List #7: Places I’ve Lived
I have never lived outside Melbourne. We currently live the furthest I ever have from where I was born which was the William Angliss Hospital in Ferntree Gully—31 km away. Here’s the list in order of all the places I’ve lived
- Rex Crt, East Ringwood, 1971. My dad built this house and I lived here until we moved one week before I got married. My dad renovated the house a couple of times and bought the blocks on either side, which made the whole lot an acre, so we had lots of room to roam. My dad built a little house for my mum’s mum on one of the blocks. We also backed onto a small park and the bush and farm area of the school I went to from grade four. The run for the cows was along the back fence.
- Queensberry St, Carlton, 1997. The week before I got married my parents moved out of our family home so I moved into their Carlton apartment for one week.
- Fairview Ave, Burwood/Camberwell, 1997. About a year after we moved in they redrew the suburb boundaries and our house was now in Camberwell. This was the house we moved into after G and I were married. It’s also the house we were living in when we had our three kids. This was a good house, but it had a heritage overlay and an easement running diagonally down the block so once it became too small we couldn’t extend to solve that problem.
- Highfield Rd, Canterbury, 2008. We moved here when our son was in four-year-old kindergarten. It was an old double-brick Californian bungalow that we hoped to renovate. After tossing up some options we realised that the layout and siting on the block meant that to achieve what we wanted we would have to lose too much of the original features to make the cost worthwhile. At one stage I found a plant growing up through a gap in the floorboards next to our bed. It slowly unfurled some leaves. I’m not sure how it managed to survive and grow like that.
- Croydon Rd, Surrey Hills, 2010. We decided to do a complete rebuild so needed temporary accommodation while it was being built. My sister and her family were relocating to Singapore so we lived in their house for a year. The kids were very excited about having a pool.
- Highfield Rd, Canterbury, 2011. Yep, back to Highfield Rd into our brand new house.
- New St, Brighton, 2021. We rented for a year while the apartment we’d bought off the plan was built.
- Queensberry St, Carlton, 2022. Back to my parents’ apartment temporarily while our apartment was getting the occupancy certificates finalised. The view from their apartment is spectacular.
- North Rd, Brighton, 2022. Our current address. I’d be perfectly content if this was the last house we ever lived in.
Have you lived in lots of different houses? Do you still live near where you were born?
11 Comments
J
Wow, you had a house built? That must have been such a huge project!
I don’t live very far from where I was born, about 16 miles. I’ve lived lots of places though…San Francisco; Berkeley (where I was born); Fairbanks, Alaska; Stockton, California; Walnut Creek, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I liked seeing your houses, and the view from your parents’ place is beautiful.
J
Oh, and your parents moved a week before you got married? Talk about stress! Your wedding photo is stunning.
Melissa
The new house was a propject home, altohugh we were able to make some changes, so it wasn’t too complicated.
Elisabeth
I loved everything about this post. The pictures. The glimpses into your life! That wedding photo is stunning (though, like J, I CANNOT IMAGINE MOVING A WEEK BEFORE MY DAUGHTER’S WEDDING! Stressful is right).
I have not moved very many times. My parents moved when I was a toddler, but I don’t remember that. I moved when I was 12 to a different province and then the next moves were all for university which doesn’t feel like it counts (2 places total across two degrees, so even there I didn’t move much)? My husband I have lived in 2 apartments since getting married and now our first (and only so far) house.
I live about an hour from where I grew up (2-12 years old); about 6 hours from where I was born. But my parents live about an hour from where I was born, so I return there frequently.
Your current place is divine. All that light!!!
Melissa
THe good part of my parents moving the week before our wedding was that we got a heap of appliances and furniture that they didn’t take to their new place.
NGS
Wow! Crazy to have photos of every place you’ve lived.
I have moved…a lot.
Let’s see if can do this concisely. I was born in Germany in an Army base. We moved to the States when I was young and lived in Kentwood, Michigan. Then we moved to the small town where I graduated from high school. Then I moved to college. I had a different dorm room every year, lived in a couple of different apartments during the summers, and spent a semester living in Arlington, Virginia while I interned in DC. I then moved to a suburb of Detroit for a year after I graduated. I moved to Minnesota for grad school and lived in apartments on Pleasant Ave, Bryant Ave, a house near the light rail station, another apartment on 38th Street. Then my husband and I moved for a year to Winona, Minnesota. Then we moved to the town where my husband got a job and we lived in an apartment there for several years. Then we moved into our house in 2017 and I hope to not move for a very long time.
Melissa
That is a lot of moving!
Tobia | craftaliciousme
Oh this is a fun list post. Makes me think about all the places I lived. Maybe i should round that up too.
The house you had built looks stunning. I bet the inside is just like it. And your currently kitchen… I am in much envy for sure.
Melissa
I would love you to do a roundup of all the places you’ve lived.
San
Wow, that was so fascinating to read… that you moved so many times within the same area and also built a house (Did you tell somewhere why you moved from your house?)
My parents had our house built when I was 10 and it was an exciting time (they still live in that house). I don’t know too many other people who had their own houses built, they usually moved into “exisiting houses”.
I only moved twice in my life when I lived in Germany (at age 4 into a bigger apartment and age 10 when my parents built the house).
Then I moved halfway across the world (6000 miles away from my hometown) and have moved a few times within California.
Melissa
We mainly moved because the house we bought when we were married got a bit small. THe house we had built was a project home with a smallish builder so was fairly cost effective.