5. Home is where the heart is

I have lived in many places in my life and I always do my best to settle in and make myself at “home” as quickly as I can. Sometimes I feel like I must have gypsy blood, as I have moved home so often…

I was born and spent my early years in Clayton, a south eastern suburb of Melbourne, where my parents had built their first home in a new estate and a growing suburb. It was a blond brick house on a reasonably large block, with gardens designed by my grandfather, a landscape gardener, and a backyard with a rotary clothesline and a barbecue. My sister, Janine, was born there two years after me. We spent many happy years living there, attending the local primary school and making friends with the neighbourhood kids.

When I was ten, my parents built their “dream” home, in Glen Waverley, in Apple Tree Hill estate. All the houses in the estate were brand new, as was the primary school nearby. There were young families everywhere and we loved playing in the streets and down by Dandenong Creek, which probably wasn’t particularly clean, but we had lots of fun. Four years later, my father’s job was moved to Sydney, so the house was sold and we moved north. This was quite a shock for all of us, particularly my mother leaving all her extended family behind. We moved into a brand new house in Castle Hill, northwest of Sydney, with a much larger mortgage to pay thanks to the inflated Sydney real estate market. Janine and I attended the local secondary school and mum went out to work to help make ends meet. Once again my sister and I made new friends and settled into a new life.

My first taste of independence came when I was seventeen and sent to teachers’ college in country NSW - Mitchell College of Advanced Education, in Bathurst. I lived on campus in shared accommodation, with meals provided in the college dining room - often unidentifiable meat and overcooked vegetables - followed by many opportunities for eating greasy take away washed down with too much alcohol. I came home almost every weekend, mainly to catch up with friends, but also to eat mum’s much better quality meals! When I qualified and there were no teaching positions available, I joined the public service and, keen to continue my independent life, took short term positions in various country towns including Cooma, Jindabyne and Orange. I lived in share houses where meals were pot luck and cleaning was optional, but I loved the freedom it gave me. Once I finally secured a teaching position I returned to Sydney, renting a flat and finding a flatmate with even lower standards than mine - when he started eating all my food and even using my toothbrush I decided it was time to start living on my own.

I married a man from the country and we moved to Bathurst, buying our first home in a less salubrious part of town and learning a lot about real estate values in the process. We loved our little house and made some improvements around the place, but we soon moved on, to Ballina on the northern NSW coast, when my husband was offered a new position. This time we built our own “dream” house in a new suburb and set about making the house our home. Then another, better job beckoned in Queensland so we were on the move again, this time with a young baby in tow. We spent a winter in Cairns soaking up the warmth, then moved south to Brisbane, where we bought another house and had another baby. Within a couple of years, yet another job was offered, which had us return to Central West NSW and build another house, in Orange.

After a few years in Orange, and with both kids now in school, we bought a small caravan and took off around Australia, spending a year on the road. We returned to Orange and the kids went back to school, but with no decent jobs for my husband, he took a “short term” contract for a company in Melbourne. Eighteen months later, sick of living so far away, the rest of us followed. We sold our house in Orange and bought one in Glen Waverley. I had gone full circle! The kids started at new schools and made new friends, I started a new job and life continued, but the tyranny of distance had caused cracks to form in the marriage which could not be repaired.

A few years later, with a new man in my life and the kids finished school, I sold the family home. We moved into a brand new townhouse in Wheelers Hill, with views to the mountains and a peace filled neighbourhood. We loved our house and our lives, our kids moved in and out, as their lives changed and so did ours. Eventually we both retired and started travelling. We bought a boat and went cruising, renting our house out and putting our belongings in storage. It was an idyllic life, with new adventures at every place we visited, from the Gippsland Lakes to Lizard Island. We would take time to visit our families, but most of the time we were travelling around and we realised we didn’t need a big house any more. Our home was where the anchor dropped!

In 2023 we made the decision to sell our house in the suburbs. We didn’t need four bedrooms, the house was fifteen years old by then and things were starting to show their age. It was time for someone else to love it. We needed a land base and we loved our life in Queensland, so we found a lovely apartment in Paradise Point, where we also had a marina berth for our boat. We complemented that with a small apartment in Docklands in Melbourne so that we can easily visit family and friends and have room for our many grandchildren to visit us.

My favourite place is wherever I am happy at the time. I don’t need to be in a big house or in one location, as long as I am with the people I care about and am doing what I enjoy, that is my home.