The house of roses

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Adam Aitken

MY FATHER ARRIVED in Sydney in late 1968. Immediately, he made himself at home. He had been a Sydneysider for a year before we arrived, and had been playing the bon vivant. Going for interviews with agencies inevitably led to a few rejections. A particularly ockerish boss famous for advertising discount whitegoods told him he didn't want ‘poof' British types and told him to fuck off. He recovered his composure – after all, it was Sydney – and realised he needed to aim higher. He found a more sympathetic agency in Neutral Bay where his pinstripe English suits and pink shirts were not completely out of place with the old school English boss. He took lessons in how to steer the boss's sailing cruiser in Kirribilli and hold a brandy-lime-and-soda at the same time. He considered buying an old Jag, but could not raise a loan.

My father had signed a lease on a top-floor apartment in a large Federation house in Neutral Bay (perfect for kids), then bought some mining shares, an antique writing desk, a revolving bookshelf, a divan with a broken foot and a probationary membership of a North Shore golf club. He quickly built up a cohort of drinking buddies. He began to collect – a wine cellar, more books, more records and more furniture. After a year in the sand dunes, my mother, brother and I arrived from Perth.

When we finally got to Sydney, on the last camel in the train, I learned that my father had driven to Sydney across the Nullarbor in a grey Fiat sedan. After Perth, the Nullarbor and Spencer Street, we were desiccated. Red dust in our hair. On the way from Central Station to the house, on a moonlit summer's night, I sat in the front seat of the taxi and looked up at the Harbour Bridge, the most enormous bridge I had ever seen. I became a new Meccano convert that Christmas – the kind of toy I could never have enough bits for – and built my first Meccano bridge and drove my fleet of Dinky cars over it in a long procession. The big house in Neutral Bay was full of the thick rugs and furniture and unpacked crates my parents had sent up from Kuala Lumpur.

‘Are we going to live here a long time, Daddy?' I asked.

‘At least six years. I want to live here six years.'

I'd also found my first ‘girlfriend', a blonde tomboy named Wendy Miller. The teacher, Mrs Linney, had picked out the vacant front-row seat next to this seeming giant of a girl. We were a good match. I was tiny and no one in the class seemed to care too much for Wendy, who was neither well kitted out nor as pretty as the other girls. They sniggered and Mrs Linney called for silence. Wendy lived in a block of high-rise units with her single mum, and very soon she came to our house for a sleepover and actually kissed me. I never wanted to move again. My mother was happy that all the furniture from Kuala Lumpur had finally arrived. ♦