It was 1999 and it wasn’t just the ’90s that were coming to an end. My uni friends were leaving campus life, cutting their hair and moving into the adult world of shirts and ties (yes, ties). Still sporting long hair, I had one year of uni to go, though my supervisor, despairing at my lack of progress on my final project, was doubtful I would graduate. My girlfriend, meanwhile, had broken up with me to go on exchange to Bristol. In a gesture of kindness she’d offered me the lease to the old three-bed home she’d rented opposite uni.
The house was basic and had no heating or cooling, but still seemed too nice for feral students like us with our vinyl op-shop jackets hanging in the hall, stolen street signs decorating the living room, and a front veranda filled with couches where we spent hours reading, people-watching, drinking beer and listening to music.
My lounge room was full of buckets.Credit: Robin Cowcher
Years earlier, I’d regularly sat on the side of the road in my school uniform and gazed at that same house, imagining its freedoms while waiting to be driven back to suburbia.
Now I was 21 and my name was on its lease. Finding good housemates would be easy for such a central spot, where you could roll out of bed and stumble to class without shoes on. And in the world of share houses, a three-bed was perfect – affordable, spacious, and with a strong likelihood that you’d have the whole place to yourself much of the time.
Share housing had, so far, been as liberating as I’d imagined as a schoolboy – just the right balance of passable hygiene and partying, with eclectic housemates, whether it was the skint Canadian who lived on rice and soy sauce and burnt off his Saturday morning hangovers with 10k runs, the English physical education student who absolutely never wore a shirt, or the engineer masters student who posted admonishments around the house like “Do the washing up!” or “Who ate my chicken!?” I’d embraced the idea that open-mindedness and tolerance were essential for a happy household.
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Word about the spare rooms went out among friends and I pinned A4 posters on the campus noticeboards with phone number tear-offs. I soon found Mick, an apparently clean-cut commerce student with a broad smile, and Sarah, a science student from the country who’d had enough of residential college.
Perhaps Sarah had some inkling of what was coming, but it took her less than two weeks to pull up stumps. She missed her friends at college, a room had come up, and she was gone. I couldn’t afford to cover her rent, but the good news was that through a friend of a friend, we found Will, a history student and DJ.
It started off well. Swimming in CDs, Will gifted me the new PJ Harvey album and, with his trademark positivity, embraced Mick’s habit for protein supplements and pumping iron.
