Winifred Avenue

This abode was little more than a converted garage with a kitchen, bathroom and toilet tacked on. Drive around the Central Coast and you'll see hundreds of these arrangements. I made a couple of trips up to the coast to find a unit and had looked at quite a few places, and some of them I wouldn't have even used as a kennel. I was quite surprised at being successful with the first application I put in. The previous tenant was just in the process of moving out when I signed the paperwork. It took me three weeks to get the dog smell out of the place seeing he had had a female boxer that used to live inside the house with him.

For a unit, it had a nice backyard, which could be taken care of with a whippersnipper. The neighbours, to begin with, were pretty good. I had a young couple living in the house. She was a office temp and he was in the navy. In the house next door was an English couple, with twin daughters. But the young couple moved out, and for a while I had the block to myself. Then came the single mum with the three boys. The two elder ones were a pain, once entertaining themselves by throwing half-bricks at my back wall. In the end she packed them off to their father and moved out not long after to live with her boyfriend. Next was a Fijian chap with a large young family, one of his boys was autistic. After them was another young couple with various “friends” who used to stop over for extended periods. They were the worst out of the lot, seeing they fought a bit, and he often displayed that he had no common sense (or that he was an inconsiderate idiot), like working on his car after midnight with the stereo blaring.

As for the house itself, well, television reception was very poor, it was draughty, it had white ants in the bathroom, and rats in the ceiling. The electrics were annoying. If you had more than four appliances going at once, chances are you would trip the safety switch or blow a fuse, which I was often made to fix myself. How I managed to live six years in that place was beyond me.

But it did have it's advantages. I never got door to door bible bashers or salespeople, nobody could see into the house unless they were standing in the yard, it was relatively close to public transport (the main road was around the corner), and within easy walking distance were an IGA and a couple of take-aways. From my place, I could also walk to two beaches (Ettalong and Umina), the local Centrelink office (Ettalong), a library (Umina) and a cinema (Ettalong again). 

It was secluded, and during the time I was there I finally finished the first of many drafts of my long suffering fantasy project Blutmunth and found the inspiration to start more projects, and write quite a few pieces of poetry.

I finally got out of the place when I received a rather large check from my father's estate. This time, to make it more convenient for people to visit me, and for me to be more central, I moved to East Gosford.