baxter street

By late 2007 nine years with my employer is enough. Visiting my daughter in Bendigo, I glibly suggest she find me a job up there. Ten days later she rings to tell me she’s found two. I apply for both, travel up on the train for interviews. The first interview goes well—I think they like me—but reality strikes on the return journey—moving house, moving city.

I accept a job co-ordinating youth mentoring programs across the Loddon Mallee region. Tours of estate agents lead to a list of six places. The last is the one for me, a semi-detached Victorian terrace, central, affordable. I apply, ask the agent who I must kill to get the place.

The JRT and I move to Bendigo in a hire truck late in January 2008. My good woman and I spend a first night in my new house by candlelight: I’ve neglected to arrange the connection of power.

For three years I live a charmed existence. The job is not so demanding; I take no work or angst home. I walk two blocks to work. The JRT and I walk every day before or after work. The cycling is fine, flat north of town, undulating to the south. Traffic is sparse. I shop by bicycle, ride to the gym. The Jazz gathers dust and leaves under the elms of Baxter Street.

My good woman and I talk most nights on Skype. I see her every second weekend when I hop on the train with the Red Rocket. My daughter and I board each other’s dogs as the need arises, the perfect set-up. She drops in for deep and meaningfuls at my kitchen table.

Fate, of course, can’t let a good think alone. On Black Saturday my daughter’s house burns in the Bendigo bushfire. She, her partner and dog lose everything but the ember-pocked clothes on their backs. The idyll is over. They live in a succession of rentals and house-sits then move to Western Australia.

Now the JRT and I drive to Melbourne to see my good woman. The funding for my job is finite. I know my time here must end. When my son moves out of my Croydon house, I make the move the back and commute for six months to a job with no future beyond 31 December 2011.

I love that house in Baxter Street; still do.  

Rock on.