The Home I’ve Lived in the Longest

I’m thinking back to all the places I’ve lived in my life

The pool is the best part of my current rented abode. Photo by author.

When I was a baby I lived at a house high up on the hill at Highgate Hill. (It really is the suburb’s name!) The only reason I know we lived there is from baby photos of me.

My next memory is of our house at Allowah Street. I was telling my brother-in-law about the time we were flooded. The water came up to the second top step. (We had a high-set house on 8-foot piers.) I can remember sitting on the top step before being evacuated. My brother-in-law didn’t believe me. There was no mention of floods in Brisbane back then. Not to be proved a liar or a dreamer, I did more research and found there WAS a flood. The local golf course had a dam that had broken and flooded the local area. We lived one house from the bottom of the street. There was an article (and photo) from memory in the local newspaper.

House number 3 was my grandparents’ house on the beach at Barney Point in Gladstone. The two years I spent living here were the happiest of my childhood. I don’t remember missing my mother at all ( or father for that matter). Is this where my dissociative disorder started? Surely it would be natural for a 6-year-old to miss her mum.

House number 4 was my great aunt’s house in Ipswich. My grandfather was transferred to Ipswich with the railway. He was an engine driver. Knowing what I know now, did my great aunt and he ever get to talk about their son? Was he still attracted to her? She never paid any attention to her husband. Even as a kid, I noticed that. We only stayed here for a few months when Grandad won the casket and bought a house.

House number 5 — I think that was the first house my Grandad ever owned. Back then I didn’t know about renting. I thought everyone owned the house where they lived. So that house on the other side of Ipswich was my home for 6 months until my father came back and remarried.

House number 6 — My dad bought a house in the next suburb and we lived with my new mother and 2 new brothers as well as my sister and me.
We had lived there for almost 4 years (apart from a few months at Surfers Paradise — house number 7) when my dad was transferred to Townsville.