We have been most thankful for the "back door" neighbours who assist us with our lawn care and with house cleaning. We have known them now for close to 15 years. They seem to be the only ones not keen to move away from us.

A couple of the neighbours have dogs. On one side there is a Rottweiller and  Chihuahua. At the back, is a Labrador (Meg) and a Ridgeback (Tommy.) Silly me had offered to take them for walks. I found out next door's daughter's boyfriend broke a leg, trying to take "Bear" the very placid, but still very strong Rottie for a walk one day. I was also informed I would suffer a similar fate if I tried to take Meg the fully grown Labrador for a walk. I have given up both of those plans. As an edit to this chapter, sadly "Bear" has gone to the neighbour's friend's home, ostensibly for security. However, if the thieves and robbers knew it "Bear" has to be the most placid Rottweiller I have ever known.

One very hot night, pre-air conditioning of our bedroom, we had our blinds and window open for any cool air that might happen to make itself known. About 1 am my wife turned over, to get more comfortable. As she did she saw a big fire burning in a "Skip*" bin across from us. It seems some scraps that were in the bin resulting from a renovation by the neighbour, was set alight by some kind of "incendiary" device.  Flames were shooting meters into the air, from the bin.

We had our suspicions where the "device" came from, as well. We called the fire brigade and they came within about 10 minutes, and soon had the fire extinguished. They knocked on the front door but no one answered. I figured the neighbours might either have taken sleeping pills or had a good night out drinking the previous night.

We later learned the couple were sound asleep in their front bedroom, just behind the skip and the fire. They had no idea what had happened till they saw the burned out skip contents next morning.

We have been robbed a few times. One of those stories is in a later Chapter. The other time was when a "whipper-snipper*" was stolen from the old back shed which I admit was left unlocked by me! Another smaller infraction was when a whole bunch of neighbours including us, had their hose portions cut off.

We wondered if someone needed them for "bonging" as we were pretty sure at one time, down in the bottom streets in front of us, a regular drug cartel or some such was thriving. We used to see cars coming and going at the same time every week, in and out of the street opposite, which led to more streets further down with only very short spaces of time between the entry and exit.

I have always been inclined to be friendly with the neighbours. The current neighbours came a bit over twelve years ago and the kids were really friendly, initially. I took a shine to all the children ranging in age from (then) about 4 years to the eldest about 12.

The lady happened to confide in me sometime later the neighbour in their previous home had (she claimed) molested one of the boys. I guess you know that was the end of it for me. From that moment on I have kept my distance from her children. We know from the neighbour on our other side that this lady has been in the habit of "colourizing" the truth somewhat.

On a number of matters, she has been seen as an outright liar. The second youngest boy, now 17 I think, was the one when they came who was particularly keen to be friends. It pains me that he has had no idea after all this time why I have kept my distance. Goodness knows what tale his mother has told him about me.

We knew there were problems in the household as one night one of the girls took off down the road, to neighbours in the street in front of us, in her nightwear, to get some sort of assistance. This same girl, at nine years of age, was climbing out of the second level window and crawling across a pipe from the house to the garage in her panties one day in broad daylight.

I reported it to her mother but I am not sure what was done about that. Another reason I know things were not ok next door is the speed with which the eldest son and the 2 girls have moved out either to live with their father or flat together or with friends somewhere. I very rarely, if ever, see them coming to visit their mother.

Thanks to a very new friend in FS I now include the following:(This intro will be deleted in final editing.)

The previous owner of the Creepy Neighbours' house had a white metal see-through fence put around her property to keep her dog in. After the Creepy Neighbours moved in a car ran up on the street opposite in our T-intersection and messed up the fence as well as knocking over the steel light post in front. The "Creepies" wanted me to pay half the cost of replacing the fence. I refused as the lady who wanted to put it up excluded us from contributing seeing it was only to keep her dog in. We did not feel obligated to contribute on that basis.

We do have 3 large Pine trees dividing our properties that were there when we bought the house (a lot smaller then of course)...sadly some of them are dying and we have had several tree removers offering to come and take the dying one/s down. 

On a more positive note with these particular neighbours. After all the troubles we have had with them over the years as outlined above. A really good thing happened over replacement of the old brick fence dividing our properties. We believe the old brick fence most likely preceded both our house and the 2-story one of these "Creepy Neighbours" you will read about in my enclosed poem. On another occasion, we found some old fibro pieces in our yard that may have belonged to a previous old house, where the 2-storey one now stands.

We are certain the old brick fence was probably there in the old house's time.Our house is the beginning of a newer estate, where the house we live in was the last of a group of homes all built by the same company in 1982.


Our former pastor visited one day and made the observation that despite a marked lean in the old brick fence, he claimed it might still stand for years.
Some two or three years later we heard this enormous bump. Our house shook from it. Lo and behold one old brick fence decided it had been sitting around on its ever-so-slight angle for long enough. Down it Came!

The "Creepy Neighbours" of our poem became much more amenable over replacement of the old fence. We came to an agreement a Skip Bin would be obtained by me. The neighbours volunteered to come over and carefully pick up all the old bricks, and load them, very symmetrically, I might add, into the skip bin to make the best use of the limited space it afforded.

We agreed on the fence provider and installer's quote and now we have a complete "Colorbond" fence surrounding our property. It took a kind of "spiritual suggestion" to get the creepies to finally pay their half of the fence cost, but they did, in the end.