You can choose your friends, and I suppose to a lesser extent your enemies, but getting to choose doesn’t really apply when it comes to family or neighbours.
It’s all a bit of a lottery.
Neighbours can become friends, or not; friends or family can become neighbours; neighbours can even become family (before our tempestuous affair began, your humble columnist’s dear wife was a next-door neighbour. She actually believed I was going to do something with that borrowed cup of sugar).
The property we have to traverse to get to our place has just been sold, so it’s goodbye to one set of neighbours and pretty soon, in will come a new set.
What/who will we get?
And if I thought they were remotely interested in my opinion, what thoughts could I offer them about getting along in the bush?
Here is a letter to them:
Dear New Neighbour,
We drive through your property along a dirt track that maps describe as a crown road. This is not an ideal arrangement for you, but we promise to help maintain the road (it’s up to us mate, the ‘crown’ won’t help), to drive slowly and carefully, to give you a wave if we spot you, but to otherwise mind our own business.
I wish you well in cleaning up the rubbish and rusty relics kindly left for all to see on either side of the track. In fact we’ll give you a hand with that.
You gotta love the serenity. It was one of the attractions for us. That, and bush walking along the tracks through the hills, which your predecessors found perfect for their trail bikes.
As the young bloke in The Castle said, “If there's anything Dad loved more than serenity, it was a big two-stroke engine on full throttle.”
We’re sort of hoping you’re not keen bike riders, although it’s no big deal. If you need some fuel we have plenty, and if one of your bikes ‘carks it’ we have a trailer, but in return there’s a small request – not too many 6am starts.
Another thing people do up here is shoot. Your predecessors valued that part of life in the bush pretty highly.
Is it on your agenda? There’s plenty of wildlife.
There are dozens of varieties of birds, big goannas, ‘roos, wallabies and wombats, plus goats, pigs, foxes and deer.
We’re not armed, but please, come and hunt on our property if you’re taking aim at ferals. We need all the help we can get with the ‘buggers’.
We’ve just had the council weed man drop by, with his bi-annual appraisal of our crop of serrated tussock.
You know, the stuff that scatters millions of seeds via the wind, so that even if we sorted out all the tussock plants on our property we would still cop more infestations from other properties nearby every time there was a bit of a breeze. So, as Council man said, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if everyone did his or her bit?’
I’ve got spare backpacks; if needs be, I’ll even go you halves in bringing in a spray helicopter.
Mate, neither of us can solve this one by going solo.
And, as I said, welcome.
Yours etc.
I’m sure our new neighbours will be fine.
Of course in the suburbs too when new people move in next door, you cross your fingers.
You ask yourself (as they do about you), will there be late night loud music and parties?
How do they vote, and will they try to sneak rubbish into my bin?
Is he/she really just after a cup of sugar?
City or the bush, the whole neighbours issue needs more study, more insights.
Someone should make a TV series about it.
Wonder what would be a good name?
