Shoddy fences make for good neighbours

This article first appeared in The Age on January 31, 2007.


OUR neighbours moved out last week and we don't know why.

We didn't know they were going. We had seen them a couple of days earlier but they said nothing about moving.

Then a huge removal truck came and took everything away. It parked out the front early one morning and had "Melbourne to the Gold Coast" in metre-high letters along the side. I thought someone else in the street was moving but got home that evening to find the neighbours and their kids gone and the house empty. Every curtain on every window was cast wide to expose its empty, lifeless insides.

Where did they go and why didn't they say anything?


It's not as though we didn't get on. We weren't bosom buddies, but we had had many pleasant (if slightly forced) conversations over the fence - about the kids, holidays, football.

Stuart once kindly brought his chainsaw over to take down a tree after he saw me struggling to do the job with a pruning saw. Another time we teamed up to mend a common paling fence that was falling down.

So we were friendly but not close. In seven years we didn't share a meal or a drink. We each had barbecues and social gatherings but didn't invite the other. Early on, when they returned to the house after several months of renovation, we gave them a "welcome back" pot plant, but the spirit of the gesture was never reciprocated so we assumed they wanted their space and we respected it.

That was OK because we also wanted our space. We have friends who have become best mates - almost family - with their neighbours; spending countless evenings and weekends together, dropping in without notice for a beer or dinner, sharing weekly shopping duties and minding pets when on holidays.

We could never be like that, we're too shy and retiring.

Neighbours are odd things. I often look at house after house on the cookie-cut blocks of our bayside suburb and think about how little the owners' lives mingle despite such proximity.

People are strangers separated by more than brick or wood; political views, education, ethnicity, personality, the pace of life and temperament all play their roles.

I suspect that to find compatible neighbours - ones you can call friends and be sociable with - is a lottery seldom won.

But the social distance we shared with our neighbours was better than the third alternative.

There were no angry disputes over shade-casting extensions, barking dogs, tyre-spinning hoonish behaviour or cats constantly fouling flower beds.

How many stories have you heard of feuds between neighbours that last decades and end in fisticuffs or court?

I don't think we did anything to drive them away, but who knows? Perhaps they are now ensconced in a Gold Coast mansion -- happily free of the annoying/noisy/aloof neighbours they left behind in Melbourne -- glad of their new beach views and opportunity to start afresh with Kevin and June next door.

We recently had a glimpse of how things might have been between us.

The rickety fence Stuart had helped me mend had to be replaced. We pulled it down and for a few days our properties were open to each other. Our dogs and children wandered freely between the borderless backyards and we had more chance than ever to chat. It felt easy, open and friendly, as I imagine a commune would. Then the new fence went up, things went back to how they'd been and I felt something was lost.

I wonder whether they know they left us feeling perplexed about their disappearance. Or whether they care. There's no For Sale sign on the house, so it's possible one day they'll magically reappear with the kids, all their furniture and the dog.

If they do, should we drop by with a welcome back pot plant?