Illoura Avenue, Sydney, Australia

Sydney, Australia is a beautiful, interesting city. Its one of the great cities in all of the world. Having lived in Australia for a while a few years ago, I’ve been to Sydney many times. Our home there was about 3 hours away from Sydney. When we lived here, the company I worked for had its Australian headquarters in Sydney. My wife was born in Sydney, was was my father-in-law. Sydney once hosted the Olympics back in 2000. Sydney is sited on a beautiful harbor that feeds into the Pacific ocean. There is so much to see and do in Sydney and its suburbs. For many Aussies, Sydney is where its at.

Sydney is a large shipping center as well. Products from around the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and elsewhere also enter the continent and country of Australia via Sydney. And likewise, products for export depart from the Sydney ports. Cruise ships often make a stop in the Sydney harbor. We’ve seen many gleaming ships in the harbor there. The excited tourists and travelers from all over the world can’t wait to disembark and take in some sights. Across the harbor, once can see and tour the beautiful Sydney Opera House. There is the beautiful Sydney Botanical Garden as well, which spills down to the water.

There is shopping - lots of shopping. There is world-class cuisine, terrific seafood, delicious domestic beef and lamb, and more. You can take in concerts and shows all over town. A lot of entertainers and bands come to Sydney to perform. Name any large, successful, American or European act from say up to 30 or 40 years ago. Chances are, they are well-acquainted with Sydney. Frank Sinatra’s reported “favorite hotel in Australia” was a Sheraton property down low by the harbor, within fine view of the Sydney Opera House.

About that shopping, you can find anything you want, need, or can afford. I have often said, to visit Sydney is to “step into the future.” Likewise, I have often said to visit rural Australia is to “step back in time.” I recall on a few occasions in the massive city of Sydney, there was this one person that I kept seeing. He reminded me of actor David Hasselhoff, or “the Hoff” for short. Hasselhoff was on tv’s “Knight Rider” back in the 80’s, and on “Baywatch” in the 90’s. And so for whatever reason, perhaps to entertain myself, when we headed into Sydney to shop, I’d see “the Hoff” at times. I’d discreetly point and laugh in his direction, telling my wife, “look, there he is again, the Hoff.” I have odd ways of entertaining myself at times I guess.

Nestled a few kilometers from the city center is a really nice, leafy area. It has a nice park in the center of the community. It has a few shops in a tidy, well-trafficked, village atmosphere. At one of the cafes, a nice Greek couple loved their clients as much as they loved running a delicious little eatery. The beautiful, outing wife always greeting everyone the same, “hello, Darling.” Man, woman, or child, resident or visitor, known or unknown to her, it was always “hello, Darling.” She was referred to informally among the community locals and regulars as the “hello, Darling” lady.

Not far from the village assemblage of shops, stood one of the many stately, residential streets. Illoura Avenue had a collection of fine, elegant, well-kept homes. If you lived on Illoura Avenue, or anywhere in this vicinity, you had made it. You were very successful. It was the right address. Your hard work, your ambition, your lifestyle, all were on plain display. Captains of industry lived here. In one home, a shipping magnate. In other, an “importer & exporter.” In another, a banker. In another, a law firm chief. In another, a gentleman who vaguely told those who asked what he did for a living, “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” Some of the guys at the nearby tennis club privately wondered if this particular gentleman was either in the mafia, or a spy, or both? No one really knew for sure.

All homes hold their stories. They hold memories of family meals, holidays, new puppies, new babies, new trees on the lawn, new paint in the kitchen, great-smelling cakes or steaks, maybe a new sports car in the garage. And homes also bear witness to hardships or sadness. It could be marriages in crisis, to children that get sick, to trees that get struck by lightning, to job loss, to minor floods in the bathroom, and more. One home on Illoura Ave. had its share of both sunshine and sadness. This is how it goes in life, for those that are living, and for the houses that make a home for us.

Owner #3 arrived in this particular home in the later 1990’s. We’ll call them family three. They were attracted to the beautiful home for the same reasons others were. Its location, its position on the block of land, its quality brick construction, its well-proportioned rooms, and its swimming pool. The home had an elegant kitchen, a nice rear covered but open porch, and a sweeping two-story foyer with marble floors. And last but not least, its owners over time have also enjoyed its fireplace in the lounge room, as well as the fire feature built-in outside, not far from the swimming pool in the back garden.

Family three was a year or two underway in their happy home, when things turned, well, unhappy. The family had been tight-nit. There was a stay-at-home mother, a hard-working father, two daughters, and a special-needs son. The daughters were early teens in age, their brother just a couple of years older. The son made his way in life on the wheels of his wheelchair. He was a cheerful, interesting person, and the delight of the neighbors. Even “hello, Darling” from the cafe in the nearby village shops would come out from behind the counter and always offer him a special hug. The post man would give him a tip of his hat whenever he saw him about the village. Such was the warm energy felt by those that encountered the young man in the wheelchair.

On one fine spring day, the happy home was forever changed. It had started off normal enough. The girls were away a friend’s holiday home, a farm in the country, for a few days. The father was in his office tower down near the Sydney harbor. His firm required his intellect, his steady hand, and his leadership for many long hours a day, but we was well-compensated for it. The mother had wheeled her sun out to the pool. She positioned him at a table near the water’s edge, and placed his lunch before him. She also placed their yellow lab, Buddy, out there. His mother then told him “I won’t be a minute, I’m going over to the butcher at the village shops, I’ll be back very soon.”

His mother returned a little over an hour later. She told others later that she had been caught by a friend or two, and was convinced to sit for a coffee at one of the cafes nearby. She then picked up the roast for dinner that evening, and hurried back to the house. It was most rare, and most infrequent, that she’d even leave their special-needs son like that at the house. But sometimes, she told herself, she needed a little break, if even just for a very short while.

She arrived at the back garden, and entering through the gate, she found her son floating in the pool. His tumbled wheelchair was now at the bottom of the pool. Their dog Buddy, clearly worried and in distress, had been barking so loudly for so long, his bark had grown hoarse. The authorities from the nearby ambulance service arrived in minutes, but it was too late. Their beloved son, the light of the house, no, the light of the community, was no more.

To say that this tragedy wrecked the entire world of the family would be an understatement. The daughters soon returned to their boarding school. They even told their grieving parents “we find some sort of strange, sad relief in doing so, because its just too hard to see you both cry every day.” The parents soldiered on, as best as they could. They became somewhat withdrawn. They were seen less and less at the nearby tennis club. They used to enjoy both hosting or attending the occasional dinner party. Not so much anymore. They had both been light, social drinkers. Now the father brought home more and more bottles. At first it was a drink or two with supper. Then it was a drink before dinner, two with dinner, and then maybe two more after supper. He was just really struggling to cope with his grief.

Tragedy two arrived at the beautiful home about a year later. The mother had gone off to a parent’s weekend at the girls’ boarding school. The father volunteered to say behind at the house. He wanted to get caught up on some paperwork, build some shelves in the garage, and of course look after their dog, Buddy. Seeing a long weekend ahead at home alone for her husband, his wife prepared him some meals in advance. He took himself to the bottle shop in the village shops, and picked up a few bottles for that weekend alone.

On Sunday night, his wife drove back home to Illoura Ave. The time in the country, away from it all, away from that house, had given her a fresh perspective. She told herself “I need to begin to live again, I must be more cheerful in the future, life is good.” She opened the front gate and then pulled her vehicle into the driveway. She entered the home from the rear door off the porch area. She called out to her husband. No response. She washed her hands, drank a glass of water, and called out his name once more. Hearing no response, she began to make her way to the front foyer, to climb the stairs up to the master bedroom.

In the foyer, she came upon her deceased husband. He was dressed in his pajamas, which were a light-blue, long-sleeve and long-pants. His head had been bleeding profusely apparently. The red wine bottle he had been carrying was crushed from the fall, as was his tall and wide wine glass. The spilled red wine only added to the horrible scene laid before her. Two empty bottles of red wine, and several framed photos of their beloved boy, were found just next to the master bed upstairs. Another two bottles of red were still standing on the kitchen counter, but he never got to those. Her husband had reportedly drank too much, and slipped and fell on the long stairs. The hard fall down the stairs, finished off with a hard hit of his head on the marble floor below, had ended his life.

The widow and her daughters didn’t last much longer in the home. Once a fortress of joy and comfort, the home had become too much for them to bear in terms of sad memories and misfortune. They sold the elegant home and moved out of the city. Another family came along as they always do. They live there to this day, having turned the page on the hard times of sadness that the prior family had to endure there. Over at the cafe in the village shops, “hello, Darling” still delivers her own signature brand of sunshine for her patrons for long hours each day, seven days a week.

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