Suburbia & Home Life
The Neighbour Who Mows at 7am Saturday
★★★★★
Commenced at 7:04am with a two-stroke engine of considerable output, completed the front lawn in nine minutes, and then edged for forty. Legally permitted. Morally indefensible.
Category
Suburbia & Home Life
40 reviews on file, averaging 2.9 stars. The panel stands by all of them.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Nature Strip Nobody Owns But Everybody Judges
★★★★★
Council land, resident responsibility, and the single most closely observed six square metres in any Australian street. Left unmown for eleven days. Received one anonymous note and four pointed glances.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Hills Hoist
★★★★★
A rotating steel monument to a time before dryers, still spinning in backyards nationwide, doubling as a maypole, a piñata frame, and the site of at least one childhood concussion per household.
Suburbia & Home Life
Bringing the Washing In Before the Storm
★★★★★
A high-speed household emergency triggered by one distant rumble, involving three people, no pegs being saved, and everything dumped on a bed in a heap that will remain there until Thursday.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Pool That Was Definitely Worth It
★★★★★
Installed at significant expense for the children, used enthusiastically for two summers, and now maintained year-round at $180 a month for a body of water nobody enters between March and November.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Ceiling Fan Doing Its Best
★★★★★
Operating at maximum setting in 39-degree heat, redistributing warm air around the room with tremendous effort and no measurable effect. Making an admirable noise. Achieving essentially nothing.
Suburbia & Home Life
The One Room With Air Conditioning
★★★★★
A single split system installed in the lounge, around which the entire household now sleeps on mattresses during February, with the door shut and a towel along the bottom. Correct strategy.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Fly Screen With One Small Hole
★★★★★
A three-millimetre tear on an otherwise flawless screen, through which the entire insect population of the eastern seaboard has now been admitted. Located after two hours. Repaired with tape.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Bathroom Extraction Fan From 1994
★★★★★
Produces a sound comparable to a small aircraft and moves an amount of air best described as theoretical. Runs on the same switch as the light, so it is always on. Nothing is ever extracted.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Sunburn Line From a Singlet
★★★★★
Achieved after four hours in the garden with no shirt discipline, producing a two-tone effect visible from space and a shoulder situation that will peel dramatically by Wednesday.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Garage With No Room for a Car
★★★★★
A double garage containing a workbench, four bikes, eleven boxes of unlabelled items, a treadmill, and a kayak. Both vehicles have lived in the driveway since 2017. The garage is working as intended.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Shed as a Place of Refuge
★★★★★
Technically for tools. Functionally a bar, a radio station, and a place to sit alone with a beer and a project that will never be completed. The most important room in the house is not in the house.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Half-Finished Deck
★★★★★
Commenced with tremendous energy in October 2022. Two-thirds of the boards are down. The remaining timber has been under a tarp beside the fence for three years, weathering beautifully.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Fence Dispute With the Neighbour
★★★★★
A disagreement over 40 centimetres and a shared cost, escalating through eleven weeks of increasingly formal notes and one survey, resulting in a new fence and two households who no longer wave.
Suburbia & Home Life
Borrowing a Tool and Never Returning It
★★★★★
A pressure washer lent across the fence in 2021, mentioned once in 2022, and never spoken of again. Both parties know. Both parties will maintain this arrangement until one of them moves.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Bin Blown Over on a Windy Night
★★★★★
Deposited its entire contents along 140 metres of street, distributed evenly, and rolled into an intersection. Recovered at 6:15am in a dressing gown, in view of the whole street.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Neighbour Who Puts Your Bin Back
★★★★★
Wheels it up the driveway every fortnight without a word, has never mentioned it, and would be embarrassed to be thanked. The finest person on this street and quite possibly in this country.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Christmas Lights House That Ruins the Street
★★★★★
Forty thousand globes, an inflatable Santa, and a soundtrack, drawing 200 cars a night down a quiet residential street throughout December. Magnificent for visitors. Purgatory for numbers 14 through 22.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Kids Who Set Up a Lemonade Stand
★★★★★
Charging $2 for warm cordial in a paper cup at the end of a driveway, staffed by two under-tens with a hand-drawn sign. Purchased three. Did not drink any. Correct transaction regardless.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Basketball Hoop on the Street Corner
★★★★★
Portable, permanently positioned, and wheeled aside by drivers approximately four times a day with mild irritation and total acceptance. Has been there since 2019. Nobody has ever complained formally.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Ice Cream Van in the Cul-de-Sac
★★★★★
Announced by a distorted melody at 4:40pm, producing eleven children at four separate front doors within nine seconds and four parents locating change with genuine panic.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Bushfire Smoke Haze in the Suburbs
★★★★★
An orange sky at 11am, an air quality reading that should not exist, and ash on the car from a fire 200 kilometres away. Windows shut. Nothing else to be done. Deeply unsettling.
Suburbia & Home Life
Filling the Gutters Before a Storm, Too Late
★★★★★
The ladder came out on the same afternoon the rain arrived, resulting in a gutter clean performed in a downpour, at height, in thongs. Successful. Wildly ill-advised. Would not recommend.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Colorbond Roof in a Hailstorm
★★★★★
Converts a moderate weather event into a sustained percussive assault under which conversation, television, and coherent thought all become impossible. Lasted nine minutes. Felt considerably longer.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Lawn That Is Mostly Weeds But Green Enough
★★★★★
Comprising bindii, clover, and four kinds of grass, mown weekly to a uniform height at which the deception is complete. Looks excellent from the road. Falls apart entirely on close inspection.
Suburbia & Home Life
Standing on a Bindii in Bare Feet
★★★★★
One step onto a lawn that appeared entirely safe, followed by a noise and a hopping motion familiar to every Australian who has ever crossed grass in summer. The prickle was never located.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Neighbourhood Facebook Group
★★★★★
Ostensibly for community notices, functionally a forum for suspicious white van sightings, lost cats, and one long-running dispute about parking that has now entered its third year.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Street Party Nobody Wanted But Everyone Enjoyed
★★★★★
Organised by one enthusiastic resident against considerable initial indifference, attended by 40 people, and now an annual fixture. She was right. We were wrong. She has not mentioned it once.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Water Bill After the Kids' Water Fight
★★★★★
A sprinkler, four buckets, and an unattended hose across one January afternoon, producing an outstanding day for the children and a quarterly account that required a sit-down.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Bunnings Plant That Died in Eleven Days
★★★★★
Purchased as a hardy, low-maintenance, almost impossible to kill variety. Watered appropriately. Positioned correctly. Deceased by the following Thursday. The tag has been kept as evidence.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Lemon Tree That Produces 400 Lemons at Once
★★★★★
Nothing for eleven months, then a single fortnight of overwhelming abundance, resulting in lemons distributed to every neighbour, colleague, and passing acquaintance, and 300 still on the tree.
Suburbia & Home Life
Leaving a Bag of Lemons on the Fence for Anyone
★★★★★
A shopping bag of surplus citrus hung on the front fence with a handwritten sign reading free, emptied within four hours by strangers. The purest transaction available in this country.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Sausage Sizzle at the School Fete
★★★★★
Operated by four parents in aprons at a rate of 200 an hour, with a cash tin, a queue of eighty, and a chief cook who has run this stall since 2011 and takes no direction from anyone.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Chocolate Fundraiser Box Bought Entirely by a Parent
★★★★★
Sent home with a child to sell to the community, sold instead to that child's own household over eleven days at $2 a bar. The school received the funds. The parent received the diabetes risk.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Front Yard Trampoline Visible on Street View
★★★★★
Captured by the camera car in 2019 with two children mid-jump, preserved permanently online, and now a source of enormous embarrassment to two teenagers who cannot have it removed.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Roof Restoration Doorknocker
★★★★★
Happened to be in the area, noticed the roof from the street, and can do it at a special price today only. Was here in March. Was here last November. The roof is fine.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Real Estate Agent's Unsolicited Appraisal Letter
★★★★★
Addressed to the homeowner, printed to look handwritten, and claiming a buyer is actively seeking a property on this exact street. This buyer has been seeking since 2018 and remains unhoused.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Verge Collection Mattress That Sits for Nine Weeks
★★★★★
Placed out for a collection that was scheduled, then rescheduled, then apparently forgotten. Rained on four times. Now structurally part of the streetscape. Two other households have added to it.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Smoke Alarm Battery Chirping at 3am
★★★★★
Never at 3pm. Never on a weekend. Always at 3am, always in the hallway, and always in the one unit whose ceiling requires a ladder the household does not own.
Suburbia & Home Life
The Front Door Nobody Uses
★★★★★
Fitted with a doorbell, a wreath, and a welcome mat, opened approximately twice a year for a courier. Every actual visitor comes through the carport and into the kitchen, as is correct.