addresses (2)

Against my better judgment I marry the mother of my child on 5 November 1980. The second attends in utero. My marriage ends one day short of two years later—I am left without wife, children, home, job or wheels. I am hollow. I try to cry but can’t.

I resume life at the home of a friend at 5 Hillside Road, Rosanna, and get a job in Moorabbin. Six months later my children come to live with me, aged three and one. I rent 16 St James Parade, Gardenvale, before quitting work and buying 65 Menzies Road in Menzies Creek, the first house I own. My parents and sister now live in Menzies Creek. It is our village.

That house in Menzies Creek remains a favourite. I live on a pension and raise two small children. My self-esteem plummets but life never has more meaning. I move to 17 Arthurs Road, Chum Creek, and blend my family with Carol’s. I sell my house and we extend her mud-brick house. It can’t last and doesn’t.

After two and a half years I return to the other end of the Dandenongs. First I rent 14 Crichton Road, Emerald, then a pine box in Moroney Crescent, Menzies Creek. I buy my second house at 7 Church Road, not the house I would choose. My father wants to invest in it so I relent from my initial opposition and live in a house I don’t like for nine years. Never again.

Just before my forty-eighth birthday I move to Croydon, number 96. For one night I think I own number 39 but the sale falls through. I love 96 but every day I pass 39 and regret surges through me. I would love it more.

A job comes up in Bendigo where my daughter lives so for three and half years I rent 83 Baxter Street, a terrace of the sort I have wanted to occupy since student days when so many others did and I did not. My son and his partner live at 96 until I return and must start again with the garden and the maintenance.

This is where I live.

I have gazed upon the house in Warrnambool where I began life. Nothing stirs. Nor at Two Sixty-five. I pass 7 Church Road without a glance, yet my children grew up there. The bricks and mortar don’t move me.

But when I pause to reflect on each house I have lived in, each town or place I have called home, each has particular memories. Important events in my life happened at each one. Each deserves a bit more space and time.

Rock on.