fridge, the predecessor of which was an ice chest, was tucked into a tiny space between the sink (original single stainless steel model) and the pantry.
The pantry I assessed, had been made by my father, judging by the old unpainted unsealed tongue and groove off cuts which constituted the flooring of each shelf. The latches were intact – cute sprung devices which clasped and unclasped the mechanism behind the door on pressing the metal button. The pantry was located in a tiny alcove which also housed the stand alone gas cooker and stove. This housed a relatively new appliance, being a late 1960s replacement for the wonderful cream enamel Kooka stove which would be an heirloom if it had survived.
Somehow we had eaten meals every night for over twenty years in this tiny room on this tiny table while mum had dished up Sunday roasts and a moderate range of traditional English meals. Sausage casserole being one of my favourites but which, with its sickly pale casseroled sausages, was true to my mother’s preference for practical over aesthetic. Later, the 3m by 3m room had accommodated families and grandchildren totalling up to 11 people. On those nights we ate in shifts.
My father’s Italian heritage combined with the austerity of the thirties was also a feature of this room. The sight of the snout of a pig’s head poking above the rim of a giant cooking pot was not uncommon and the ensuing stripping of the meat and the savouring of the delicacies which I rarely tried but which my father swore were food from heaven (tongue, cheek, eye) was part of the ritual. The stink was overwhelming, and for dad intoxicating, and the resulting brawn his favourite meat. He never ventured down the path of cured meats which his father, the failed farmer but brilliant smallgoods man, was renowned for. We had so smoking room, no curing room for fat Italian salamis. Sad how quickly these crafts get lost.
So there I was in the kitchen. My brother had secured the sign to the front fence and, with me dreaming at the back of the house, him keeping guard in the front sunroom, peering through the half opened louvres in a pose reminiscent of my mother, we waited.
We hadn’t baked a cake nor taken to baking a loaf of bread in the oven. We were going for the real homespun feel. No frills.
We’d sell the house and we’d do it ourselves. Capelin and Capelin Real Estate Rookies - Come see us and if we like you, we might sell the family home to you for a song.
We put a notice in the Courier Mail advertising an open house for the following Sunday (1-3pm). With our extensive experience we chose to ignore the fact that everyone else was having their open days on the Saturday. We’ll have ours on a Sunday we decided. We figured that the market would be less crowded and we’d be able to spend the Saturday doing what we loved – sailing our 14 foot dingy on the Brisbane River at South Brisbane. It was February after all. No point in wasting the best month of the year.
Sunday reminded me of the drives we used to take as a family in the 1960s, when a great afternoon out was driving around the city visiting the Mater Prize Home and staring at brand new houses in suburbs we never knew existed. We were not inconspicuous in Dad’s latest toy, a brand new canary yellow Vdub.
Surely people still did that.
On the Sunday we agreed to meet at 12:00. We needed to put a sign on the fence and check that all the little repair jobs we’d made were still holding together. They were only minor. We weren’t going to try and fleece anyone. We didn’t want to be real real estate agents.
My brother was late. I was nervous. He had the sign, newly printed from his work computer. A3 and wrapped in a storm proof plastic sleeve. Inside in the kitchen I’d blutacked some information about the house to the feature wall – the flimsy masonite wall behind which lurked the bedroom my brother and I had shared for sixteen years. This wall had always elicited the liveliest debate between my parents when kitchen repainting time came around. Unfortunately my mother always won and had a terrible sense of colour. Today one of her worst design decisions stared at me and challenged my imagination as to how I was going to put a positive ‘real estate’ spin on a tiny cream kitchen with a dozen out of proportion orange door knobs which screamed HELLLLP! LOOK AT ME! ‘Original condition’, ‘renovate to your tast’ were the best I would be able to do.
Today the wall featured a display of maps and property details, recent sales in the area and a description of the house inviting offers around the $400 000 mark.
I’d opened all the blinds and windows. Light flooded into the living room where the Grundig stereo and minimalist record collection had held pride of place for twenty years. My parents had reaped the benefits of the post-war economic boom in terms of full employment and rising living conditions but they still lived as if they were in the thirties. There were no frivolous purchases in that house. The record collection was a symbol of that. It was all of ten records. About one purchase every two years. The Beatles and Tijuana Brass sat beside Paul Robertson and blues singer Juanita Hall, a little known but original Bloody Mary character from the musical South Pacific. My father’s fascination with ‘Bloody Mary” totally flummoxed me. What he saw in this raging version of Gimme A Pig Foot which he played at every opportunity I could never understand.
Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beerSend me a gate I don't carefeel just like I wanna clownGive the piano player a drinkBecause he's bringing me downHe's got rhythm yeah, when he stomps his feet.
Despite my father’s love of opera and southern American 1930s blues he never owned more than one record in any genre.
Back in the kitchen I tried to relax. I became acutely aware of how small this room was. I could almost stretch out my arms and span the room from wall to wall in either direction. Apart from the orange orbs staring at me it was original. Every element was in the identical position they had been in 1949 when my parents moved in. The fridge, the predecessor of which was an ice chest, was tucked into a tiny space between the sink (original single stainless steel model) and the pantry.
The pantry I assessed, had been made by my father, judging by the old unpainted unsealed tongue and groove off cuts which constituted the flooring of each shelf. The latches were intact – cute sprung devices which clasped and unclasped the mechanism behind the door on pressing the metal button. The pantry was located in a tiny alcove which also housed the stand alone gas cooker and stove. This housed a relatively new appliance, being a late 1960s replacement for the wonderful cream enamel Kooka stove which would be an heirloom if it had survived.
Somehow we had eaten meals every night for over twenty years in this tiny room on this tiny table while mum had dished up Sunday roasts and a moderate range of traditional English meals. Sausage casserole being one of my favourites but which, with its sickly pale casseroled sausages, was true to my mother’s preference for practical over aesthetic. Later, the 3m by 3m room had accommodated families and grandchildren totalling up to 11 people. On those nights we ate in shifts.
My father’s Italian heritage combined with the austerity of the thirties was also a feature of this room. The sight of the snout of a pig’s head poking above the rim of a giant cooking pot was not uncommon and the ensuing stripping of the meat and the savouring of the delicacies which I rarely tried but which my father swore were food from heaven (tongue, cheek, eye) was part of the ritual. The stink was overwhelming, and for dad intoxicating, and the resulting brawn his favourite meat. He never ventured down the path of cured meats which his father, the failed farmer but brilliant smallgoods man, was renowned for. We had so smoking room, no curing room for fat Italian salamis. Sad how quickly these crafts get lost.
So there I was in the kitchen. My brother had secured the sign to the front fence and, with me dreaming at the back of the house, him keeping guard in the front sunroom, peering through the half opened louvres in a pose reminiscent of my mother, we waited.
We hadn’t baked a cake nor taken to baking a loaf of bread in the oven. We were going for the real homespun feel. No frills.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
ABC Radio - The Family Home
I had my one minute of fame on the ABC Radio 'Life Matters" program yesterday. And I blew it.
It's a very strange experience being the last in a queue of callers talking to a radio host you've never met. There's no time to warm up. And therin lay my downfall. I expected a conversation but what I now realise is that I needed my story ready to roll and it needed to be short and punchy. I can do that in a live studio setting but over the phone! Ah well. that's why I have a blog.
The other reason my minute of fame was cut to 30 seconds is that I was on another track. Richard Aedy and the other guests were focusing on the nostalgia and deep connections with family homes and I said to Richard something to the effect that I'd moved on and that the memories were more important that the house. Once it was empty and the 'life' no longer present it was just a shell. More of a trigger for memories. Which is what the "Ordinary House" stories are about.
Then as I was swimming my 20 laps in the local heated pool this morning it occurred to me that I have a stronger association to my father's family home at Wardell on the Richmond River in Northern NSW. Strange I thought. Why would that be?
On reflection I figured that this is where the nostalgia lies. Even though I only ever visited that house a few times as a young child and never even stayed overnight it's the place that holds the story, the big story of my past. Or more acurately the story of my father's family's Italian heritage. The New Italy story of an ill fated voyage and a villanous French Marquis who fleeced the gullible Italian peasants of their life savings with a promise of paradise and a reality of a tropical nightmare in New Ireland (New Guinea) . The story told and researched and retold over many years has an iconic place in the Capelin family. (see previous blog - Frenchman's Beach poem )
That house at Wardell, which was sold in 1965, over forty years ago, still draws me back. I take the detour and drive by every time I'm in that part of the world. There are relatives scattered throughout the area; there are cane fields which were the scene of my fathers youth and it's beautiful country. (see previous stories - Journey 1-16)
It's much easier to feel conections to that rich story than to a war service home in a singularly unattractive suburb in Brisbane's eastern suburbs. Which is not to deny the significance of that house in my life. Fifty seven years as the family home is a long time.
Which is why my stories are about the ordinary. There is beauty in the ordinary and that is something I value strongly. The ordinary sometimes carries stories and details which are every bit as rich and life affirming as any grand narrative associated with BIG stories.
Who knows, perhaps the Moolabar Street house will have the same resonance for my children when they reach my age.
It's a very strange experience being the last in a queue of callers talking to a radio host you've never met. There's no time to warm up. And therin lay my downfall. I expected a conversation but what I now realise is that I needed my story ready to roll and it needed to be short and punchy. I can do that in a live studio setting but over the phone! Ah well. that's why I have a blog.
The other reason my minute of fame was cut to 30 seconds is that I was on another track. Richard Aedy and the other guests were focusing on the nostalgia and deep connections with family homes and I said to Richard something to the effect that I'd moved on and that the memories were more important that the house. Once it was empty and the 'life' no longer present it was just a shell. More of a trigger for memories. Which is what the "Ordinary House" stories are about.
Then as I was swimming my 20 laps in the local heated pool this morning it occurred to me that I have a stronger association to my father's family home at Wardell on the Richmond River in Northern NSW. Strange I thought. Why would that be?
On reflection I figured that this is where the nostalgia lies. Even though I only ever visited that house a few times as a young child and never even stayed overnight it's the place that holds the story, the big story of my past. Or more acurately the story of my father's family's Italian heritage. The New Italy story of an ill fated voyage and a villanous French Marquis who fleeced the gullible Italian peasants of their life savings with a promise of paradise and a reality of a tropical nightmare in New Ireland (New Guinea) . The story told and researched and retold over many years has an iconic place in the Capelin family. (see previous blog - Frenchman's Beach poem )
That house at Wardell, which was sold in 1965, over forty years ago, still draws me back. I take the detour and drive by every time I'm in that part of the world. There are relatives scattered throughout the area; there are cane fields which were the scene of my fathers youth and it's beautiful country. (see previous stories - Journey 1-16)
It's much easier to feel conections to that rich story than to a war service home in a singularly unattractive suburb in Brisbane's eastern suburbs. Which is not to deny the significance of that house in my life. Fifty seven years as the family home is a long time.
Which is why my stories are about the ordinary. There is beauty in the ordinary and that is something I value strongly. The ordinary sometimes carries stories and details which are every bit as rich and life affirming as any grand narrative associated with BIG stories.
Who knows, perhaps the Moolabar Street house will have the same resonance for my children when they reach my age.
Sunday, 3 May 2009
That Ordinary House 9 Onions
Onions. The classic layered metaphor. On the outside the brown skin protects, flakes, peels, layer by layer the flesh falling away to reveal another and then another skin, working towards the centre until finally revealing, not a Chinese fortune message or a pearl but a void.
This house was like that. It was my home for over twenty years but there was a strange feeling of disassociation. The physical structure was as familiar as my own onion peel skin and triggered stories from the past but it had no value in itself. My parents had lived here for over fifty years and yet all that seemed to be left were memories. The spirits had fled. They existed only in my head.
My parents lived with very simple expectations. There was an austerity to their lives. They were working class, uncomplicated people with little ambition for worldly possessions or status. One was the daughter of a Sydney public servant, the other the son of an Italian immigrant fruit and vegetable merchant and failed farmer. They were content. Content with what they had, which in turn was all they needed.
Except. Except for my father’s love affair with driving and cars. And the occasional investment in something which, in retrospect seems odd, but which, at the time was about making life even more secure and content.
They decided to wrap this lovely little post war weather board cottage in aluminium.
As a sailor I myself have a fascination with this metal. A metal which is the most abundant in the earth’s crust. When in its industrialised form it is lighter than timber, impervious to weather, rust, water and decay. And it shines. It’s a magic product. Could it be related to uranium with a half life of thousands of years? Archaeologists in post apocryphal millenniums digging in coastal regions will unearth forests of aluminium masts, intact fishing tinnies and miles of salt resistant balustrading. And my parent’s house.
It could have been a wonderful experiment. Behold this shimmering vision in sensible brushed silver. Such a house would have made the family name notorious in Morningside circles. It would have been a brave statement about the glory of extruded metals and the place of the reflective war service cottage in the annals of architecture. My life would have become unbearably public as the son of this oversized silver cigarette box. Only in my confident middle years and in my eccentric dotage would I have reaped the rewards of this event. Infamy would have been my glorious inheritance and my father’s contribution to the world.
Sadly my father missed this opportunity and chose cream over silver. At that time aluminium cladding came in at least four colours – grey, blue, brick red and cream and was guaranteed for a lifetime. My father, who was committed to DIY projects, single handedly mixed and poured the concrete which created the mismatched patchwork under the house on which we chalked our hand tennis courts and was also the house painter.
Every five years he would spend his precious four weeks annual leave balancing and bouncing on five metre long timber planks stretched between cast iron trestles stalking the sides of the stilted house. This was all before power tools. Sanding a house was a manual task. I can still see him in his army shorts and navy singlet, a long cleaning rag hanging from his waist and on his head his trusty slouch hat – a remnant of the war.
After twenty years of painting he had succumbed to the door to door sales pitch of the man from Alcan. The idea of never having to paint the house again overwhelmed his better judgement.
Now twenty years later (as per the guarantee) this dusty cream aluminium mock weatherboard house sat defying time and the elements. The temptation to remove the wraps and expose the original weatherboards was tempting but my brother and I resisted. At one point we considered the price of aluminium on the stock market and dreamed of the wealth we might acquire by trading in this layer of the inheritance as scrap metal. But as with many of our good ideas it was discarded as impractical and ultimately a waste of time.
This house was like that. It was my home for over twenty years but there was a strange feeling of disassociation. The physical structure was as familiar as my own onion peel skin and triggered stories from the past but it had no value in itself. My parents had lived here for over fifty years and yet all that seemed to be left were memories. The spirits had fled. They existed only in my head.
My parents lived with very simple expectations. There was an austerity to their lives. They were working class, uncomplicated people with little ambition for worldly possessions or status. One was the daughter of a Sydney public servant, the other the son of an Italian immigrant fruit and vegetable merchant and failed farmer. They were content. Content with what they had, which in turn was all they needed.
Except. Except for my father’s love affair with driving and cars. And the occasional investment in something which, in retrospect seems odd, but which, at the time was about making life even more secure and content.
They decided to wrap this lovely little post war weather board cottage in aluminium.
As a sailor I myself have a fascination with this metal. A metal which is the most abundant in the earth’s crust. When in its industrialised form it is lighter than timber, impervious to weather, rust, water and decay. And it shines. It’s a magic product. Could it be related to uranium with a half life of thousands of years? Archaeologists in post apocryphal millenniums digging in coastal regions will unearth forests of aluminium masts, intact fishing tinnies and miles of salt resistant balustrading. And my parent’s house.
It could have been a wonderful experiment. Behold this shimmering vision in sensible brushed silver. Such a house would have made the family name notorious in Morningside circles. It would have been a brave statement about the glory of extruded metals and the place of the reflective war service cottage in the annals of architecture. My life would have become unbearably public as the son of this oversized silver cigarette box. Only in my confident middle years and in my eccentric dotage would I have reaped the rewards of this event. Infamy would have been my glorious inheritance and my father’s contribution to the world.
Sadly my father missed this opportunity and chose cream over silver. At that time aluminium cladding came in at least four colours – grey, blue, brick red and cream and was guaranteed for a lifetime. My father, who was committed to DIY projects, single handedly mixed and poured the concrete which created the mismatched patchwork under the house on which we chalked our hand tennis courts and was also the house painter.
Every five years he would spend his precious four weeks annual leave balancing and bouncing on five metre long timber planks stretched between cast iron trestles stalking the sides of the stilted house. This was all before power tools. Sanding a house was a manual task. I can still see him in his army shorts and navy singlet, a long cleaning rag hanging from his waist and on his head his trusty slouch hat – a remnant of the war.
After twenty years of painting he had succumbed to the door to door sales pitch of the man from Alcan. The idea of never having to paint the house again overwhelmed his better judgement.
Now twenty years later (as per the guarantee) this dusty cream aluminium mock weatherboard house sat defying time and the elements. The temptation to remove the wraps and expose the original weatherboards was tempting but my brother and I resisted. At one point we considered the price of aluminium on the stock market and dreamed of the wealth we might acquire by trading in this layer of the inheritance as scrap metal. But as with many of our good ideas it was discarded as impractical and ultimately a waste of time.
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