4: Allawah

Arrival

After six weeks of the luxury of living in the city apartments courtesy of ThoughtWorks, it was time for us to find our own accommodation. Our budget was limited because we had to pay rent in Sydney as well as paying for the mortgage on our house in Canberra and supporting our children. So I looked for some affordable shared accommodation. I advertised on Gumtree and Irene gave me a call. She and Paul are Chinese students sharing a three bedroom flat on Lancelot St in Allawah, near Hurstville. Irene offered us a bedroom with its own balcony and ensuite bathroom. Dave and I moved out to Allawah on December 10, the day of the ThoughtWorks Christmas party, which was ironically just down the road from our previous apartment on Elizabeth St.

Cost

$250 per week

First Impressions

	Lancelot St is a beautiful tree-lined street running through the heart of Allawah directly from the train station. The brief walk from the station takes you past medium density housing blocks, some with lovely gardens. When it rains, the air is filled with the scent of citronella from the lemon-scented eucalypts lining the street. Irene and Paul were very welcoming, treating us to some lovely home-cooked Chinese food. It felt a bit strange to be sharing accommodation again - as if I had reverted to student-hood myself - but Irene and Paul, though friendly, were very quiet and usually kept to their own rooms. It was almost like having the place to ourselves.
	The bathroom needed a bit of TLC. The toilet leaked and the taps dripped incessantly even if you shut them off hard with both hands, until the plumber came and fixed them - a week before we left. The shower was the old fashioned kind with two taps, a non-water-saving shower head, and a raised lip you had to step over to get in and out. I found I much preferred it to the trendy showers we had in the city apartments, where it was impossible to avoid getting water all over the floor, and adjusting the flick mixer to the right pressure and temperature was a high art.
	The previous tenants of our room had owned the TV and a lot of the furniture and equipment in the place, and had taken it with them when they left. As a result, the place was very sparsely furnished. We ended up buying some bits and pieces of furniture and some bedlinen. Dave bought a small TV set that could double as a computer monitor. The reception was terrible and the only channels we could get were SBS and 9 - and then only if you had the aerial in exactly the right spot for each one. It's a good thing I don't have much time for TV! Then there were the morning wake-up calls. Every morning at around 5:30 two things happened. The guy who parked his truck outside our balcony started warming his engine, and the birds started calling. I love birds, but when you have magpies, currawongs, crows, lorikeets, grey butcherbirds, pigeons and  a baby noisy miner all clamouring to be the centre of attention, even the keenest twitcher would yearn for a scarecrow, if not a shotgun.

The Neighbourhood

Allawah is a small suburb near Hurstville on the Eastern and Illawarra train line, about 25 minutes south of the City. When Europeans arrived in the early 1800s the area was inhabited by Aborigines of the Eora tribe. The first European settlers were of British or Irish ancestry and there are still some houses on the back streets that are reminiscent of late 19th century Britain. During the 1960s there was a wave of immigration from southern Europe, especially Italians and Greeks. Today you can see their influence in the style of the balustrades on the medium density housing blocks that give the area a decidedly Southern European feel.

In the 1990s there was another wave of immigration, this time from China and Hong Kong. Now 42% of the local population is of Chinese ancestry. Hurstville is a Chinatown, the streets lined with great restaurants and fascinating Asian grocery stores, though lacking the traditional Chinese gateway you see in Chinatowns in the centre of cities like Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco.

Lancelot St comes off Railway Parade, which has a few small shops, some takeaways and a rather nice Italian restaurant. The heart of Allawah would have to be the Allawah Hotel, which comes alive on a Friday and Saturday night, with concommitant rowdy drunks staggering home past our balcony late at night. They do make a pretty good counter meal though (the hotel, not the drunks, I mean!).

Paul, Irene, David and me at our farewell dinner

What Will I Miss?

The hardest thing to leave behind is always the people you've known and come to care for. Irene and Paul were ideal flatmates. They were very busy with their studies and spent most of their time at home studying quietly in their rooms (in distinct contrast to the Australian students I have lived with!) I think we all enjoyed learning about each others' cultures.

During our last week in Allawah David and I took Irene and Paul out for dinner at an Italian restaurant. They are not used to Western style dining, and we spent a very enjoyable evening talking about the differences between Western and Chinese eating.

Departure

In my last blog I expressed the fond wish that I would not have to move our stuff by myself the next time. Well as luck would have it, on moving day David was in Canberra. I had to pick up the keys for the new apartment on April 2nd, which was a Monday. The previous weekend I had spent at a very intense rehearsal retreat (did I mention that I'm a singer?). I returned exhausted, late on Sunday afternoon, and had to pack the car that evening so I could get across town and pick up the keys, park the car at the new place and get into work by a reasonable time in the morning. After rehearsal on the Tuesday night I stayed one last night in Allawah, and completed my packing and cleaned the bathroom and our bedroom before heading off to work on the Wednesday. By the end of the week I was a complete wreck. Luckily it was Easter, and I had a four day weekend to recover. Note to self: next time organise a day off work to move and don't try to do it all out of hours!

You may remember from my first blog that I had hoped to live Agile, with only a suitcase and a backpack to weigh me down. Well, the best laid plans... Thankfully Paul carried two heavy suitcases down the stairs for me. As well as the suitcases, there was a box of office equipment including a printer, the food from the fridge and cupboard, a bag of linen, and some small items of furniture and some household equipment we had bought. Oh, and Dave's TV. All in all, a carload and a half. As far as Agile Living goes I think we can call that an Epic Fail :-P.

At least we didn't need a truck!