21/08/2024
A couple of weeks ago, we farewelled our dear mate and neighbour Cliff.
It feels a bit like all over Mile End flags should be at half mast and people wearing black arm bands - it is truly the end of the era and we will miss him terribly.
Cliff was an incredibly generous friend, to us and to our little boys. The day we took settlement of the house, Cliff passed a dining table over the fence for us to sit at in our otherwise empty house to share dinner with our friends.
The first night we spent at Ms. E’s was during a heat wave with a very new baby. I quickly realised I had baby-brained the arrangements for the electricity connection and we’d flown all day from Port Hedland with our 10-week-old to find we had no power. Before we knew it, Cliff had passed an extension cord over the fence so we could run a fan and boil a kettle and keep milk cold and do other things essential for managing with a new bub.
Our lives side by side were punctuated by a constant stream of things being passed over the fence in both directions: tools, lemons, jam, a thousand tomatoes, advice, jokes and even, in the heady first days of the pandemic, toilet paper.
When I spent long periods there alone with a small baby and a FIFO husband, he would pop over each day to check that everything was okay - always to the back door.
He told me he used to do the same with Mrs Tav - the original Evelyn, Ms. E’s namesake. As she got older he’d come to the back door each day and check in.
With older children, if I wondered where they’d got to, there was a good chance they’d jumped the fence to visit Cliff. He’d reward them with an ice cream in a cone and a play with the trucks the lived under the TV in his lounge room.
My husband Locky spent many hours in Cliff’s company over the years, working side by side to fix something or just catching up over a beer at the end of the day.
He had this relationship with so many people - there was always someone out for a walk who would stop and chat over Cliffy’s front fence, or a neighbour dropping off food or, given our proximity to the airport, someone coming to park their car in Cliff’s driveway and getting a lift to catch their flight.
Cliff introduced us to a neighbourhood which, as a country kid, I’d never dreamed could exist in the city, where neighbours knew each other for generations and produce from quarter-acre-block backyards was swapped up and down the street along with news and genuine ‘how are yous’. It felt like being welcomed into an urban nirvana and it’s part of what makes Ms. Evelyn’s feel oh-so-special every time we arrive there to stay.
For those of you who have stayed at Ms. E’s, there’s a good chance you met Cliff, in the form of a cheery hello across the fence and, if you were lucky, a little snippet of history from his six decades living next door.
If you arrived at Ms. E’s after dark and found the lights and the heater left on for you, there’s a good chance it was Cliff who had done it.
Cliff lost his wife Syl many years ago, before we met him, but we feel like we knew her because he spoke of her so often and with so much warmth.
We will miss him dearly but I know how much he would love to see Syl again and how much they have to catch up on.
Vale Cliff, thank you for everything, always, and look after yourself.
