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?