Eight types of neighbours every Melburnian has lived near

They say good neighbours become good friends. But try doing that when they leave notes on your car telling you where to park, or secretly put their stuff in your bin. Here are eight types of neighbours you will encounter in Melbourne suburbs.

They say good neighbours become good friends.

But try doing that when they leave notes on your car telling you where to park, or secretly put their stuff in your bin.

Here are eight types of neighbours you will encounter in Melbourne suburbs.

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REALITY SHOWS MELBURNIANS DESERVE

PEOPLE YOU MEET ON THE TRAIN

EASY RULES FOR RUNNING A LOCAL COUNCIL

COUNCIL WARRIOR

The council warrior might as well front up to meetings at city hall dressed in highlander gear.

Even before the final nail has been driven through the yellow planning sign at the front of a property on the street, this neighbour has lodged a complaint.

Firing from a machine gun nest of legal experience with an insurmountable grudge against council bureaucracy, this neighbour will fight to the bitter end against inappropriate development, heritage overlays, rezoning or ugly toilet blocks.

Known for the motto, “I’ll bloody well run for council if they keep trashing the place like this.”

RATBAG KIDS

It’s not just the old cars with red P-plates hanging out of the driveway and obstructing the footpath that annoy you about these kids.

It’s the loud music at 2am, the discovery of bottles and cigarettes while gardening, the continual spectre of the road toll every time they speed down the street and the kerbside vomit that lingers after the weekend until it rains.

If a tyre is ever slashed, a window ever broken or a bin ever vandalised, just call the cops and point them towards those ratbag kids.

HOODIE McMETHLAB

Can’t wait until the street features on the news and old mate is carted off.

A solitary, stubbled bloke in his 20s who gets nervous whenever Jehovahs Witnesses come to the door, this neighbour is rarely seen because he loves wearing a hoodie and keeping the blinds shut.

God knows why his garden is so overgrown and water always seems to be gushing from his down pipe.

It would surely have nothing to do with the production of a commercial quantity of drugs.

Everyone’s looking forward to the street being on the news when old mate’s amateur lab gets knocked over by the cops.

NOTE WRITER

Hi, would you please avoid parking in front of our place? Thanks.

Hi, would you please keep the noise down on Saturday afternoons? Thanks.

Hi, would you please make sure your bins are taken in as soon as garbage is collected? Thanks.

Hi, would you please make sure your pets are on their leashes at all times near our property? Thanks.

The global deforestation crisis is worsened by this neighbour’s constant and habitual note writing, which often simply encourages neighbours to do the opposite.

TRASH PILER

The aim of the trash piler is to make the streetscape so unappealing that eventually someone else will clean up the mess.

Christmas was more than four months ago and that tree lying dead on the nature strip has stopped looking festive.

It’s not hard rubbish season but a mound of broken old furniture and a Sesame St high chair are forming a fire hazard near the driveway.

That’s OK. These days you can call the council and arrange to have your rubbish removed.

But this neighbour never calls. The rubbish remains until someone else deals with it or sets it on fire.

MEMORY KEEPER

This lady, who was already on the age pension when decimal currency was introduced, knows more about the street than anyone.

With a willingness to recount tales of floods in the 90s, a fire in the 80s and sandbags in the 40s, she can remember when her mother bought land straight off the government subdivision and, at a stretch, can remember the indigenous people who lived there before that.

It pays to sit and listen over a cuppa before her memories are lost to time.

BIN BANDIT

Stealing your bin space is the bread and butter of the bin bandit.

It’s a familiar tale.

You pop out to the kerb late on bin night to dispose of some extra bottles.

But, lifting the lid, you discover something has been robbed from you.

Your precious bin space is now occupied by a box from a new microwave or a bunch of tree clippings.

This is the work of the bin bandit.

Having exhausted their own resources, this anonymous prowler now off their unsuspecting neighbours.

SILENT STRANGER

Despite living 40m away from this neighbour for more than a decade, you wouldn’t know them from a bar of soap.

It takes a fire evacuation for you to meet the people who live in the apartment below you, or it takes misdirected mail for you to meet the people who have lived across the road for fifteen years but on whom you swear you have never laid eyes.

You inevitably have the same question of each other: “How long have you been living here?”

Mitchell Toy is a Melbourne artist and writer.

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