For a period in 2011 and early 2012, I lived on Homebush Road, near Liverpool Road. It wasn’t a great place to live by any stretch of the imagination, and it was a stressful time, too. Living with people I didn’t quite want to, but felt I had no choice in the matter. I’d only been living out of home for around two years when we moved, and I’d only lived in one place. I didn’t have the experience, and didn’t feel I could afford a place on my own.

The place that we moved from, the lease was terminated due to the actions of my housemates. That wasn’t the best place either, but it was an awesome place to live. Ideal location, decent size. Should’ve taken better care of it though. Anyway.

So I’ve been driving along Homebush Road a fair bit recently, and I was thinking about hot it’s a bit of a boring road to drive along, but that’s okay. It’s another urban road; it doesn’t need to be appealing. But I’ve been driving along it and I’ve been thinking about how it’s changed, or rather how the place I lived in has changed. I’d been along it a number of years ago and seen the changes then, but now that I’m passing it more often, I’m thinking about it more.

It’s changed in that it no longer exists.

What was one a cheap house is now a set of apartments, far too conspicuous for the area they’re in, though hopefully better designed than the house that once was. But it does feel cold and extreme even though it isn’t, and that’s part of gentrification, really.

But I lived in this house and it was and intense one, in part due to issues with the real estate. It’s one that loved to threaten litigation against people who would leave bad Google reviews, which was almost everyone who reviewed them and it got to the point where they removed their listing on Google Reviews. They also threatened to sue another website for people reviewing them leaving bad reviews, which the website then commented on on their listing for the real estate. Early on this real estate sent us a rather exceptional bill which also contained threats, though that was overturned. Plenty of other issues too, including a rather suspect subdivision of the house.

It was also intense due to the personalities in the house, and just how full-on a lot of things were. This was a place that was crawling with cockroaches when we moved in, so we bombed the house and then taped up as many gaps as we could. The roaches stayed well away from everything after that, unless you were eating take out, in which you’d start see them coming out of the walls. This was a place where housemates would be randomly antagonistic toward others until they were shown their being wrong or they calmed down and moved on, leaving someone or everyone else with the wreckage. It was a house with some great parties and some great problems.

Public transport was good around the area, but it was also not. Missing the bus could mean waiting a while which could then mean being late to anywhere, and there were times where I was. Realistically I should’ve been in the habit of arriving early at the time, and I kind of was but kind of wasn’t. It’s one that took a while to develop. But I remember times when I would run across to the other side of Homebush Road and then put on my shoes as I didn’t want to miss the bus. Poor planning on my part.

There were many times when I’d walk to the home from Strathfield station, and it was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes of walking. I’d walk along Homebush Road, up and down its hills, and it was generally pleasant. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs came out in 2010 and I never cared much for them, but I remember being at Ewe’s place when he was living in McMahon’s Point and he’d put on “Modern Man” which I both liked and didn’t, and I ended up getting the album. In 2011, walking along that road, some of it was more appealing. I think hearing “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” somewhere may have helped. I’ve listened to the album here and there since but it hasn’t grabbed me in the same way, and with what came forward about Arcade Fire’s frontman a few years ago, they’re not a band I’m too enthused about returning to.

But it was an album that matched that walk really well.

I remember doing some shopping with my ex (the one whose dumping of me in 2014 led to my writing here more) and we had our bikes, and had to cycle back home in the rain with all of this food. She was staying the night and the rain was thick and dangerous, and visibility was minimal, and we made it back in one piece, thankfully, but it was scary. I remember cycling around the are stoned for around twenty minutes on a sunny day, and that was a great feeling and one I never want to repeat It was far too dangerous.

There was one party where we were all getting stoned and my friend Frank and his partner were there. So was my ex. We were ordering food from a nearby restaurant. My housemates and I would get takeout form them regularly, and get it delivered. They’d always end up taking a while because they’d be confused about the address. They were around forty, fifty metres away from us, and on the other side of Liverpool Road. We were too lazy to go in and collect it most of the time.

But anyway, Frank always took time to order food. He’d go over a menu and weigh up his options far more thoroughly than most people. That, combined with weed meant he was extra slow that evening. It was to the point where some people had forgotten that there was a food order being placed.

Frank got stuck particularly on their offering of crab omelette. He started getting deep into what it was. Far too deep, and he was going on about it for a while. When it got to the point where he said something along the lines of “Do they stuff the crab with omelette? Is the omelette in the crab?”, I told him that it was just a crab omelette, that it was an omelette with crab in it. I then got up and went to my bedroom because I couldn’t handle it anymore. He, his partner and my ex came in soon after to make sure I was okay, and I was but I just could not deal with his exploring the idea of a crab omelette anymore.

Near us and also on Liverpool Road was a liquor store, and I’m not sure if it’s there still. I remember seeing it once again years ago, but in going past it these days it hasn’t stuck out to me. It was a pretty regular one, but they had this alcohol (I think it was a liqueur) called Pamp. One of my housemates and I had eyed it off a few times and then we eventually took the dive. We couldn’t find information on it, or not much. We did find a business in another country that seemed to be the one that made it at one point, but by the stage we got the bottle it appeared to have stopped. The bottle itself was dusty, and there were concerns about how it’d be.

From what I remember, the label had half of a citrus fruit on the front, but I’m not completely certain. I also remember it being fine to drink, and tasting nice enough.

I remember my ex getting alcohol poisoning at that party, and heading to Concord Hospital with her and sleeping by her bed. She came out fine, but not feeling well. She threw up on the carpet before the ambulance came, and due to how the place had been treated before my housemates and I moved in, it was actually difficult to tell where the stain was.

My housemates were only there for around seven, eight months. We spent time trying to get the real estate to fix a light fixture that was leaking water, as well as get them to try and pay the power bill (the way the property was subdivided meant they were obligated to cover it). They sent us a notice to vacate. I ended up taking them to tribunal to get the money back, which I was eventually successful in getting done.

It was a pressurised time, living in that house. Had I known better and been more willing to break free from those housemates, I probably would’ve been in a better headspace earlier on. I ended up moving with them again, which was not a good idea and led to more issues, though that ended up leading to my living next to Ewe and Anna in 2013, and that was good. But a lot of damage was done before then.

I remember walking along Homebush Road and feeling all sorts of things. A lot of turmoil, but there were a lot of good walks, too. A lot of walks under pleasant skies, and a lot of boring times. It was a heavy time, but it was a light time too, and the walk was boring and enjoyable, and those days are now past me. Homebush Road is just another road, but back then it held meaning. Still does, really.