The West Queanbeyan palace
Ah, West Queanbeyan, with its steep streets, formidable high school on the hill and home to the mighty Kangaroos rugby league team. The area known as Crestwood starts at the town park tennis courts and makes its way right up to the monstrosities at the top of Munro Road.
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In the 80s and 90s, West Queanbeyan was the home of the European nouveau riche, second-generation Macedonian, Italian and Greek migrant families who'd lived in smaller houses closer to town were now building their dream homes in the city's west.
The style was definitely 'palatial'; two (sometimes three) storey white-brick dwellings with giant verandahs held up by Greek Corinthian columns (the more columns the better).
Upstairs lived mum, dad and the kids, while the self-contained flats underneath housed many a Baba and Dedo, Oma and Opa, Yaya and Papou.
West Queanbeyan was a kids paradise: within walking distance of the Queanbeyan pool, home to the best cricket ground in town - Freebody Oval - and also home of the best corner shop.
Kickin' it southside
Did somebody say housing commission? Growing up in South Queanbeyan was all about your bike or your Big Wheel, your best A-Team T-Shirt and huge gangs of kids out on the streets until dusk.
From Margaret Street to Karri Crescent, South Queanbeyan's streets were lined with brand new housing commission homes built in the 1960s and 70s. The five standard designs meant that your neighbours and nearby friends often had the exact same layout as your own house. It was fascinating to see where they'd put the telly in the lounge room or the beds in the bedrooms.
Speaking of: the bedrooms were shoeboxes but you were small yourself, so they seemed huge. You'd squeeze in a set of bunks, a desk and a toy box, and pile your mates in for sleepovers.
South Queanbeyan had its own 'open door policy' - neighbours and their kids would often just wander in, help themselves to the fridge and start bitching about whatever was on their minds.
The Cooma Street, Anne Street and Donald Road corner shops were the go-tos for Double Dips, Redskins and Bubble-o-Bills and you always had to duck into Lindbecks for a kilo of sausages while mum sat in the station wagon with about a million whingeing kids (most not wearing seatbelts).
The Jerrabomberra dream
Alex Brinkmeyer sold the vision - and thousands bought it.
A new residential area with a lake, where you could buy a house with its own jetty for Pete's sake - and all this at the foot of Queanbeyan's own stunning Mount Jerrabomberra.
It was where you moved when you'd 'made it' - i.e. dad had worked in the public service or military long enough for the family to upgrade to a brand new, sprawling four-bedroom brick home with huge bedrooms, a double or triple garage and, in many cases, a pool.
When you dragged your belongings to a new home on the other side of the mountain, you were no longer a Queanbeyan peasant. And then, in a move that truly divided the classes, Jerrabomberra got its own postcode. 'We're not from Queanbeyan,' they continue to declare to this very day.
But life at Jerra as a kid could be lonely, what with only that tiny strip mall to hang out at (who needs a hairdresser and a grocery store anyway?) and earth movers roaring in the background as they cleared land for thousands of future residents.
The East Queanbeyan bungalow
Drive over the Queens Bridge and you're suddenly on the side of town I refer to as The Titanic - simply because it's a mind-blowing mix of the rich and poor.
Down below deck you have Booth Street, Mowatt Street and Trinculo Place: block after block of brown and rust-coloured flats housing literally thousands. (All of whom live with the daily torture of the scent of freshly-cooked KFC wafting in the windows.)
Above deck, you have Greenleigh, home to the rich and famous - huge houses high up on Severne Street on quaint bushy acreage, overlooking the Queanbeyan River and indeed the entire city.
But smack bang in the middle of East Queanbeyan you'll find streets lined with fibro bungalows from the 50s and early 60s, most of which were transported on the back of a truck from Captains Flat to their new homes in East Queanbeyan.
When the lead and zinc mine closed at the 'Flat in 1962, young miners and their families came streaming into Queanbeyan to find work and make a new life. The 'Flat families became neighbours along High Street (now Buttle Street), O'Neill Place and Mulloon Street.
If you grew up in an East Queanbeyan bungalow you'll remember the scratchy woollen carpet of the 1960s, ripper sunsets from the front balcony and - shock horror - outdoor toilets and laundries. Oh, and the blue and white tiled corner store on Macquoid Street is still there, but it's been empty a long time.