A friend recently sent me the link to a Real Estate brochure. You know them. They are easily accessible on the internet, advertising a particular property that a real estate agent is trying to dress up in the best possible way to get the maximum return for their client (and for them!).
This particular property was our family home throughout my childhood, teenage years and beyond. It was a place of much family history and of particular family moments, great and small. Our mother sold it many years ago. It sold again in 2013 so I was really interested to see what the brochure had to say about the place. I was particularly interested to see the recent photographs. There are always many photographs in the picture galleries, the kitchen from three different angles, the best possible views of the backyard, and this brochure is no exception. There are lots of photographs of our old home in this picture gallery, none of which I recognized at all. But the one that really caught my attention and brought a smile, well, a laugh really, was the main photograph that presented itself when the brochure was opened. This photo was the reason that Peter sent me the link. He thought it was pretty funny too.
I had hoped to include the photo but it proved very elusive. It is shows the view of the front of the house looking quite different from how it looked when I last saw it. It is a good photo which I am sure represents the front of the house at the time of sale. But what is peculiar about this photo is that at the centre, standing on an area of tan bark, are two old fashioned outside chairs, one beside the other. They are low white wooden chairs with fan-shaped backs. I am sure that they would be very comfortable and ideal for passing the time of day in good company, perfect for admiring the vista that the position of the chairs offers. The reason that the photo is funny is that where the chairs are placed there is no vista! Well, there is, but from that position you could just about see the surface of the street and perhaps the houses beyond. You can see the photo at www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-sawtell-114070303 You will also note the price that the house sold for. I am still recovering from the shock.
We moved into the house early in 1953. We had spent the summer holidays in a holiday house that backed onto a creek and a little-used beach. It was a good holiday with only a couple of downsides. It was discovered that I was particularly attractive to sandflies and was covered with sand-fly bites at one stage and we lost our pup to a tick - the first of many, sadly.
I had no idea that it was intended that we move to Sawtell permanently - well I was only 5 years old, but, looking back on it, it was the best move our family could have made. The town where I spent the first 5 years of my life was not a particularly happy one. Sawtell was a much more accepting place and there didn't appear to be the same sense of insiders and outsiders. We all shared similar experiences.
When we moved in, the house had only just been completed. Fortunately it was built with a weatherboard exterior rather than the ubiquitous fibro sheeting that many houses in the neighbourhood were built from. It was a two bedroom house, as it is today. I remember that we 'camped' in the house for a short time until basic furniture was acquired. Two bedrooms were not enough for 5 people so the first major task that was undertaken was the construction of sleep-out along the western wall. It provided a bedroom for my brother and me, he was down one end and I was down the other. I am sure that he really enjoyed that experience! Eventually a large cupboard was obtained. As well as storage it provided a division between the two ends of the sleep-out. I think that it came through mail order, but whatever the case, it was the precursor to Ikea.
The sleep-out was a pretty quick construction - really a matter of making do. The eastern wall of the sleep-out was the original western wall of the house. Not only did that mean that the internal wall was the original weatherboard but that western wall contained a window for the main bedroom which stayed in place. The internal access to the sleep-out was through the second bedroom. This wasn't very satisfactory and required a good deal of negotiated logistics.The sleep-out was built by couple of men from the town. Dad helped out where he could. I remember him helping lay the floorboards and hammering them in place. It is the last major physical activity that I remember him doing.
The house was built on what I remember as being reclaimed swamp land. I remember that in the few weeks after we moved in, there was a great deal of rain - not unusual for February in Sawtell. The backyard was a quagmire and the pungent mud was up to my knees. There were frogs everywhere and even the smallest pool had tadpoles. Later, when life became more civilized, it was not unusual for there to be a thud on the glass front door and through the glass could be seen the white underbelly of a green tree frog. Eventually, a lawn was planted in the backyard. I remember watering it with a tin can with nail-holes punched through the bottom. It was a slow process, but it didn't need to happen all that often as there was plenty of rain to water it naturally. In time, the backyard was overtaken by the dominant weed in the neighbourhood - paspalum. It wasn't really meant to be a lawn grass but it was hard-wearing!
The toilet hardly bears writing about. It was at the end of the back path some distance from the house. The walls were asbestos fibro - that amazingly cheap and versatile building material of those days - and which we were later to discover, was incredibly dangerous. There was no light in the toilet so evening visits were quite dodgy. There was no sewerage system for many years after we arrived so it was a pan system with a weekly visit from the sano man. At least we knew which night he would visit, but now and then he would arrive early so if you happened to be in the toilet at the time of his arrival, it could be a quite disconcerting experience.
For the first few years all of our water came from a large tank at the back of the house. It provided water to the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Most of the time there was plenty of water. The record rainfall for the town while I was there was in 1959 with 2825mm. The reticulated town water was connected when I was in late primary school. This brought lots of change. Firstly, I could put the old tank stand to good use. I put down a concrete floor (pretty rough!) and closed it in to make a quite useful chemistry lab. Most importantly, the individual small hot water services which provided hot water to the kitchen and bathroom were replaced by a large central hot water system in the laundry. It provided what seemed like inexhaustible hot water for the kitchen, bathroom and laundry.
The bathroom was a small room which was dominated by a large linen cupboard. There was a green plastic bath and a matching green plastic hand basin. The fact that the hot water was available at the turn of a tap was a huge advance on our previous house where the hot water for the bath was supplied by a chip heater. I remember our towels. They were towels for all uses. I don't remember there being bath mats. That is a strange thing because our mother was a woman of great dignity in this regard. There were possibly bath mats in the linen cupboard but I don't remember actually setting eyes or feet on them. Knowing me, I was probably in too much of a rush to consider the possibility of such delicacies.
I have often thought about this in recent times. Every night of my adult married life I have stepped out of a bath or shower onto a dry bath mat. What a luxury this is! How much of my adult life do I take for granted?
