Putting up fences
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 2: Dreams of Land
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Tess Brady
Download the complete article PDF
Tess Brady's biography and other articles by this writer
Like most of the women I walked with in the park, I was renovating a house; getting it ready for sale. It's Melbourne and we were all caught in a-property-in-my-suburb-went-up-a-stunning-55-per-cent-last-quarter kind of talk. We used to talk about overseas trips but with the health scares and terrorism – even flying to Sydney you have to take your shoes off going through security – renovating and selling had become our thing. Instead of talking about travelling to Cape Town's Table Bay, the Red Sea or Bath we now talked about colour swatches, tiles and bench tops.
One of the girls, Sandy with her border collie, was an expert in kitchen doorknobs. She was an importer. Wendy and her black labradoodle drove the seniors' bus and taught art. She had a great eye for tones. Lila with her boxer was a computer expert who installed video security systems. Penny and her jack russell, the youngest in the group, bought property with her dad, a kind of father-daughter hobby. They specialised in East St Kilda and knew all the streets. And Trudy who had the red heeler talked about pools. You need a lot of land to put in a swimming pool and that kind of renovation talk was at the top of the chain.
We went to the park – the basic inner-suburban variety with a series of ovals and a few trees – because it was safe for the dogs. It was fenced, which meant we could let them run off their leads. Trudy and her red heeler always led the way. It was really Trudy's walking group.
The only one not renovating and still travelling was Veronica, who had a spaniel. She was the psychiatrist in the group, I'm not sure if that explained anything at all. Even Marianne was selling, although hers was a different story. Her business had gone down the drain and she couldn't keep up the payments. It was the alcohol and anything else she could get her hands on that tipped the balance. She'd seriously fallen off the wagon and this time got the shakes. Even in the park she was a mess. We tried to help but there wasn't much any of us could do. Her clients left in droves and it got so bad she couldn't even sell her business as a going concern. There's no getting around it, as a dominatrix you need a firm hand. We, of course, gossiped about her for a week or so, until we got used to it. She was probably the only sex worker any of us had ever met. Marianne had the great dane pup. It was nine months old, almost full size, but still in training.
I HAD THE SCOTTIE, AND I WAS TRANSFORMING MY BACKYARD into a private courtyard. Just like a private education: it costs, it takes time and it requires experts. There were experts in tree lighting, landscape architects, colour consultants, pavers, plumbers, renderers, fence constructors and, of course, the artists for the trompe l'oeil. The initial quote, from a-friend-of-the-family-who-was-giving-me-a-good-price, made me realise that I was not the only one hoping to make a profit out of the sale. Taming the backyard came at a cost.
The team of experts moved in and turned their attention to the shade of yellow the feature wall should become and the exact image for the trompe l'oeil. I made a few suggestions, enthusiastic about a Rousseau-like jungle, but was ignored completely. Recent city water restrictions had, according to the designer, changed people's attitudes towards gardening and we were to have a mural of the central Australian desert behind the kangaroo paw feature plants. It was apparently all to do with auction psychology. We were planting for a sale in drought conditions.
Even though I had hoped for something a little more adventurous than the central desert, I was pleased about the trompe l'oeil – no one else was having one and it gave me a unique topic to talk about. It was a bit like going to a remote island off the coast of Greenland instead of the same old tour of the Great Wall of China or Yellowstone National Park to see the canyon.
BUT THAT MORNING I DIDN'T GET A CHANCE to even introduce my new topic. When I got to the park the women were gathered by their cars, dogs all a-scatter, noise and dust everywhere. The council was tearing down the perimeter fences.
Trudy was furious and ready to throw herself in front of the machinery but we stopped her and the moderates took over. We organised and the next day pulled off a media stunt. The great dane pup, or Marianne in her skimpy top, took the fancy of the photographer and a colour shot appeared on page three of the local paper under the heading "DOG WALKERS DEMAND PARK RIGHTS". The mayor and councillors came down to the park the very next morning to discuss the issue with us, or at least with Marianne, and the work on tearing down the rest of the fences stopped.
We were assured that the old fences would be replaced with newer ones and we were invited to join a subcommittee to help with the new-look renovated park. It felt like a victory and most of us were happy – renovating was something we understood. And unlike our private renovations, if the council renovated a park it meant it wasn't about to sell. We began to walk the dogs in the area that was still fenced and went back to chatting about pavers and specialty companies who make the old paints.
Meanwhile the jack-hammering at home had ended and the backyard, still only a yard, was muddy and crisscrossed with ditches. For a city officially in drought it seemed to rain a lot. Perhaps the water restrictions were more to do with the number of people living in the city rather than the amount of rain that fell. Whatever, I was warming to the central desert idea. The agents had come around and a date was set for the auction. We were now working to a timetable.
IT WAS ALL GOING SMOOTHLY UNTIL THE SPECIAL-LIGHTING engineer decided he would replace the tree with a new one – the existing tree, no matter how hard he pruned it, just didn't have the right bough structure. He ordered in the crane.
Have you any idea just how disruptive a crane in a suburban street can be? Apparently it's the powerlines that are the problem, those and any shallow sewers. Next-door's tenants were, I thought, unreasonable. That the crane slipped on the mud was unfortunate and not in anyone's plan. That another crane had to be called to rescue the first was not in the plan either. The cranes were only there for four days and some effort was made to recover their car. It wasn't possible at the time to recover the item from the glove box, no matter what it was, and insisting that the emergency workers went into the sewer was ridiculous, particularly with the powerlines as they were. What could have been of such value? Thankfully the car itself didn't take all that long to dismantle, those large saws do a terrific job, and we were reassured that the parts we couldn't get out would, given enough time, wash into the sea. I've since heard that a numberplate has been found on the back beach at Sorrento, which was really lucky because no one ever did find Harold Holt.
I was finding the whole process stressful and quite looked forward to my daily walks in the park. It was the day the third crane arrived that the ranger booked the lot of us. We tried to explain that without the fences it was impossible to keep the dogs away from the playground but she wasn't having any of it. Wendy, always trying to calm the situation, offered the ranger the mushrooms we'd just picked but that only resulted in another round of fines.
Then Trudy lost it completely.
What remained of the morning was spent trying to convince the two coppers that the mushrooms were just common field ones – we'd been picking them all season. Marianne didn't handle the questioning at all well and the dent in the top of the ranger's van was a little hard to explain. But we managed. You do, don't you? I spent the rest of the day collecting the dogs that, in a final act of spite, the ranger had sent to as many pounds across town as she could. I drove all over Melbourne while the others continued to organise the park renovations although they were upset and angry and not in the mood to help the council. Secretly, I didn't mind the running around. It kept me away from my street and whatever havoc the cranes were causing
this time.