On the Move - again!
Moving - a common theme in my life, as the great Australian dream of a home of one’s own drifts further out of reach for many, and rentals become less secure than ever before.
My mum tells me we lived in more than twenty houses before I was three. This may be an exaggeration but I do know I’ve lived in many houses. The longest I’ve spent under the same roof is five years. So when the real estate agent of our rental tells me the owner wants to sell, I go into panic mode. Moving is a trigger. This feeling of not being secure, according to my psychologist, is a pattern I am so used to it is also strangely safe. Counterintuitive right?
Mum and Dad married in 1970. To please Dad’s parents who didn’t want them living in sin. They were young, eighteen and twenty one. Perhaps forcing them to marry had the opposite effect because they chose a less conservative path and became part of the alternative counter culture experimenting with new ways to live. Sharing houses with others, travelling a lot. Not settling for the picket fence.
There are photos of the various houses in my childhood. The one with Floppy the goat in the Adelaide Hills. Kempsey when I was two. Back in Adelaide in Thebarton when I was three. Then mum and dad broke up. Mum packed the old EJ Holden and we took off to Bellingen in the Northern Rivers. My trike balanced precariously on top. With mum being a single mum on the pension, money was tight, so we shared houses with other single mums or mum’s boyfriends. Between houses sometimes it was a caravan. There was one house that was my favourite where I lived with my “other” mother and her kids. The closest thing I had to siblings.
Another favourite house was in Dorrigo when I was eleven. Mum had the restaurant at the front and we lived out the back. A film came to town. The cast and crew would eat at the restaurant. I skipped school to hang out on set and that was where I caught the film bug. Then we moved back to Adelaide. I think there were only four houses during my high school years. Sometimes it’s hard to keep count.
As an adult the moving theme continued. Like many twentysomethings in the nineties, I moved between cities and share houses. From Adelaide to Melbourne and then to Sydney where I lived in an infamous share house in Bondi. After I met my now husband we moved a lot too. Renting used to be fairly straightforward and easy. I’ve always been a good tenant. Paid rent on time. Left the place better than we found it. When the kids were little we tried hard to give them stability and managed to get three long terms rentals in a row. Until a teenager firebombed our house. A targeted act of violence. But that’s a longer story for another time.
Since then we’ve moved five times. The last time only a year ago. We had a fixed term agreement until Feb 2025. But the owner advised he wanted to sell - as vacant possession. Now, I really don’t like being somewhere I’m not wanted. Might be a hangover from being a hippy kid and evicted from a house in Bellingen because my mum was a single mum (back then Bellingen was more religious than alternative).
So I went into frantic mode to find us a new house. I negotiate a deal with the owner to pay our costs. I am true to my Taurean star sign, like a bull at a gate. Nothing will stop me until I make sure we have a roof over our head. I achieve my goal. It’s a nice house, further out than we’ve ever lived before and more than we’ve ever paid before. But at least we have a home for at least the next twelve months.
We spend the next two weeks packing, sorting, cleaning. I am stressed. My whole body feels it. I am anxious. I feel less of a person because I can’t just buy a house and stay. I tell myself not to be so hard on myself. I am doing the best I can. But it lives in the body. This feeling of never really being secure in the homes we rent. Part childhood, part firebomb. I try to self regulate with mindful colouring in, suggested by my psychologist. But renting has changed now too. It feels impersonal with online applications. Thankfully our new real estate agent is local and small. A more personal touch.
I am elbows deep packing a box in the kitchen, mid meltdown, when my husband turns to me and says, “It’s okay babe. We can do this. We’ve done it before. We’re good at it. Let’s just get it done.”
And we do. We get it done.
The new home feels different. More welcoming. It’s hard to pinpoint but it has changed our mood. Perhaps it is the fruit trees in the back yard. The vege garden. The kind real estate agent. The only thing I miss now about our previous home are the neighbours. Especially Lily and Charlie. As we were leaving Lily said to me in her forthright manner, “don’t worry my girl. We have a saying in Croatia, sometimes when you think something is going to be bad it turns out to be better.”
She was right. This is better. Maybe the owner of the old place did us a favour.
So even though we might not have the Great Australian Dream of owning a quarter acre block we are still lucky. We have a home when so many others in the world don’t. Rising rates of homelessness, the situation in Gaza. It’s easy to forget to be grateful.
Donate to help those coming from Gaza to set up a new home here.
By the time I was 30, I’d moved 30 times - what you’ve articulated is so familiar. It saddens and angers me that housing is seen as a commodity in this country instead of the basic human right it really is.
Love this post!