45 Hale Street, Townsville

 

The new owners did not change much of its outside appearance apart from giving it a 'cool' blue-and-white paint job.

 

The year was 1985. I had come back from my last posting to Greece. My Saudi boss, reluctant to let me go, had promised to let me continue my work from Australia, and so I bought this property on the edge of Townsville's CBD, which was going to be both office and home to me.

 

 

I bought it for something like $50,000-plus but then left town as the promised work never materialised. I hung onto the place for some years as a rental property but the trouble with maintenance and defaulting tenants was just too much bother and so I sold it in April 1998, a whole thirteen years later, for a mere $90,000 - hardly the sort of rags-to-riches story so often touted by real estate agents.

 

However, the inside has been quite stunningly renovated. The humble verandah has become an extension of the living-space.

The front room, once meant to have been my office, is now a beautifully appointed lounge.

Behind the lounge is another sitting-room. Its feature is the silky-oak room divider, repainted a gleaming white.

The garden has the city skyline as its backdrop, illustrating how close this ideal 'city pad' is to Townsville's mall and CBD.

 

What was it Heraclitus had said about rivers? It is not possible to step in the same river twice? Well, I haven't been back to Townsville since then.

 

Googlemap Riverbend