![]() I can imagine it coming up in shared memories, my mother thinking “Oh goodness! Look at the face on it! She hated having her hair cut” and sharing it with her friends, never knowing how that memory was framed in my mind. I can’t help but think of what my feelings would be if that picture was found on Facebook by me years later. Most of the time I liked to run away and hide in trees and make umbrellas out of leaves. I didn’t really have the words to talk about what was happening. The punching bag that hung there hung there because on coming home from pre-school I would rage at those in my safe place, and my parents made me a punching bag because I wasn’t allowed to let my anger hurt other people. My big feelings in that moment represented pain and genuine confusion about what was happening in my world. No-one had or knew what baby shaming was. And if I don’t ever want to look at it ever again, I don’t have to. Thankfully, that picture has only one copy, and it’s in an album I own. So when I look at that photo, I see a little girl who felt trapped and stuck and powerless. At Nanny’s house I could eat the Weetbix I missed so much on her green chair, and play with Kassy -Nanny’s beautiful Golden Lab, gentle and kind, and not at all like the village dogs who belonged to no-one, roamed unchecked, and would snarl if you came too close. ![]() If I could grow my hair long, like Rapunzel, I could throw it all the way to Nanny’s house in Australia, and pull myself across. I saw my hair, my princess hair, as the way out. It meant mango trees to climb and hide in and eat from until my tummy was sore and juice dripped down my chin and hands. It meant adventures sometimes too – leaves from rubber trees big enough to use as umbrellas, weekend trips to Singapore, which was just over the sea, and watching with pride as Daddy’s little red car would overtake the big timber lorries, loaded with logs – only to get bogged 5 metres down the road, and having all the village men come and push us out. It meant hearing my Amah call me “nakal” for not eating the lunch she’d prepared, with enough chilli to knock over a horse. ![]() It meant being called “white ghost” by other children and being excluded from play. That meant a lot of standing under a picture of the Queen, for infractions I didn’t quite understand. I was going to pre-school in the local community, and I didn’t speak Bahasa Malay. I hated feeling bad and naughty and out of control and far away.Īt the time we were living on a compound in Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia. I wanted to grow my hair as long as Rapunzel’s, because I felt trapped. I was furious because my mother was cutting my princess hair. I remember that day with clarity – I was as furious as my face would imply. To the right of me in the picture swings a pillowcase from a rope, stuffed with rags. Note, spending more than 30 per cent of gross income on housing constitutes housing stress.There’s a picture of 4 year old me, in a high chair, thunder written all over my face, while my mother stands behind me cutting my hair. That means 31 per cent of an average person’s income was used to pay rent – that’s before the recent jump in median unit rent to $620. To paint the picture, median rent for a unit in Sydney was $575 a week last year and total average weekly earnings for a full-time adult was $1877 before tax. It’s a scramble to get a roof above our heads now, let alone to think about saving for a house. And the Reserve Bank expects it to keep rising. After a 22 per cent increase in unit rents over the year, we’re facing some of the highest rent increases on record in Australia. Paying off a house today requires about 13 and 10 years’ worth of today’s average income in Sydney and Melbourne respectively.Ībelson pointed out that mortgage repayments as a percentage of income have scarcely risen, but admitted there is a substantial problem with being able to put down a first home deposit (without family help). Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Applied Economics’ managing director Peter Abelson suggests it would have taken five years’ worth of average income in 1980 to pay off a house in Sydney at the time, and three years for one in Melbourne. But even after accounting for inflation, you could buy a house in Sydney or Melbourne in 1980 for one-quarter of the price of an average house today. I often hear people say that buying a house has always been hard, and that we should quit complaining – and quiet-quitting while we’re at it.
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