Paradise Bought

The hunt offers much thrill than the kill, it is said. When it comes to house-hunting, the proverbial "hunt" exists , the task is onerous, hunters are many. Did we bag the prize? Read on...

"TW" or "CW": Arachnophobia; Ornithophobia

Disclaimer: The writer of this blog is not to be held responsible if the images embedded towards end of this article might cause concern, make you to jump or scream or force you to avoid visiting the water closet in future

House-hunting is an onerous task. Considering my family’s outrageous architectural dreams and quaint customary tastes, it only added further chaos to our house-hunting tours. While dream home was “Duplex” for one, it was a swanky “glass-and-chrome” apartment for another. “An acreage!” declared the head of the family as I drooled over a magazine cover displaying a Victorian-style bungalow with grille balconies propped with climbing roses and weeping Wisterias.

We commenced on making many a boring car trips traversing across unknown geographies, stepping in and out of strange houses while trying to escape multitudes of strangers, who were evidently there house hunting too, flashing frowning countenance, limited patience, and bickering constantly with partners or over phones. The most sensible amongst us was the 5-year-old who voted to sit in the car.

We also dropped into impeccable display homes, with remarkable exteriors and picture-perfect interiors, dipping hands into the lolly jar and cramming our mouth with sweets. The suit-and-tie real estate agents sang paeons of the property, which of course remained a dream for most of us. It did not take much time or even much grey matter to comprehend that this inviting tapestry was just a shroud under which lay a multitude of unbreakable contracts literally written in concrete, bound by inescapable legalities and garnished with a hideous price tag.

Despite it, weekend house-hunting for us were de rigeur. We packed a picnic basket or two, to add gastronomic charm to a physically demanding chore and to comfort our souls. As early as 7-o-clock in the morning, we raced down snaky lanes, queued, and presented to estate agents, elbowed our way for the best views of halls and salles and rushed out to clamber into the car and race again to view the next domain.

Fifteen-minutes was what we got before we made up our mind to buy a property worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions. This act confounded us. In Asia, it is ideally not a “deal” if there were no haggling or a bargain or two thrown into it. Considering cultural differences, we might inadvertently translate this as “extortion”. Nonetheless, it is said, in Rome, do as the Romans, so we followed suit a la fellow Aussies.

The good lord must have taken pity on us (or on a struggling agent or the desperate owner), for we received a call confirming sale. We scratched our heads to recollect which property we had bought. Perplexed that it was a house that we all liked even though it did not tick all boxes, we now delved deep to think what was the catch in this sale. Was there a resident ghost? Or was a volcano just discovered amongst its grassy mounds?? Is the next-door neighbour related to Jack the Ripper???

Throwing caution to the wind, we shouted with joy, hugged each other, and signed on the dotted lines and were pronounced proud owners of our “own” property. The shadow of a looming mortgage to be paid over next 30-years was but a legacy that I was certain to pass on to my children if nothing else. Considering the repayments, retirement would remain a distant dream even in our seventies’. Taking proud possession of the keys, we set out to discover our home.

That the former owner was a (wo)man of refined taste else, a landscape artist, was definite. A steep driveway took us to the house sitting high on a mound ensconced by a formal English garden. There was not a rose bush in sight. Trimmed box hedge and sculpted lily-pillies stood guard to a hand-kerchief sized lawn, immaculately trimmed putting a tennis court to shame. The alfresco had just the right amount of wooden decking with narrow, grassy corridors, perfect for an evening promenade. The highlight was a swimming pool in the backyard landscaped to look like a tropical oasis and to shade from the neighbour’s prying eyes.

The excited family rushed to book their swimming lessons. I was no “Piscean” and it did not further help that I had once watched a horror movie where an evil spirit terrified its victims in the swimming pool. Perhaps, it feared eviction or suffered from a “territorial” syndrome. My constitution was not up to dipping my foot to test waters and disturb any resting water sprites. I rushed to the garage to rummage for some nails and bolts to anchor the sundeck chair firmly. Someday, I planned to sit at the water’s edge, reading my favourite books sipping cocktails into the sunsets.

During this time, we never once gave a fleeting thought to distant realities such as lawn mowing, cleaning large French windows framing majority of walls, annually, painting and staining the decks, general upkeep of a six-bedroom house et cetera and huge council levies that would be thrust upon us, year after year. When things started slowly dawning upon me, I quickly drew up permanent portfolios, allocating chores amidst general disgruntlement and rising arguments which would come to be settled, outside a boxing ring or avoiding a duel, as in the olden days.

In a couple of years, slowly but surely the “spirit of adventure” went mostly missing and essentially fleeing. We continued to wrestle with the art of mowing. The front lawn had sprouted intermittent bald patches. The grassy strips were impromptu parking lots for bicycles and bins. Stubborn dandelions laid claim to remaining green space and colonized it. The once proud, sculpted pin-heads of lily-pillies now stood like testaments of war (or a DIY haircut), thanks to our rough skills and unwieldy hands with a garden trimmer.

With unpredictable Melbourne weather, outdoor swimming was not much of a fancy even for the Aussies, let alone a bunch of wannabe swimmers. Our genes were deeply coded and tattooed by tropics of the sub-continent. We spent more time along the pool deck sticking our fingers to gauge the icy waters. At times we were even tempted to turn the pool into a fishpond. But then, no fish would survive in those wintry depths, except for seals or walruses. Polar winters came as a perk of living “down under”, Antarctica being next-door.

As time passed, we retracted more and more from outdoors and spent more time indoors. The gardens were proliferated with a wide variety of spiders, blue-tongued lizards sunned on the decks, an occasional possum or two dropped by and there were unexplained rummaging sounds emanating from rubbish bins. During an odd Summer day or two spent in the lawn sipping tea, a crackle of cockatoos descended on the neighborhood, banishing peace with their non-stop squawks and screeches and flew away just as suddenly, leaving the area dotted with chewed fencing and white excrement. Indoors brought its own challenges especially during Melbourne winters. While a live fireplace looked classy and made a good sales pitch, managing to light one was far from easy. By the time we “googled” and lit the fire, we ended up looking like “smoked salmons”, only smellier and a tad less appetizing. It was a sheer miracle that the fire-fighters were not called to assist. However, we managed to keep the fire burning through Spring right into the middle of Summer when the temperature touched the all too familiar 40 degrees. It was time to conduct a backyard swimming expedition.

Dressed in our skimpiest, we skipped to the pool area only to quickly smother this idea. There was an odd, bushy Huntsman spider swinging gently in its web, eyeing us with quiet contemplation. We extended our myopic vision to quickly search the grass for eastern or southern brown snakes, death adders etc. Irrespective of names both indistinguishable or horrifying, all promised a certain, unpleasant end, and if that alone did not convince you, these are also considered among the world’s most venomous. In all, it did not paint a picturesque setting and we quietly tip-toed back with our rolled towels to more familiar surroundings for a quick ablution.

While we went about our seasonal inspections of the house and premises, we shook our heads sadly, wondering what our banker would have to say. We even wept a tear or two for the former owner who had handed us a “piece of glory”, but now it deemed that we sing a eulogy. “Nothing another couple of grand cannot fix”, said the weaselly real estate agent, looking for a quick sale and his commission.

But this being our home, I decided to read “The Secret Garden” (by Frances H Burnett) to my family after dinner each night, to encourage them to work on our green space or what was left of it. I even dropped hints of designing an English garden or turning the decking into a Mediterranean one, complete with tubs of Bougainvillea and citrus trees in pots. That was when COVID-19 made an unannounced entry and brought the world to a standstill.

The blue-print of the garden was hastily redrawn. It was an ambitious plan to practice sustainable living, as we stood tethered on the edge of an apocalypse. What followed was a tale of kindred spirits and an epic saga battling slugs and snails and other garden pests. Did we make it? It is but another tale to tell.