Susie O’Brien: I want to Block it all out

CONTESTANTS on The Block, set in the former Gatwick Hotel, don’t seem to behave much better than the previous residents, writes Susie O’Brien.

ST KILDA’S infamous Gatwick Hotel is full of crazies arguing over the awful bathrooms, derelict hallways and dodgy bedrooms. Step inside and you will hear them screaming, crying, engaging in petty powerplays and threatening to walk out.

You’ll meet lots of people with big personalities and small minds flinging abuse at each other. And that’s just since The Block contestants have taken over the former boarding house.

The Gatwick was once a refuge of last resort. It was where drug-addicted, mentally unstable, alcoholic misfits unsuited to mainstream accommodation could find a bed. They paid about $200 a week for a ramshackle room often shared with rats, lice, bed bugs, murderers, prostitutes and drug dealers.

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Sara and Hayden from the Block. Picture: Richard Dobson

I wonder what those former residents think of the $75,000 Sara and Hayden spent on their disastrous bathroom. Or the $2.7 million pricetags on the penthouses which are already on the market. Will they line up for a chance to ogle Kerrie’s and Spence’s bedroom “textural highlights” or Courtney and Hans’s “dream experience” bathroom?

In this season of The Block, the rooms seem less impressive than ever, along with the contestants. By now, viewers know the contestants well, including Norm and Jess Hogan “the bogans” who are like Kath Day-Night and her husband, Kel. “Geez, it’s nice, it’s flash,” Jess says when she first sees inside their apartment.

On the first night, she admits she’s been “pooing herself” with nerves.

I know the reality-TV rule is that ratings gold flows when you get the right mix of crazies, cuties and cuddlies among the contestants. But I feel like we’ve reached a new low.

Do we really need discussions over whether people want to “poop next to a plant” or whether they’ll “wee in the pot plants” to get someone else back for their choice of landscaper?

This week was “master bedroom week” and the five couples were having fights over recessed curtains and ugly padded bedheads as if their lives depended on it.

Big issues this season so far include the lack of feet on a bed, the pillow count and whether “on-trend” terrazzo floors should really be laid up bathroom walls as well.

And there’s Sara, who seems so cray-cray that it feels exploitative just watching her.

Checking out Hans and Courtney, who are also young and telegenic, Sara proclaims: “They’re not as good looking as us.”

Sara and Hayden's bath on The Block.

Before she’d even picked up a paint swatch, she’d already won: “We’re amazing,” she said. “We smashed it.”

But I look at Sara and her histrionics over her $8000 brass bath and I wonder what the world’s coming to. She insists the bath — the linchpin of her and Hayden’s decorating approach — is the only one in Australia.

Take a look and you can see there’s a good reason why there’s only one.

I am sure a lot of it is in the editing, but they had 90,000 people apply and they chose Sara?

She’s happy, she’s upset, she’s staying, she’s going. She’s staying, but only because her make-up’s here. She’s “deadset f---ing going”. Oh, she’s back.

Sara insists she and Hayden went on the show for the right reasons.

“We want to grow our family,” the mother of one said. “We did this to create a better future, not to gain social media attention. We were 110 per cent ourselves. And we’re still together.”

Hayden then joked: “As soon as I win the money, I’m going to run.”

Touche.

Now, I don’t want to idealise the old Gatwick. I spent a few hours there a couple of years ago and couldn’t believe how decrepit, depressing and dangerous it was.

And yet some of its residents called it home for more than 40 years. Owners Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks and their parents were known as The Saints of St Kilda for taking in those whom nobody else would have.

It’s a pity, I think, that no one cared about their bathroom tapware or bedlinens. No one cared about whether their taps were matt or gloss. Whether their lighting was recessed or track. Or whether their doonas were feather or wool. Or even whether there were more murders at The Gatwick than any other hotel in Australia.

Except for Rose and Yvette, most people didn’t care about them at all.

Now, it seems the new Gatwick’s residents only care for themselves.

Decorator Shaynna Blaze’s advice to contestants was not to “overwhelm the room with too many heroes”.

That’s not likely on The Block these days.

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist

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