Farewell family home

Remembering the little charms of the suburbs

A sentimental moment - last time staying at the OG family house before its rented out. Farewell to that antenna too.

Those two weeks in Sydney were a warm holiday. I didn’t even need the rose-tinted glasses, the sun provided. I opened up more to my younger neice and nephew, we decided we could all be silly gooses together. We let those hours run loose, to blur into different little games, conversations, excited playful nonsense. Four year-old E and I were showing off tricks on the trampoline like boys. Three year-old H interjected to show off a sassy dance that she challenged us to copy.

I remember a drive and an unofficial hike to a waterfall oasis hidden deep in Macquarie Pass. Runs, cafes, a walk with Mum on the beach, talks, wine and movies with my sister and brother-in-law. No real committments except for cooking Christmas lunch.

But some of the best moments were sitting on the backyard deck with a book, all manner of greenery in view, freshly misted repellant left a smell. The birds come to peruse and play. Sometimes a land animal slinks around the corner: one of our cats. He stalks casually and disappears into the brush under the frangipani tree that used to drop its flowers into the pool before we filled it over and covered everything with grass.

I used to deride the suburbs, how sparse they are, how disconnected everyone seems and feeling like a vagabond when they look out their car window at you if you walk anywhere. Those cars that are always parked on the front lawn, multiple per house. But there is emotional density here in the family units. Hopes and dreams, gatherings, journeys outward, coming home, grief, and my favorite; sharing food together.

Of course it’s privelege to have a little space. I knew it but wasn’t mature enough to acknowledge it. I was wrong to focus on the modest elements - this far flung suburb, the six-lane main road whose traffic I somehow got used to at night.

This was the home of not sleeping because I was overflowing with boundless optimism about what would happen next with high school crushes. Jumping the fence for basketball and tennis in the school grounds across the road, Super Smash Brothers with a neighbourhood friend, first times going out to clubs in an electric phase of Sydney’s music scene. Walking home alone from the train station late at night, seeing the city lights shimmer from the top of the hill. It was the gathering point when we lost someone. The point of departure for many journeys, and the place to return to.

‘That’s it!’ my brother in law rose slowly and switched off the TV. The end credits of that cracked rollercoaster of a film Good Time (Safdie brothers, 2017) had still been rolling, backed by Oneohtrix Point Never’s synth-y melancholy ‘The Pure and the Damned’.

That was it. The lingering elation of that incredible film vanished and things felt heavy. We walked out of the lounge room that had been the site of many such movie nights, and decades ago, the site of many sleepover parties and Nintendo 64 marathons with still-dear childhood friends.

E and H will go on to form their own memories in a new house, their own school friends, sleepovers, games they’ll make up. Whatever they consider good or bad they’ll get swept up in it and come to miss it all. Goodbye 251, thanks for sheltering and nurturing us.