Are the suburbs like Tasmania?
A colleague recently expressed surprise when on a weekend away in Hobart, Tasmania, people in the street would say hello as they walked by. Pure strangers for chrissake. She thought it was nice, but unusual, and added it to the long list of charms we all know the apple isle holds.
Well… that happens here too, out in the burbs.
In fact, it’s such that, with my antisocial tendencies, I sometimes have to do all manner of expressions to avoid eye contact with folk I pass on the street, so that I don’t have to say ‘hi’ but so I don’t also appear rude. Hence there are a lot of people around here who think I’m obsessed with the standard of our roads or the architectural inspirations of my neighbours’ roofs. On the flip-side (because I am a contrary beast) I do find more and more that I feel slightly put out when people do the same back to me. Another sign that I am becoming more in tune with my suburban surroundings. ‘What’s wrong with saying hello to your fellow human?’ I shout out in my head. Nothing. But sometimes we don’t feel like it. It’s not rude it’s just that we’re in a hurry, inside our heads, in a bad mood, struggling too much with the effort of exercising, too busy singing along to latest emo track on our MP3s. But because I like people to acknowledge me (when I am in a good mood and feel like bonding with my fellow suburbanite) I am trying harder to smile, nod, blink in the direction of the neighbour coming towards me. It’s not hard and you might be the only person who has smiled at them that day. Mind you, if someone walks past me and is studiously staring at the nature strip I try not to be offended. They are clearly in their own head, and wanting to avoid the awkward ‘I know you live here but you’re still a stranger’ hello. And we all have days, hell, weeks, like that.
But like that ‘hug’ guy that was big for a few seconds a year or two ago, a simple hello can be a powerful thing. Sometime that person who spies your football jersey and says ‘good win on the weekend’ was the only person that day who didn’t ask you for something. Or that old lady who pats your dog reminds you of your nanna. And sometimes it just makes you feel more connected with the greater world. So for me, even on those bad, in-my-head days, I am trying to think – and walk – more like a Tasmanian.
It’s a jungle out here
From the mouths of babes….
When my friend’s two-year-old visited our little old dead-end suburb* on the weekend she apparently exclaimed to her mother as they entered our general vicinity ‘Jungle, Mummy, jungle!’.
Now we live in a proudly bushland suburb but jungle? It is lovely and leafy here but this little girl doesn’t live in a concrete box herself. As my friend exclaimed as she staggered down the hallway with the goods and chattels travelling with a toddler involves, ‘It’s not like we don’t live in a leafy area!’ And that’s true, they live on the lower north shore, lots of parks, trees and general greenery. But to paraphrase Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee: That’s not a leafy place. This is a leafy place.
When I lived on the lower north shore, I too would exclaim about the foliage factor, but I have found lately that I no longer find that so much of a thing, despite it having it’s own share of national parks etc. Maybe it’s the landlocked nature of my little suburb – streets just end because the bush takes over, maybe it’s because my friend up the road’s backyard leads into bushland and what I call in my ignorant geographic knowledge a ravine, maybe it’s because I sometimes get stuck at work because bush fires have closed roads not that far from me, maybe it’s because if you sneak into the reservoir land up my road (don’t tell anyone) all you can see are treetops.
‘Jungle’ is a very particular word. Dense vines, ancient trees, man-eating plants, undiscovered fauna. I immediately think of Mowgli and orangutans with king-complexes thanks to early readings of Rudyard Kipling. Jungles are homes to lost tribes, poisonous frogs and guerilla armies. Of course, to a two-year-old the jungle is just a big green place with lots of trees and potential fun – but I kind of like that too.
I’ve always known my suburb was bushy, leafy, gum-tree-y, but from now on I will always think of it from the point of view of a toddler who can communicate her observations for the first time. It has a nice ring to it and to some of those folk who think Leichhardt is in ‘the west’, quite apt: ‘Oh, me? I live in the jungle.’
* I really do live in a deadend suburb – there’s one road in and the suburb rests on an escarpment overlooking national park. I wasn’t being rude!
Where is this land you call Suburbia?
Where do the suburbs start? I think it’s different for each person. Technically speaking, if you don’t live in the CBD you live in a suburb. For some folk, anywhere more than a 15 minute drive from the centre is suburbia, for others it might be anywhere where the houses have backyards and more families than singles reside. For me, i often imagine the ‘new’ suburbs growing on the edge of the sprawl where all the houses look a bit the same and there’s that ‘just add water’ feel. Which is probably how my area seemed to others 30 odd years ago. When you think suburbia you think of well-plotted houses with green expanses out the front, picket fences and amiable blokes mowing their lawn while the cricket squawks out of the radio. Yes, it is always summer in my suburbia. I think swimming pools and swing sets, hot asphalt roads thirsting for a downpour, squealing children avoiding bindiis. It’s summer now and these cliched images are not that far away from the reality of my own burb, though of course there is a lot more to it than that, and this summer Sydney’s weather is often masquerading as autumn, but still…
In summer we talk to our neighbours, get into the garden and are happy to take the dog for a walk. In winter the drudgery of leaving for and returning from work in the dark compels us through the gates and indoors with little but a glance down the nature strip. The suburbs do thrive in the warmer months, it is when they are at their glorious best.
Where’s that?
You know you live a fair way out of the city when the most common response to saying ‘I live at [fill in name of your suburb]‘ is ‘Where’s that?’ or a vague ‘Oh yeah’ followed by that distracted look people get when the cogs in their heads are whirring around trying to work out if they really do know what you’re talking about. Mind you, these days if you live more than a 15-minute drive from the inner city most people won’t have heard of where you live. It seems it’s just a part of these self-concerned times. Or maybe our brains are just too full to be able to maintain a mud map of the geographic location of all the suburbs in a large city. And maybe that’s fair enough. In any case, I live in one of those suburbs that usually gets the blank look from the person who asked the original question. Sometimes I try ‘Near so-and-so…’ and choose a close by but larger municipal hub complete with train station and Westfield shopping universe, but even that sometimes gets ‘the blank’ from those who seemingly find satisfaction limiting their lives to a 5km radius of their front door. I feel a bit sorry for them but sometimes wish my answer to ‘Where do you live?’ didn’t always take 5 minutes and include driving directions and satellite maps. I also wish I wasn’t so compelled to feel embarassed about it – as if there is something wrong with me and my suburb because THEY don’t know where it is.
I guess that is my issue – somewhere in my past, probably around the age of 12 - I decided that simply no-one of any interest lived in the suburbs. Somehow (and this doesn’t seem a rare inclination) I decided that to be ‘cool’ to be ‘worthy’ (or worth something?) you needed to live in a terrace in an inner-city suburb, preferably a terrace you renovated yourself and originally bought for a song in a down-and-out but soon to be trendy area which has great restaurants and cafes and a small but vibrant artistic community… Seriously what’s wrong with us (me)? In any case, that’s not how life has so far turned out. I am here in the burbs, in the suburb no-one knows, looking over freshly mown grass, drinking a cuppa and listening to the parrots gossip. Now, seriously, what’s wrong with that?
Yes, I live in the ‘burbs
I have a love-hate relationship with where I live. Like many people I live in the suburbs and the plan for this blog is to explore my take on suburban life and the range of experiences and notions connected with it. I did not grow up in the outer suburbs. Most people have never heard of where i live. It is both beautiful and isolating, freeing and inconvenient. We have more opportunities for our domestic life and less flexibility elsewhere. We have room for a vegetable garden, composting, water tanks and native plants, but we have to drive our co2 emitting cars if we want to go anywhere. There are parks, sporting ovals, bushland and swimming pools in abundance, but teenagers wander the streets at night egging cars and hang out in the middle of roundabouts. I could go on, and will.
NO FOOTPATHS will explore the experience of living the suburban life.
Possibly the first question to pose is : what do i mean by ‘the suburbs’? Yes… that’s a good question.
