Perth needs good neighbours, but is a beer a bridge too far these days?

Sydney Morning Herald

16-07-2025

Given Gen Xers were raised wandering the plains of quarter-acre blocks in Perth like suburban hunters and gatherers, we were mostly spared the backyard battles that can erupt between neighbours.
But as urban living becomes denser, friction can become more frequent: petty disputes over fences, trees or the unresolved murderous tension of someone butchering John Farnham songs until dawn.
To some degree, such front-yard feuds are harmless and ingrained in suburbia. But I'm convinced the recent brouhaha in my street went beyond the norm.
After I declined to have a beer with a nearby resident, the person unleashed a series of well-executed insults that made me rustle through my bedroom drawers looking for my old therapist's number.
I was impressed by their forensic examination of my personality, given they were drawing from such a narrow source of information as we rarely spoke.
I wanted to inform the relentless inquisitor my lack of charisma was because I'd been sick and was on the brink of breaking my all-time insomniac record, so I had little desire to spend time with my family, let alone some stranger.
But my neighbour was pointing at me like Donald Sutherland's character at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, their message clear: I was un-neighbourly. And unbeknownst to me, I'd been that way for years.
While I have no urge to become the next Neighbourhood Watch captain, I've always tried to keep the small-scale interactions with people in my street blissfully simple.
Wave. Nod. Smile. I felt this was being a dutiful fellow-dweller.