I'm sitting here on the black leather sofa in my mother's living room at the front of the house. It's freezing cold. I've got the air conditioner on cool again because the heater switches itself off once the room reaches a certain temperature, and for some reason it won't stay on all night. The air conditioner is on because I need the noise it makes, and I need it now more than ever. But I'll go into that in more detail later.
Mum's sitting on the sofa beside me, watching Emily in Paris from the very beginning. I like having it on in the background while I write because we've watched it so many times that it feels very familiar to me.
I'm wearing a knee length black nightie with love hearts on it, and I've got a beige shawl around my shoulders and arms to keep warm. It feels like forever since I last wrote, so I'll fill you in on what's been going on with me.
Two weeks ago today, on Wednesday 24 June, Mum and I made a trip to Service SA to pick up a Fitness to Drive form for her. She had been given one after being diagnosed with mild dementia. Her geriatrician told us she could continue driving, provided a doctor completed the form and she passed a driving assessment.
We had the original form filled in by a doctor, who then told us we also needed an optometrist to complete part of it before Mum could sit the driving test. Somewhere amongst all the red tape, we managed to lose the form altogether, which is what led us back to Service SA.
It's almost impossible to get a park at Service SA Tranmere during the day, so I hatched a plan to arrive at 8:30am, grab a park, and wait until it opened at 9:00am. We managed to get a spot right out the front and settled in to wait.
As 9:00am drew closer, we noticed people walking up to the front door, reading the sign, and then turning around and leaving. I couldn't work out why, so I got out of the car to have a look for myself.
It felt like such a government morning. People were waiting in line for their motor rego needs and other government business. Many stood there clutching forms in their hands, and just like us, they were hoping to be among the first through the doors so they could get on with their day. Eventually, I jumped out of the car and joined the back of the queue.
As for my own car issues, I still hadn't heard anything about the red Beetle. I'd pretty much given up. The following day, on Thursday night, I went to the hairdresser, and they asked me about the car and whether I'd managed to get it. I said no, but just talking about it inspired me to write to Peter one last time and ask whether the car was still available. I sent the following message:
"I just want to ask if there is still any possibility of purchasing this car. It's been a week now, and if it is possible, can you let me know? If it's not possible, could you also let me know so I can look at something else? Thanks, Me."
I received a message back almost straight away asking where I was located. I responded and asked whether if he'd received my previous messages because I'd been trying to contact him for a week.
A woman replied and said she had taken over selling the car for her father, who had fallen ill. Then I went in for the kill. I asked if I could buy the car and said I'd come and pick it up the following day.
She responded that there was another potential buyer, but if that sale fell through, I was next on the list. I was so angry. I assumed she'd read my previous messages so I responded with this message:
"Listen, I know it probably wasn't your intention to be rude, but you can take me off the list.
Just so you know, I think the way I was treated over this car was unbelievably unfair, and the whole experience has taught me not to trust these sorts of websites.
I wish your father good health, and I wish you all the best with the sale."
She then wrote back and apologised. From what she said, I realised she probably hadn't seen the messages I'd sent her father, and I could see how things might have got lost along the way. So I just left it.
On Friday morning, she sent me another message saying the prospective buyer was unable to view the car until the following week. She didn't want to hold onto it for that long, and said I was welcome to come and see it that afternoon if I was still interested.
It didn't take much convincing. I jumped right on it and arranged for Mum and me to catch an Uber to the lady's house. I was so determined to buy the car that I was prepared to do it without even inspecting it.
The lady asked for cash, which meant I had to go to the bank and withdraw the money. Before I knew it, Mum and I were sitting in an Uber on our way to Springfield to pick up my bright red Beetle.
We arrived at the house and it was an absolute mansion. The first thing that struck me was how secure it looked. Whilst I'm sure a house like that would attract criminal attention, it had a high fence and an intercom system. Through the fence, I caught my first glimpse of the little red Beetle, and I instantly loved it. But, if I'm being honest, I already knew I loved it. It was like that Savage Garden song: I Knew I Loved You. I knew I loved it before I met it.
The lady and her husband came out to greet Mum and me, and we naturally gravitated towards the Beetle. She opened the driver's door for me and I climbed in while Mum settled into the passenger seat. I simply handed over the cash without asking a single question.
Sitting there, I knew the only thing I wanted that day was to drive away in that little car. I didn't really care about any imperfections. It appeared to be in good condition, although it didn't have a log book, but by that stage it simply didn't matter to me.
As the lady and her husband counted the money, I asked how her father was. She told me he had liver cancer and was on borrowed time. Suddenly, all of my previous communication with him made a lot more sense. We spoke about him for a little while before saying our goodbyes, and then Mum and I simply drove away.
It's an older car and it makes a few noises that I still can't quite pinpoint, but I absolutely love it, and I couldn't have been happier with my purchase.
When we got home, I parked the Beetle on the road and we went inside. A little while later, I went back outside to drive the bug into the driveway. When I put the key in the ignition, it wouldn't start, and the battery light came on.
I couldn't believe it. But, strangely enough, I didn't care as much as I probably should have. It crossed my mind that the previous owners might have known the battery was on its last legs, but even if they had, it didn't really matter to me.
I called the RAA and ended up buying a new battery. The RAA man was a little bit creepy, but he was also nice, so I suppose the two qualities cancelled each other out. Below you can see two photos of the RAA man replacing the battery.
Below you can see some of the heavy machinery.
The 1st was last Wednesday, and I jumped in the Beetle and took Mum along for the drive. We pointed the car towards the city and headed to what is now the most underwhelming GPO. I knew the historic General Post Office had been turned into a hotel, but I thought they would have kept some sort of iconic post office there, if only for nostalgic purposes. I was wrong. The new GPO is a small, simple post shop on Franklin Street. The sentimental side of me was extremely disappointed.
I had made a list of all the stamps I needed, separating them into Zones 1 to 5. It was my expectation that, being Adelaide's central post office, they would have the new stamps in stock. Once again, I was wrong.
I asked the first woman who served me for the stamps. There were 197 in total, but I honestly don't think that's too much to ask of this post office. If any post office in Adelaide was going to have the new stamps, surely it would be the GPO.
She didn't know anything about the zones, so she went out the back and brought out a young man to help me. He told me they didn't have the new stamps, so he had to make them up using the stamps they already had in stock. That was annoying because these weren't self adhesive stamps. They had to be moistened before being stuck onto the envelopes, and when you're making up the postage with multiple stamps, it can be quite time consuming. Still, it wasn't the end of the world.
It took him quite a while to put the order together. While I was waiting, I called Mum, who was sitting in the Beetle in a carpark close by, and apologised for taking so long.
When he finally finished and I paid more than $1,300 for the stamps, he asked me which business I was purchasing them on behalf of. I told him they were just for personal use. And get this. He then asked me my name.
I couldn't believe it. I felt like I had to justify my stamp usage to Australia Post. Why did they want my name? Can't a private citizen spend more than a thousand dollars on stamps without being questioned?
I gave him my name, then asked why he needed it. He smiled, shook his head slightly, and I said, "That sort of violates privacy in a way, don't you think?" He replied, "Yes, I agree with you."
But just like the Beetle, I was far too excited about these stamps to dwell on it. I took them home and immediately started sticking them onto my pre prepared envelopes. Below you can see some of the beautiful stamps I purchased for my police letters.
The letters requesting the oaths were already folded and sealed inside their envelopes. I had dated them 3 July to give myself a little extra time to prepare everything before sending them out, and I was so excited to finally release them into the big, wide, global postal network.
On Friday morning, I got up early and took the letters to the post office. I used to drop large mail outs like this into post boxes, but they're now few and far between. It had also been raining, and I didn't want the envelopes to get wet.
I used to have a very good relationship with Jimmy, the older Chinese man who owned my local post office, but he's retired now and I haven't really warmed to the new owner. He's a younger Asian man who doesn't speak the best English, which I don't judge, but more than anything he simply doesn't seem to care about my letter writing projects.
I felt a little awkward leaving the police oath letters there because I hadn't purchased the stamps from him. With Jimmy, I used to order the stamps through the post office and they would arrive about a week later. I liked doing that because Jimmy would fuss over the projects a little, whereas the new owner couldn't care less.
Still, I walked into the little post office with a grin as wide as the Cheshire Cat and placed my envelopes on the large scales on the counter. I took the following two photos.
Later on Friday, Mum and I went to Baby Bunting to buy some gifts for Mum's great nephews. The only reason I mention it is because I always call Baby Bunting "Baby John Bunting", after John Bunting from the Snowtown murders. I took the following photo out the front.
When I was in Tanzania in 2018 and 2019, I became really sick. I have never been that sick before. I wasn't vomiting or suffering from flu like symptoms. It was so much more than that. It was an overwhelming, relentless nausea, coupled with an inability to move. I would lie there for hours, feeling as though I were trapped somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. I honestly believed my body was simply going to shut down and die.
I was staying alone in an apartment, and I would spend hours awake during the night searching the internet, trying to work out what could possibly be wrong with me. So many of the results pointed towards cancer, and the more I read about different types of cancer, the more convinced I became that I had one of them.
Looking back now, I think that was the period when I truly realised that cancer and other terrible illnesses are a reality. They could happen to me, or to anyone I love, at any time. I'd always been aware of cancer, but it had always seemed so far removed from my own life. It was something that happened to other people.
My time in Tanzania wasn't really a realisation of my own mortality. It was more a realisation that there are forces in this world that can suddenly strike without warning, causing immense suffering or even taking your life. Until then, those forces had always felt distant. In Tanzania, they suddenly felt very close.
Thankfully, my mystery illness passed, but the stark reality of ill health, and cancer in particular, stayed with me. I had to learn to live with the fact that the risk is very real, and that I somehow have to get through the rest of my life without living in constant fear of becoming terminally ill.
I think I've managed that. I'm still pretty unhealthy. I'm fat, although I am losing weight, and at the moment I think I might have bowel cancer. The truth is, I'm too frightened to get it checked. But I get by. The fear of ill health no longer cripples me the way it did when I was in Tanzania.
But there is something else that is crippling me at the moment. Every night, I stay awake in sheer terror that someone is going to break into the house. I keep the television turned up loud, every light in the house is on, and I even have the air conditioner running on cool because I hope the noise will distract me, if only for a moment.
This fear has developed over a number of years. I watch and read a lot of news, and my heart sinks whenever I hear about a home invasion. I literally live in one of the safest documented suburbs in Adelaide, yet I feel every noise with every inch of my body. I don't just jump. I almost pass out. My heart races, I feel a kind of shattering in the pit of my stomach, and for a moment it feels as though I can't breathe.
So I sit here in the cold in sheer terror. I do hear noises, and realistically I know we have rats in the roof, but it sounds horrifying, as though there's someone up there.
This fear escalated after they knocked down the house across the road. I don't know what it is about that empty block, but it just reeks of trouble. There are always men working there during the day, and that empty space gives me the creeps. I hate seeing large groups of men like that.
As I said earlier, I'm fat, and ever since I became fat, I've developed a fear of being gang raped. There's something about a group of those toxic masculinity type men that terrifies me. I imagine them trying to humiliate a woman like me simply because of my size. It is one of the deepest fears I carry whenever I think about a home invasion.
Even though I've been living in this state of constant fear, where I literally dread the night, there has always been a small part of me that held onto the statistics. They said I was living in one of the safest areas in Adelaide. Then, on Monday afternoon, a police officer knocked on our front door and told us something else.
I heard the doorbell ring, but I let Mum answer it. She spoke to a woman for a brief moment before coming back inside and telling me I wasn't going to like what she had to say. She said it was a police officer who had told her there had been a strange man hanging around the area. According to Mum, the officer also said they'd caught him and there was nothing to worry about.
As Mum was telling me this, I could feel my eyes widening and my jaw dropping. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I started asking her a series of questions. Where was he? Was he near our house? Did it have anything to do with the work site across the road? Mum didn't know the answers.
I just stared into the distance. My already shattered world somehow became even more shattered, and I realised I was never going to sleep in this house at night again.
But as the day went on, the story changed a little. Mum then thought there had been men knocking on doors and that they weren't invited. By night time, I was so confused and terrified that I called the police assistance line on 131 444 and asked whether I could get some more information.
I explained that my mother was becoming confused about a conversation she'd had with a police officer who had knocked on our door. The woman I spoke to was very nice. She said it looked like a trespass and that it was probably just an offender trying to break into a house. The way she said that so casually really annoyed me.
She then told me that if I wanted more information, I would need to ring a police station and speak to an officer who could look up the incident. She gave me the numbers for the Norwood and Hindley Street police stations. I rang both of them several times until they rang out, but no one answered.
So I called 131 444 again and explained that I couldn't get through to either station. I asked whether they could give me any more information. They couldn't, but they said the police were probably just door knocking to see whether anyone had CCTV footage.
I then called the Elizabeth Police Station, where someone finally answered the phone. She was incredibly kind. I admitted that I was frightened, and she sent an email to the police officer who had knocked on our door, asking her to give me a call.
In the meantime, I asked Mum a few more questions. That's when she started crying and told me I was confusing her. It was literally the worst moment of my life. I wanted to cry myself, but right then and there I realised I couldn't. I couldn't fall apart because Mum was frightened too, and she needed me to hold it together.
Later that night, while I was in my room at the computer, I missed a call from the police officer. It was about 11:00pm. She left a voicemail explaining that there was nothing to be concerned about, but that there had been an incident in the houses around us where people had been on someone else's property without permission.
I really didn't like that wording. Why not simply say they had tried to break into someone's house? She said I could call her back the following day, which was yesterday.
Yesterday she called me again, and once again I missed the call. I rang her back straight away. She explained that, at around 4:00am the previous morning, some men had tried to get into one of the houses near ours.
That was my worst fucking nightmare.
Four o'clock in the morning is exactly the time I'm usually wide awake. They would have seen our house. They would have seen every light on. Maybe they simply moved on. I don't know. But they were there. They were moving around in the darkness.
Even though I'd already spent the past year living in sheer terror every night, this hit me like a brick. It's that cold, horrible realisation that there are people out there who genuinely want to take things from you. People who are willing to frighten you, hurt you, or violate the place where you're supposed to feel safest.
Just as I came to see cancer in the cold light of day after my experience in Tanzania, this suddenly became another frightening reality. Not simply something I read about in the news, but something that had happened only a few houses away. I am so scared. I really am.
Mum and I have talked about it. She stayed up all night with me last night, and she said she'll stay up with me for another two nights, including tonight. After that, I'm somehow going to have to find a way to live with this.
I honestly don't think I'll ever sleep at night in this house again. Now I just have to work out what a life looks like around this impediment. It's now 3:04am, and Mum and I are still watching Emily in Paris. It's kind of ironic that I was so excited about sending off all those police oath letters, only to have the police scare the crap out of me a few days later.
The police officer called me again late yesterday afternoon, and I rang her back after I realised I'd missed another call. She told me it must have been a mistake. I then asked whether they had caught the men who had tried to break into the house.
She was quite short with me. She explained that she was in the middle of another job and couldn't answer my questions, but that she would call me back. After I hung up, I realised something. It's not her job to make me feel safe. Her job was to give me the facts. My job is somehow to learn to live with them.
