I'm sitting here in my bra, a rare occurrence given I don't think I've worn one in years, my tits completely foreign to the concept of underwire, but it's the only clean thing left in my drawer. I'm butting out my cigarette in an empty coffee cup. Sun on my back. My toilet and washing machine unanimously decided to flood my bathroom floor this morning, and in a moment of genius I grabbed every bit of bedding I own to soak it up. Which is how I ended up with a clothesline full of sheets at 10am and my one Kmart towel, which can barely dry me after a shower, nowhere near the situation it needed to be.

I look around my backyard, a concrete slab with an embarrassing number of seating options for someone who lived here alone for 3 years, and for the first time, instead of seeing an unmanicured, slightly weed-infested space I should probably do something about, I feel something unexpected. Nostalgia.

Growing up, my Nonna lived in Altona, and if you don't know Altona, just know, ten metre radius and you're guaranteed to run into a Rosa, a Maria, or someone's Nonno in a singlet watering concrete.

Nonna's backyard wasn't particularly aesthetic. It wasn't modern or anything you'd save to your Pinterest board. But fuck was it welcoming.

Huge concrete slab. A shed. And needless to say, her garden.

It operated as the ultimate third space, before third spaces were a thing people wrote think pieces about. You didn't need an agenda to come over. You didn't even need an invite. Everyone was doing their own thing, but together.

Mum would be there having a durry after hand balling me and my sister off to Nonna, or to whatever other unlucky patron had decided to pop in that day. My sister either joined at the hip with Nonna or in the shed building something out of whatever scrap wood she could find. Uncle Maurie lost in a deep snore on the couch within five minutes upon arrival, impressive. Nonna on the phone with her area code or cooking, or getting some sun on her legs (runs in the family that one).

And then there was the sound of the side gate.

That specific creak. The anticipation of it. Waiting to see who was going to come around the corner next.

What I'm now sitting here realising is that you can't engineer it back. That's the problem. Whatever that backyard had, that ease, that door-always-open quality, that sense that showing up unannounced was an act of love rather than an imposition, it wasn't built intentionally. It grew out of consistency, and proximity, and a generation of people who didn't yet feel the need to schedule a coffee three weeks in advance.

So how do you recreate something that only works if nobody knows they're creating it?

I want my backyard to be that place. I want neighbours to hear the chit-chat and wander in. I want friends who are in the area to just appear. I want family to not need an invitation. I want someone to be having a coffee while someone else opens a wine while someone else starts an unsolicited card game on the Facebook Marketplace table that is genuinely one strong breeze away from collapse.

I want to hear the side gate again.

The thing is, I'm also the person who just discovered the only clean item in her wardrobe was a bra she forgot she owned and whose washing line is doing the most it has ever done in its entire life right now.

But I'm outside, sun's out and the side gate's unlocked.

It's a start.