Dover Road, a memoir.

It feels a little ✨ DRAMATIC✨ to love an apartment so much, but alas, here we are. You know those times in your life that you’ll look back at fondly until the day you die? Dover Road has been one of those.

I loved my little apartment from the moment I moved in. I loved the pink kitchen tiles and the way the sun shined into every room and cast beautiful shadows on my walls. I bought a couch in my favourite colour and though it seems stupid, it genuinely brought me joy every day. I loved that if I took a midday shower, the sun would shine right in on me and make the water sparkle. I loved the high ceilings, the scratched-up wooden floorboards, the old pink bathtub and the blue bathroom tiles.

I also loved my neighbours! Not just Ais (though of course, she has been a HUGE part of why I loved Dover Road so much), but I also had Blanche who loved having a wine in the garden, Paul who singlehandedly looked after our gorgeous garden (rosemary, lemongrass, a grapevine, frangipanis and a bunch of other beautiful plants) and I also had Ali upstairs who always loved a little chat in the hallway.

So why on EARTH would I leave? Well though it has been magnificent, ya girl has saved absolutely nothing over the last year. This is partly due to poor spending habits (think: dinners out, uber eats and various “treat yourself” moments) but also because rent and living expenses were a lot. Despite this, I probably would have stayed but my landlord let me know they would be raising my rent by $40 a week when my lease was up so I embraced that it was time for a change!

The news of course didn’t go down so well with Ais! She promptly offered to pay me $20 a week to stay, though she did EVENTUALLY come round to the idea that change is good and would help us both grow.

So what now? Well in an equally exciting and let’s face it, CHAOTIC move, I decided to sell the majority of my belongings and I have moved into a beautiful little place in Coogee for a month to house-sit the apartment while its owners are away in Europe. The benefits? IT’S RENT-FREE, it has a beautiful kitchen and my new little housemate is a cat called Mouf. After this, I am off to Maroubra to a two-bedroom apartment near the beach to do the same thing! After that who knows, I think eventually I will find a cheap little sharehouse though.