Incredible story behind squashed Aussie home

Hidden among the towers that have sprouted up across Australia there are those who are hanging on to their homes with everything they’ve got.

As Australia’s population has grown over the years, there has been a drive to build apartments that has left large parts of the nation unrecognisable.

Suburbs that were once populated with red-brick California bungalows and children shrieking in the streets with glee are now home to clusters of imposing residential towers and shopping centres.

Walking around these heavily-populated hives of city-dwellers it’s difficult to imagine how much life has changed in such a relatively short space of time.

However, if you look carefully enough among the towers you will find an incredible sight.

There are just a handful of homes that are now left surrounded on all sides by enormous buildings — creating an almost comical juxtaposition for those walking by.

Inside them are Aussies who are hanging onto the lives they had before the big developers moved in. And they’re not moving out for love nor money.

This home in Rhodes is surrounded on all sides by towers. Picture: Ben Graham

Next door is a swanky shopping centre. Picture: Ben Graham

Perhaps one of the most striking examples in Sydney is a home in Rhodes — in the city’s inner west — which is ridiculously dwarfed by its neighbouring buildings.

Immediately next door and separated by just a narrow driveway sits the swanky Rhodes Central shopping centre — where chefs in the food court are busy doing their prep for the lunchtime rush and tradies are stopping for their morning coffees.

There are similar-looking old red brick homes around the other side of the centre that have clearly been earmarked for demolition, with their owners moving onto pastures new.

A 15-minute drive away in Abbotsford there is another home that stands out like a relic of a bygone era among large blocks of apartments, supermarkets and shops.

The four-bedder that seems to sink in between its surrounding buildings was built originally as a single-storey home back in 1940, and it belongs to 81-year-old Winston Marsden and his 77-year-old wife Adele.

Incredibly, Winston has lived in the home for almost his entire life and said that he’ll have to be “carted out in a box” when he leaves.

The four-bedder appears to sink behind the surrounding buildings. Picture: Ben Graham

Speaking to news.com.au he said his parents began renting the home when he was just three-months-old.

“It was a terrific place to grow up,” he said. “There was bugger all traffic of course and we had the trams going up and down.”

He said the formally industrial area has “completely changed”, and it’s easy to see what he means.

On the outside of the home, heavy traffic clogs the Great North Road as busy Sydneysiders rush about in the pouring rain.

But stepping into the Marsdens’ little haven, the sound of the engines seems to miraculously die away and you’re transported to another point in history.

Despite the renovations and extensions over the years, the home retains a charm that modern buildings just don’t have.

The first thing that strikes you is that the walls are almost completely lined with photos of the couple’s family.

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Winston (on the far right) with his family inside the home. Picture: Ben Graham

From four kids, they have ten grandkids and each one of them has an attachment to the home where so many memories were made for the Marsden clan.

Group pictures plastered along the hallway show all the grandkids lined up, always in the same order, at the family home each Christmas so you can see them dramatically sprouting upwards each year.

On the wall next to the entrance to the main living area there’s a sprawling family tree which traces the family name back to Lancashire in the north England and Germany. Incredibly, it spans back as far as the 1600s.

There’s a side-room not much bigger than a cupboard next to the living area that unbelievably served as a kitchen until just over 20 years ago.

“Believe me I had about 250 people in that garden for a 21st and I was cooking for them from this kitchen,” exclaimed Adele.

It wasn’t until recently that the home was extended to the size it is now, meaning space was at a premium when the Marsdens were raising their kids.

“We raised four kids in here, with two and half bedrooms,” said Winston.

That sounds like a luxury compared to Winston’s sleeping arrangements as a teenager, when he shared a 4x3m “back room”, separated from the main building and across the garden, with his brother Leonard.

The tiny room Winston used to share with his brother. Picture: Ben Graham

How the home used to look. Picture: Ben Graham

That room now is just a tiny storage room in the garage.

“We never had a problem,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of stuff like kids have now.”

The experience certainly didn’t Winston put off wanting to live in the family home. After his parents bought it in the 1950s, he and his wife bought it off them in the 1970s.

And, by the sounds of it, they had a blast in Abbotsford — a suburb they said was a decent, hard-working neighbourhood that was thriving with strong industry and factories.

In fact, Adele and Winston met each other through their work locally at BHP.

She was a tracer, meaning she would work in an office where workers would draw designs in pencil and Adele would trace them onto linen using black ink. Winston was an engineer who spent 50 years with BHP.

However as time marched on, life around the home began to move forward quickly. And before the Marsdens knew it, there were large apartment blocks, a large car park, a supermarket and a bottle shop springing up around them.

The old serenity of the neighbourhood was vanishing as heavy traffic began to flow down the street where kids used to play and trams used to stop.

This is the view out of the back of the home now. Picture: Ben Graham

The Marsdens have a long list of issues they’ve had to endure over the years, from alleged antics from developers that drove them up the wall, to the sounds of trucks reversing each morning and people parking in their driveway.

All of which has resulted in more letter of complaints to the council than Winston cares to remember.

He even believes that developers found a woman who was as “nutty as a fruitcake” to take tenancy of the house that used to be next door in attempt to drive them out.

“She’d come home at three in the morning have the music flat out and that sort of s**t,” he said.

However, the couple are able to look on the ups and downs of their time in the home with good humour, and they are happy just where they are.

“We looked into moving and we weighed up the pros and cons,” he said. “But there was far more in favour of us staying than there was of going anywhere else.”

“We’ve got all our facilities here, we know all the local shopkeepers, it suits us for shopping, it’s close to the city and we have a ferry service that goes into town.

“And, now we’ve got no neighbours it’s terrific.”

A view of the house from the back. Picture: Ben Graham

After all the problems they’ve endured over the years, the couple say they feel they have finally won the battle against the developers.

Money doesn’t appear to factor into the equation for the Marsdens. Despite the fact the home would likely fetch a fortune in today’s red hot property market — and homes nearby selling for upwards of $3 million — the home contains too many memories for them to consider moving out now.

“We’ve won. We’re here forever,” said Winston. “They’ll have to cart me out in a box when I leave.”

However, Adele appears to have other ideas.

“Look, if somebody came and offered $4 million then I’d say that Winston is in the nursing home!” she laughs.

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