Mike Colman: Life of a prize-home junkie

From the days when our kids were still in their car seats we’d drive as far as we had to in order to traipse starry-eyed through a prize home, buy our tickets and dream of getting that phone call advising us that we had won, writes Mike Colman.

WE’RE a devout prize-home family — always have been.

From the days when our kids were still in their car seats we’d drive as far as we had to in order to traipse starry-eyed through a prize home, buy our tickets and dream of getting that
phone call advising us that we had won.

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It was cheap entertainment. As they got older the kids would run from bedroom to bedroom, arguing about who would be getting the pink one with the doll’s house and who would be sleeping under the ceiling with the stars painted on it.

Meanwhile, my wife was running her fingers along the granite benchtops and I’d be eyeing off the ride-on mower.

It was a staple of our annual holiday up the Sunshine Coast. “What day are we going to look at the prize home?” the kids would ask.

It was usually when it was cloudy, or maybe when they’d had too much sun and needed a day in the shade. Whatever the reason, it was a given. At some stage we would find ourselves trying to grab a parking spot within walking distance of a prize home, along with what seemed to be every other family in a 1000km radius.

Even when we moved to the Sunshine Coast a few years ago we didn’t give up on our dream of winning a prize home. We’re still as committed as ever – as is everyone else, it seems.

I’ve driven up and down prize-home streets so jammed with cars that it looked like the evacuation scene from The War of the Worlds.

I’ve been part of seething masses of humanity that have trodden the once-lush green nature strips of prize home neighbours into dust.

And I have gazed at the houses directly across the road from prize homes, encircled by parked cars and a constant stream of rubberneckers and thought to myself, “Boy, I wonder how the poor people living over there must feel.”

Well, I’m about to find out.

My over-the-road neighbour has just sold. To a prize-home foundation.

Even as I write this there are workmen up on the roof. Yesterday they were cleaning it. Today they are painting it. Each swoosh of their air compressor making it look more sparkling and immaculate – and my home more old and tired in comparison.

The sale only went through a few weeks ago and the workers – often three or four different trades – have been there every day.

Now our neighbour was no slouch when it came to the gardening department. His lawn was the pride of the street, his sprinkler system something to behold. And what that man could do with a leaf blower. He was an artist.

But the prize-home people have taken it to another level.

And that’s just the bits we can see through our front-room curtains. You can rest assured the steady stream of interior designers and staging consultants who have been beavering away inside with sketch pads and tape measures are working their magic as well.

Everything we’ve dreamed of doing to our house for years, but couldn’t afford, they seem to have done in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, all we can do is wait for the onslaught, knowing that as soon as the brochures go out in the mail and the dream-inducing pictures hit the worldwide web our street is going to be overrun.

The strip outside our house will be busier than Myer’s carpark on Christmas Eve as tens of thousands of hopeful families elbow each other out of the way to buy their tickets.

And who will be first in line? Us of course.

The way I figure it, after all these years our luck has got to change eventually.

And at least we won’t have to wonder how the poor people living across the road feel.