We were moving.

To the other side of the road.

Yes, that was my trolley (well, my new neighbours’, who I hadn’t met yet), clanging back and forth from the home we had made to a house in view from our front porch. 

No, to police who drove past me, I was not stealing the fridge, its crushing weight loaded onto trolley, tipped against and testing every bone in my back. 

I smiled at you; you smiled back.

Perhaps all those subjected to the noise were just grateful it was not them having to pick up and move on. 

Shifting is a hell that should be reserved only for those most worthy – tax collectors, parking inspectors and Collingwood supporters. 

But for renters like me it’s a worry with each ending lease. 

Cleaning, packing as well as securing, let alone finding, the next roof to sleep under.

So, the “For Rent” sign, erected before a tidy brick unit set among the odd numbers of our street, was the sign.

No hire trucks, and the terror of crashing.

No locking cats inside for weeks, because they already know how to miaow their way back for food.  

We remain in the same street, with its overhanging branches, leaves orange and falling, its hippies who blare jazz and drink champagne well into the night. 

And we have already enjoyed kindness from those we now live beside, typical of most regional Australians.

One, a dapper gent I still only know as Bill, leant my wife his trolley.

“Hold on to it as long as you need,” he later told me.

It was just one of those wonderful surprises from a “small” move. 

Chris O’Leary