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| Shane Adams, 7-3-75 engraved in the concrete out the back. |
Recently, the owners of the house we rent were to be in town and wanted to call in to have a look. The house was newly rebuilt prior to us taking on the lease, following a fire a couple of years ago in which most of the house was destroyed. The owners brought their teenage daughter, who hadn't seen the house since she was small and it was interesting to see her reaction to this, the house she grew up in.
She asked to see her old room, and the backyard. The pool looks so much smaller, she said. There used to be a wall there, they said. Oh, there's my painting! Exclaiming at the mural painted on the corrugated iron fence at the side.
I've always been fascinated by houses, and their inhabitants through time. When I was 14, my family visited the village in Tipperary and the house of my father's forebears; a once-stately house that appeared long abandoned. When my parents went back to Ireland a couple of years later, they decided to bite the bullet and knock on the door. This time around, the house was occupied and being lovingly restored by - of all people - an Australian couple. They were most happy to oblige and my dad shared the history of his family connections and some of the stories of the house and the village.
When I was at art school, for one of my projects I took the train to Sydney to track down the house where my great-grandmother grew up, on busy Parramatta Road at Petersham in the inner west. I was always so eager to soak up her stories of childhood, often recounted with side-splitting giggles. I found the house, a three-storey place with a shop at the street level and living areas above. I could imagine her and her brothers peering out of the third-storey window, guessing the colour of the next car to come sputtering down Parramatta Road. (How different this is to the unrelenting traffic of today!) I found the school she and her siblings used to go to (or play 'hooky' from, as was more often the case) and the hilly street where she sent her baby sister hurtling down in her rickety pram, resulting in a huge scolding when the pram overturned.
What about your house? Does it have a history that you know about, or imagine? Or is it a space newly built for you, where you're making your own history?
I've never really stopped to think about who may have previously lived in my house. I'd love to have a house filled with that much history! Unfortunately my little one bedroom apartment has little to offer in that area, though I do live in quite an old area of Melbourne.
ReplyDeleteI've just discovered your blog, and it's quite lovely!
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Reanna
www.youll-move-mountains.blogspot.com
Thanks for stopping by, Reanna! Sometimes it's fun just to imagine.
DeleteI'll have to check out your blog - your food photos are SO enticing!
It is the oddest thing with our new home in Bellingen, because the question could almost be, who hasn't lived here. We seem to have met quite a large number of people who either lived here, or stayed here for a couple of weeks some time back. "Yeah, yeah, I know your place. Do you use that north eastern corner for your kitchen table? Great morning sun." "Well, yes, but...."
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful that we are in a place of which so many people have fond memories.
How wonderful, Gary! Actually, a similar thing has happened with the house we live in as well. Aside from the current owners from whom we rent it, the previous owner is someone from work, and another colleague has lived in this house, as well as someone else we know! Apparently someone who once lived here used to throw big parties and there are stories of people sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool (obviously it was empty at the time!) drinking wine.
DeleteAn addendum: was wandering and wondering in the backyard just then as one does, and the smell of freesia is everywhere. Previous owners, Edna and Bert (I am fairly certain Bert built the house), had planted freesias across the block. No one was allowed to mow the grass until they had flowered. Some decades later, there are freesias popping up all over, and filling the air with a perfume that takes us back to an earlier life . A delightful legacy of someone who lived in our house.
ReplyDeleteOh, that is delightful. What a delicious fragrance!
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