Last year, on the last day of my Hobart trip, Mum and I went for a big drive around all our old haunts. We drove past all the houses we lived in before we left Tasmania and moved to Western Australia and I took photos and filed them way. I found them again today while I was sifting through some old files. I think they belong on my blog and I thought it would be nice to write about these homes.
When we left I was only nine, so my memories of these houses are obviously super childish.
The top house is on Bath Street in Battery Point. It’s on a hill that sweeps down to Sandy Bay. I remember so little of this house, as I was a baby and a toddler when we lived here. One thing I DO remember is pushing a cute spoon with a little enamel ware animal on the top through the floorboards on the front verandah. It disappeared forever and I remember being super sad.
The middle house is on Parliament Street in Sandy Bay. We lived on the left-side of this building (upstairs and downstairs) when I was about 3 or 4. I remember sitting on the steps inside and my parents opening the door, bringing my baby sister home for the first time. My Nan lived with us here for a while, from what I can remember and that little room above the entry arch was my sister’s nursery for a while. I think!
The bottom house is on Mt Nelson Road (Mt Nelson). I lived here until we left Tasmania for WA – maybe from age 6 to 9? This house had a huge rumpus room and a whopping bush block at the back. The block ran down to a gully with a little creek and my brother and sister and I used to spend a lot of time exploring down the amongst the wild orchids and the blue tongued lizards. I shared a room with my sister here. We had bunk beds and home-made blue floral bed linen (it was quite fancy to have homemade bedding, I think!) My Nan lived with us here too, some of the time. She made the best cakes and I always loved getting home from school because there’d be jelly cake or coconut tarts for afternoon tea.
We used to spend a lot of time with grandparents too – at the shack at Tinderbox or at Nan’s house in Battery Point or my uncle’s house in Glenorchy or at my other grandparent’s gorgeous house in Lord St, Sandy Bay. I loved that Lord St house. There was a piano and huge, dark front room lined with books (FW Boreham’s, I now realise!) There was also a playroom chock full of old toys which invited exploration… and a backyard with a swing and a chook shed and a plum tree.
We spent a lot of time on the roof of the chook shed, eating plums or playing ‘chopsticks’ on the piano. Upstairs, there was a little sewing room and I used to spend a lot of time sorting through the buttons and buckles and other treasures. My Nanna used to nap in there during the day. Once, I found the entrance to the little attic room via one of the bedrooms and found lots of things in boxes, hidden away. My favourite find was a deck of cards with painted pin-up girls on them. For some reason my Nanna (we called her Icky) whisked those away and I never saw them again!
I remember I was forever stubbing my toe when I visited that house. I am still a bit of a klutz!
How about you? Where have you lived?
x Pip
I live in Launceston (I have moved a lot and lived every eastern state), however I lived in Hobart from between the ages of 7-18 (it was overseas before that). I have just returned tonight from visiting my dad, who himself is living in Hobart for the first time in 8 years (he went overseas for a bit). Would you believe I am familiar with every one of those streets (bloody Tasmanians huh!!) No really, I’ve known someone who lived in each one. Ha, small world eh? (Yup. I’ve lived in north Queeny too – the eh is a dead giveaway!!). Hobart is a lovely town. I haven’t had family there for a long time, and I’m not sure that dad will settle there. It doesn’t really feel like home anymore, though I did refer to it as my home town for a long time. It is still a great place, with a lovely arty vibe! Maybe you had some creative influences while you were a young Pipster?
I’m fascinated by people who moved around so much as children as for me from age 1 til I was 15 I lived in the same home. It was a Jennings fibro weatherboard, in Point Lonsdale, built in 1978 as a holiday home but we moved in permanently. It was all about brown – brown shag pile, heavy camel brown curtains, chocolate
laminate bench tops. Lots of street play in our
court and getting swooped by the local plovers.
I’ ve since had 12 moves, making up for all the early sameness. I would love to step back inside my childhood home. Did you knock on the door of any of these houses, Pip?
5010 Spruce Street
POBox42
Lovely story Pip with your mom. As I sit here and recall back in time. First recollection is the home my dad built behind my grandfathers. Three rooms and a big tub to take a bath. Very clear memory of my new baby brother coming home and frequent visits to my widowed grandfather and my two aunts and uncle thru the path behind our home. School and church were within walking distance as was the grocery store around the corner from our home. Then we moved to a town calling Wilmington, Illinois that was an apartment uptown where my brother cut the top of his foot open and a storm scared me with all the wires I could see out the windows. We then moved to Channahon into cute house where all three of us came down with measles and our cat chased the parakeet and my first experience of a tornado and plane crash.. Finally moved back to our home on West 7th Street and played with my childhood friends. Dad built another home next to our first and lived in the basement but not upstairs. In high school, we moved to our next home my mother thought was not the best to be our home but years went by and I graduated from High School and got married. This was fun and revealing. Thanks Pip for awakening years gone by.
Love how photos evoke such strong memories. What a great post (it’s made me reminisce about all the places I’ve lived….and about my Gran and Grandad’s home which no longer exists and is somewhere I long to go back to……..)
That’s a lovely nostalgic post. I wonder if that enamel spoon is still under the floorboards….
I’ve lived in so many places, we moved around A LOT as a kid – from Wagga Wagga to Townsville to Sydney to Adelaide to country south Australia to Canberra – Phew! Then Sydney as a young adult and now Tasmania. I don’t think I’ll move again unless it’s to live in Nuuk, or thereabouts. x
Pretty places and memories Pip.
As an adult I have lived in more houses than I can recall in one hit.
As a kid we only moved once, and then just one suburb over.
The BEST thing about those family homes – my dad built them both. Still standing strong, and the second home had several extensions as the family grew. My parents still live there, it’s definitely familial ground zero (in a good way).
It makes me SO bloody happy and proud of my dad’s skills as a builder that I grew up in homes he brought into existence.
And as an adult, I got to live in an apartment he built with HIS dad when he was an apprentice.
Home makes me the happiest.
I love battery point – such beautiful place. I have lived in many houses. I grew up in Montmorency in a small 1950’s style house. My parents moved from Northcote to this house. We had a huge backyard that we used to ride billy carts in. We moved when I was 15 to the other side of Montmorency to a new unit with less maintenance. I have also lived in Eltham, Wattle Glen, Hurstbridge and now Castlemaine. I hope we don’t move anytime soon as three kids and ourselves have gathered many knick knacks.
How nice to hear about your Tassy homes, Pip. I visited Hobart in January (also with my Mum) and absolutely loved it. Such a cool town.
I lived, for the first 19 years of my life, in my family home in Wright Street, Middle Park (squished between Albert Park and St Kilda). My parents lived there for 10 years before I was born, and I think they will live there forevermore…already 40 years and counting! Very unusually stable in this day and age. I remember that when I got my own room (my brothers had to share, win for being the only girl) my Mum planted a climbing tea rose and trained it so that the little yellow flowers would grow towards my window and greet me in the morning. Aw.
When I left Wright Street to have adventures at age 19, I lived in a house with bamboo wall panels and a grass roof in Papua New Guinea, with skinks running across the floor and walls, and birds of paradise not far off. The roosters would wake us up every day before dawn (earplugs were coveted).
After PNG my best friend and I rented a room in Bath, in the UK (aka ‘Bath Spa’ and the setting of some of Jane Austen’s books). We shared a tiny Harry-Potter-cupboard-under-the-stairs-style room, where in order to get dressed in the morning, one of us had to leave the room as there wasn’t enough space for two people to stand up. It cost us 12 pounds a week each…the landlord couldn’t believe we would be willing to pay any money at all to live there!
Back in Aus, I lived in a house in Hotham St, Collingwood which had a lemon tree hanging over the back fence and a pot belly stove in the lounge room, followed by a sunny flat in Robe Street St Kilda.
Then I shared a flat with a woman named Sorrel (like the herb) in Balmain, Sydney. Our back garden actually had a beach (yes, a beach!) where we could sit and have breakfast with a view of the Harbour Bridge. You could launch a kayak from the back garden – Sorrel often did! It was awesome. Then when my man joined me in Sydney we moved to an old subdivided town house in Darling St, Balmain where the next door neighbours, newly arrived migrants from China, would get their little boys to give us steamed buns and dumplings through the open kitchen window. And now I am living in a ground floor flat on a busy road in Nanjing, China (just for a year) where people throw rubbish over the back fence as they walk by…but other than that it’s great!
Keen to hear where others have lived x