Garbage Chutes

The thing about big blue skies and seemingly endless horizons is that they quickly change into endless looming black horizons once the weather takes a turn for the worse. The weather in Australia is so spectacular and extreme that it makes the news all the time for it's purple thunderstorms and torrential downpours and when it snows, it's like they've hit the jackpot.

The weather continues to pour buckets on New South Wales, especially up in the central coast and Hunter Valley regions. The balcony is litterd with leaves and debris, the barbeque abandoned in the corner. And I've finally given in and bought Ella a thick winter coat.

This morning we went to the ballpool at Marrickville to meet up with Jan and Saul. As the weather is bad, it was bursting at the seams (or, you might say, fuller than a pommie complaints box) and impossible to keep a close eye on the kids without physically tailing them through all three levels of the climbing equipment; something of a feat when you're decked out in skirt and boots. We lasted half an hour for our $12 entrance fee before heading off back to their place for the rest of the afternoon.

Jan lives in a two bedroom flat on the second floor of a complex near the University at Camperdown. She parks her car deep underground and finishes her journey in a mirrored lift. Admittedly, the security car parks are great but it's such an enormous hassle doing the food shopping and getting it back up to your flat that you'd almost consider buying one of those tartan shopping trolleys if you weren't also lugging a toddler. Almost.

Jan is spoilt because she also has a garbage chute, unlike us, as we have to lug our bin bags out of the complex, up the hill and round the corner to the communal bins. I can only dream of having my own wheely bin, especially one tucked neatly in the corner of the driveway and I'll never again moan about going out there in the rain.

The trip out to the bins is such a trek that we usually wait until we're going out in the car then put the binbag on the roof and drive round there instead. Unfortunately this works for dirty nappies as well, but being that they're smaller than binbags we've often forgotten about them and driven away with them still on the roof rack, only to remember halfway across the city. By the time we've remembered, they've been blown off, presumably leaving a trail of, well, poo, in the same way that the baddy in Hansel and Gretel left a trail of sweets to lure them to the gingerbread cottage. Brings a whole new meaning to leaving something of yourself behind when you leave a place you love, doesn't it?

Anyway, we had a nice afternoon and Jan and I talked some more about her trip back to the UK.

"I'm going to fit in a visit to all the rellies" she began, the end of her sentence turning upwards in an AQI (Australian Questioning Intonation) worthy of a native.

"My brother has a house in Altrincham. They bought it at the bottom of the market and did it up, it would be worth a fortune now. And their back garden, well I reckon it's the same square footage as our entire flat, a great place to bring up kids".

I thought about our own garden, which my lovely father-in-law is mowing into stripes as we speak. I don't think it's far off the size of their flat either.

"The thing is, nobody can afford a family house in Sydney anymore. We keep talking about "taking the Kellyville route" and getting out of the city, but I don't think I could stand it"

"What's Kellyville?" I asked

"Oh it's a suburb out to the north. All McMansions and pools and shopping malls. can you imagine the kind of people who live there? Anyway, the only people who can afford a house in the city are those whose parents owned properties. Thirty years ago everyone could buy a house, white collar, blue collar, it didn't matter. Everyone could own a house and a plot and a pool. Now it's only their kids who can own a house. Professionals like us, lawyers, we'd be struggling to buy a small two-bed semi with a kitchen that needed ripping out. You're talking the best part of $900,000 (£400,000) for a small house like that. It's why we're still living in this unit, it's why we have no garden, no view, no walk to the sea"

I thought about what we'd get if we traded in our house at home; our four bedrooms, three loos, two bathrooms. Perhaps a two-bed semi in a crappy suburb. We'd have to trade up, not a problem with the private income, but still a very big problem for other professions who don't have chance to earn extra money on the side. It's a trap which means it's cheaper to rent, and the landlords know it. They've got people by the balls, they can do pretty much whatever they please and the tenant can't really do much to stop them. There's no security, no sense of a home of your own.

"I had a house in Didsbury, bought it as a deceased estate at rock bottom in 1996, ripped it out and put central heating in. I loved it there, had a great social life, friends always dropping in for coffee. Then I sold up and used the equity to come to Sydney and set myself up. I rented a flat with a view of the city skyline, you know, the whole city shimmers gold and purple when the sun's setting out west"

I know. It does.

"Anyway, I thought we'd better get on the housing ladder so we bought this place off plan. It's smaller and there's no view, but it's ours. The only thing is, we'd like a second child for Saul, a sibling for him, but we're so stretched financially paying for this place and stretched for space, there's no way we can consider it. Already he's sleeping in the spare room that used to be the study. Our books are locked up in a storage unit because we've nowhere to put them. We just kept the recipe books, that was all".

She loves Australia, I think. I'm not sure because whenever we talk about Manchester she goes glassy eyed. I wonder how often she thinks about her brother's house in Altrincham and the house she had in Didsbury and the house she could have pretty much anywhere with a garden and a cosy local pub. Sometimes you have to come away from a place to appreciate the things you have back home.