1 Malunna Crescent - the front yard and the street

These are all my memories of the house we grew up in. I lived there from about 3 months old to just before I turned 18. Mum and Dad sold it in 2000 or 2001, and this what it looked like in 2010.

We always had two cars in the driveway. Dad had a white Kingswood HR wagon with red upholstery called Humphrey, and mum had a white Fiat 124 called Giuseppe that had belonged to dad’s father Didds. Later Dad bought a new yellow Fiat 128 called Sophia which arrived on a ship at the Port of Burnie, that was around 1975. By 1985 Dad had a dark blue Datsun 260C, unnamed. Mum later sold the white Fiat and regretted it. I drove it a bit on my Ls and I loved it. It had old-fashioned H-harness seatbelts in the back, and on the dashboard a squashy trilby-hat shaped rubber thing to squeeze to spray water onto the windscreen for the wipers.

We crammed into Sophia for regular one-day round trips to Launceston to see dad’s mum Ibey, and for him to mow the lawn and pick fruit. We occasionally stayed overnight but it was nearly always up-and-back. Dad had a St Christopher medal stuck to the dash. It seemed to work, we survived all those trips.

The Wescombes lived to our left and the Westbrooks to our right. The Wescombes had a line of dark trees much higher than in the photo above, on the north side of us: so our driveway was mostly a dark spot. Our lawn was split in half by a short concrete front path. The sloping left half was always spattered with gumtree detritus and quite mossy as it was overshadowed by a very big spinning gum. This was a great climbing tree but we needed a stool or a ladder to get started. You could sit up there quietly and people would pass below you, unbeknownst.

We had a fire hydrant in our driveway, and quite often in summer we had a fire engine parked there using it. The grounds of Marist college would mysteriously catch fire regularly.

We originally had a white timber rail fence, and I think I remember a front gate. But they went at some stage. We had dogs but they were kept in the back yard. Later the big gum become dangerous so it was cut down and mulched. 

The flat right half of the front lawn had a camellia growing in the middle of it. I grew up thinking of this as the 'mulberry bush', because we went round and round it. All it was good for was going round and round.

There was a "pebble garden" along in front of the house, sloping up to the front door. We had a piece of driftwood in it that looked like a seal. And red/pink fuschias with sweet nectar. It was originally very stark and low-maintenance but became more "planty" as years went by. There were two steps up to our small front porch which was held up by a square post with a healthy jasmine growing around it. Our front door was quite distinctive, it was dark green with three portholes in it.

I played cricket alone on the front path, with a “superball” - hard compressed rubber, very bouncy. I'd bowl it at the step, trying to get it to bounce back to me so I could take spectacular return catches, falling away down the slope to the left. Quite often I pitched it wrong so it would miss the steps and bash into the screen door. Quite often. Bash…bash… … …… bash.

I also would stand on the nature strip by the telegraph pole (imaginary stumps), throw a ball in the air and heave it to the legside, across the street into or over Gilmores’ front fence. My score advanced only by 4s or 6s.

At one time our front path had standard roses down each side. The tree shading the nature strip in the photo above might be one that mum planted which I remember as a liquidambar (but I know very little about trees). There were no trees then on our nature strip or further up to the right either; nature meant strictly "grass". We rode bikes and scooters down nature strip unencumbered, and also had thrilling sprint races complete with a handicapping system orchestrated by my friend Macca (his dad trained professional runners). Between our house and the Tolunah St corner were a silver birch and a woolly-barked red flowering gum.

For the record the neighbours going up the hill on our side after the Westbrooks were the Kellys, the Fords, then Hardings, then Murfett's until they moved across the road. Up the top on the bend were the Beaches and the Millars (including my soccer coach and music teacher Gordon). I thought of Mr Ford this morning – he had a very generous wave. I think he had survived a heart attack and seemed to be determined to spread happiness in his small way when he had an opportunity. 

At one stage I had a friend at kindergarten named Elizabeth, and she lived around on the other side of the block, in Paraka Street. One day we discovered a shortcut between our houses but it required going down the Ford's driveway and through a little hatch in their back fence.

Directly across from us were the Reardons (Mr Reardon gave me a chest expander) but they moved out and were replaced by the Boss-Walkers. Up from them were the Gilmores, then Murfetts and a bit further up a fascinating man we think was a retired seaman – with many chickens. He had long black hair, was quite weatherbeaten and I think had a dog who matched his hair. Pippa escaped and caught one of his chickens once and mum had to return it to him, deceased.

When I started primary school, the Waterfall bus stopped right in front of our house, and it cost 5¢. This shortly went up to 7¢, which meant there was double the chance of losing a coin and having to go and ring the doorbell while panicking the bus would come. The route changed later so our nearest stop was around in Paraka Street.

Macca and I played footy and cricket on the street. It was very quiet except at the end of the school day, as Marist College is just behind the houses across the road from us. We would have a crate for wickets and pick up and move when a car came. I remember at least once we were kicking end to end and talking about god knows what (probably cricket gloves or bats or footy cards) after the street lights came on. Which seemed very grown up.

I had a scooter but didn't have a bike until turned 9. I don't think I ever went too far in the scooter years, although I remember riding it down the steep and sweeping grassy hills around the Marist football ground. Coming down the nature strip, Ford’s driveway created a bit of a lip you could get a decent jump off.

I was intimately familiar with my grassy side of the street and all the driveways that crossed it; but also every paver on the other side, and where drains lay in wait to take a tennis ball. You could heave off the drain cover to make a daring rescue in some cases, but not all. If I had gone on Mastermind in 1976, my special subject would have been the surfaces of Malunna Crescent under my feet. I looked down a lot.

This is not our Kingswood but these pics do spark up some memories.