Our refugee story, part one

It's been a while since I've posted because we've had a pretty terrible couple of weeks. The upshot of it is, we moved out of our place in North Bondi after being threatened by the brother of our upstairs neighbour, and we're going to be moving next week to a new place in Petersham, just north of my old stamping ground in Enmore.



All this started two Mondays ago, when I got word that there were some bookshelves in stock in Ikea way out in Concord, western Sydney, and hired a Ute to pick them up. As always with Ikea, however much you try to plan ahead something has to go wrong. In my case, although I'd stock-checked and location-plotted every item I was planning to pick up, I hadn't been counting on the fact that the cunning little brakes that stop the Ikea shopping trolleys rolling down angled travelators also kick into action when you load say five bookshelves onto the same trolley. So I spent a good bit of the afternoon trying to push an immovable trolley full of flatpacks around an underground carpark halfway up the Parramatta River, before finally loading it into a hired ute and driving it back to North Bondi, where the nearest parking space was 300m away.

Once I got back it became apparent that I wasn't the only one having a nightmare afternoon. Our neighbour diagonally above us had been testing our nerves for some time. She was a good example of the type that proliferates in Bondi in the summer and gives the suburb, and by extension Sydney, a bit of a bad name in Australia: orange spraytan, blonde hair extensions, surgically-attached stilettos, low-level alcoholism and a nose for a scrap. She found her seven- to eight-year old son a bit of a handful (fair enough), so sent him most days to play boisterously outside our flat instead (not so fair), where he would spend literally all day firing off a toy machine gun.

All that said, there was nothing in the situation at first to suggest we were going to have to move out. When we asked her to keep the machine-gun play to the far end of the garden she complied. We hadn't exactly made friends and privately she got on our nerves, but much of the time that's neighbours for you.



The problem came with her brother. He first came round just before Christmas, when I was out, and brought with him his pet Staffordshire bull terrier dog. I know that to their owners Staffies are lovely loyal creatures, but they're also responsible for one in six dog attacks in New South Wales. This one was being allowed to run around our garden unsupervised, which meant we didn't want to go out there and Jasper was left cowering indoors.  I think the conversation between him and Kate went something like this:

"You need to keep your dog under control."

"Calm down love, he's just having a run around."

"He's a fighting dog and he's running around unsupervised on shared property."

"Well we can hardly keep him in the flat all day, can we?"

"Fine, but if he comes into our shared garden he needs to be on a leash."

"What does it concern you anyway?"

"I don't want him attacking my cat."

"You need to calm down love, he's not going to attack anyone."

The guy was clearly a bit of a thug and equally clearly didn't intend to take instruction from anyone about what to do with his dog. But after that incident just before Christmas we didn't see him again until two weeks ago, while I was out at Ikea.

Kate first realised the dog was back when she heard our neighbour's son and a kid from the block next door calling out "miaow, miaow" into the house. They were standing on our balcony, at our french windows, with two Staffies, trying to entice Jasper to come outside. Jasper, sensible animal, was having none of it; Kate told them to get off the balcony (one of the kids protesting, "It's not my dog, it's my uncle's"); closed the french windows; and called our property manager to complain. He was off on holiday, but said he would look into it when he was back.

The next encounter was a few hours later, as I was unloading the Ikea flatpacks and trying to get them into the house. Kate was out the front of the block holding the security door open while I carried the flatpacks into the hallway of our flat; as I was moving the ute, the same guy came downstairs with his two Staffies, still unleashed, which promptly ran straight into our flat and started chasing Jasper again. Kate ran into the flat to flush them out; the man, helpfully, called out "That's gonna help" but otherwise pretty much ignored the situation as he sauntered casually out of the block.

When I got back in Kate had already gone upstairs to have words with our neighbour.

"Your friends' dogs have been into our house twice today. You've got to keep them under control."

Our neighbour clearly had her dander up and her her stilettoes were dug in. "You talked to my son today. Don't you ever talk to my son," she spat back.

"I told him to get off our balcony because he was taunting our cat with your brother's dogs."

"I don't care what the reason is, you don't ever talk to my son."

"But listen, you have got to keep your dog under control on shared property. It's in your contract."

"Oh yeah? Well we never had any problems here until you two moved in. If you want to make a problem we'll talk to the other neighbours and force you to get rid of your cat."

"You can't do that. We're allowed to have him here, he's on our lease. But those dogs aren't and you have to control them."

"Look I can't talk about this now, I need to bathe my son."

"OK fine, but let's make sure we talk about it later."

"Don't you ever speak to my son again," she said, and slammed the door.

So far so annoying, but nothing we'd move out over. I'm still moving furniture in and out of the flat; as I'm doing it, her brother comes past in a temper, calling out: "I'd help you if you weren't such a pair of pricks". He's hammering on his sister's door and eventually goes off round the back to knock on her french windows. We've barely got everything into the flat  when there comes an angry hammering on our own front door; I go to answer it.

This is the first time I've got a good look at him. He's probably a bit over six foot, with wolf-blue eyes and a nasty scar down one side of his nose. He's got short-cropped blonde hair and that ready-to-swing-a-punch stance you see on some blokes out on a Saturday night. Like our neighbour, he's British, with a bit of Essex or London in his accent. He is popping with anger.

"Don't you ever speak to my family again," he says as soon as the door's open.

"Hold on -"

"No, you let me finish," he says, jabbing a finger towards my chest. "If you ever speak to my family again, you'll be dealing with me."

He points to some sort of insignia on his beige collarless sweatshirt. It's a sort of black patch on the right shoulder - I have no idea what it was. "Do you know who you're dealing with here?" he adds. "If I ever hear from you again, you'll have a lot more than a few dogs coming round to your house."

It's our turn to close the door. We call our property manager and his colleague, and tell them that we'll be going to the police in half an hour. Then we sit and wait.

(to be continued...)