Packing up the great Australian dream

When moving house becomes a personal breakdown, sponsored by negative gearing.

Moving house is chaos.

This is a universal fact.
Talking about moving chaos is practically a national sport—because everyone knows the pain.
Especially when the skies flood the streets, you're two Taxi Boxes short, and you have to scramble for emergency storage at a local facility, costing twice as much as you budgeted.

But the real chaos?

It’s the great Australian dream of owning your own home.
Only now, it’s a night-terror mortgage that follows you into every corner of your living life.

A three-bedroom apartment in a gentrifying suburb? $2 million.
At a ~6% interest rate, that's a weekly mortgage of $2,850.
Stay with me here—I accidentally typed ‘g’ instead of ‘t’ just now and honestly? That tracks.
I don't have interest rates. I have interest rage.

I'm raging at being kicked out of our first family home.
The one where we brought home our little chicken nugget from the hospital.
Where she said her first words.
Where she loved carrot puree but flat-out rejected solid carrots—because, you know, logic.
Where we watched a thousand hours of seven-minute Bluey episodes and became experts in a fictional world where dogs actually have dog names, not people names like Charlie or Jack.
Where we became mates with our neighbours (unheard of in Sydney!).
The one I imagined living in until we could afford to buy it.
The one we entertained buying when the landlord hinted they might sell.

The one that felt like home.

That home.
Packed up into cardboard and bubble wrap, like it was nothing more than a rental on a spreadsheet.

Why?
Because the landlord can make more money selling it vacant than tenanted.
Because the landlord can't legally raise the rent on us again, but they can end-of-lease kick a family out on the streets to hike up the rent by at least $100 a week—something they did to the last family, according to our neighbours.

How is this a fair go, Australia?

For those of us trying to buy a home in the same cities where the jobs are, imagine what life would be like if you had to pay $2,850 a week?
It's absurd.

The only people who could possibly afford it are:

• Those born into the stonkingly rich millionaire club, who somehow own eleven houses by the time they're twenty-five. (And let's be real: none of them are calling those properties "home.")

• Or those getting mega-sized tax breaks big enough to make the disparity between mortgage repayments and rent feel attractive—at the cost of pushing up the price of housing for everyone else.

I feel like the men in blue suits, vying to be Australia’s next Boy Boss for the next three years, are just grey enough to have bought into the property market when the Great Australian Dream didn’t feel like a chaotic fever dream.

I don’t want a life where homeownership is a fever dream.

I want a life that's worth living—for me, for my family, and for my neighbours. For everyone who calls Australia home.
For the excellent humans, dishevelled and waiting for their large extra-shot skim flat white at the local café in the morning.
For the guy who walks his two dogs wearing only tiny white shorts on a winter’s day.
For the educators at daycare who keep my chicken nugget safe and loved every day.
For the new neighbours who just moved into a three-bedroom apartment—needing five full-time professionals just to afford the $1,400-a-week rent (think: lawyers and tech bros).

Chaos is moving, yes.
The real chaos? When your childhood bedroom becomes someone else’s tax break—because the idea of “home” has been bought, sold, and priced out of reach.