Neighbourhood Watch SA State Coordinator Kirsty Mudge revisits the neighbours who have shaped her life across continents, homes, and decades.

I’ve lived in cities and country towns in the northern and southern hemispheres. I’ve lived in single dwellings, apartment blocks and duplexes. I’ve lived with my family, on my own, with friends and with flatmates. I’ve lived in some places for decades and other places for just a few months. But all the places I have lived in have had one thing in common - neighbours.

My childhood memories of my neighbours are rose coloured. We lived in Canada for a while and one neighbour took me on his snowmobile and let me help carve a Halloween pumpkin. When I was in primary school, my family went campervanning up to Queensland and our elderly neighbour thought nothing of feeding our moggy for an entire month.

As a young adult living in the US, my neighbours and I would bump into each other in the shared laundry. Despite living entirely separate lives, we all washed our clothes in the same machines.

Neighbours can be hidden gems. They are all around us, but as we go about our own lives, we don’t always cross paths. You usually need to leave the protective bubble of your home to discover the local treasures.

I’ve now lived in the same street for more than two decades and I first got to know my neighbours on the train. A bunch of us would congregate on the platform in the morning and get chatting. I soon knew where everyone lived and worked, and who their family members were – including the furry members.

It was a neighbour I called first when my house was broken into. She put on the kettle and got the cups down from my cupboard where she’d seen me reach for them so many times before.

The neighbours saw the ambulance arrive when I had pneumonia. And they made sure they were there with care packages and offers of help when I returned from hospital. Thanks to my neighbours, the dog was walked, the lawn was mowed and my shopping was done.

I was able to pay it back when a neighbour hit her head and needed someone to take her to the hospital. I sat with her in the emergency department while she held a soggy pack of partially frozen peas to her head.

It would be hard to count how many people I know in my local community. Some I know from my son’s school, others I know from our local shops or Pilates classes and there are plenty more I know from walking the dog.

Many have become friends.  One neighbourhood friend is a volunteer with a local charity and she regularly brings me left over loaves of fresh bread. I catch up with another twice a week when our dogs have a play date at her house. During the COVID years, I sat in my neighbour’s front yard while we had a socially distanced cuppa and she took a short break from mothering a toddler in isolation.

I’ve laughed and cried with my neighbours. We’ve been through tumultuous life events together. We’ve watched each other grow up.

It’s not always rosy and I’m not always the ideal neighbour. Tact isn’t always my first language when it comes to my home and castle. And my wilful dog, who refuses to come in when she is called, barks incessantly. I would imagine my back-door neighbours were relieved when I recently had a giant cactus removed - its prickly limbs no longer threatening to become long-range missiles in high winds.

Noise, bins, boundaries and overhanging trees are universally cited as the key neighbour issues. They seem trivial from the outside, looking in. But these problems strike at the heart of how safe and comfortable we feel in our homes – they disrupt our sense of sanctuary.

Living as part of a community is messy. We are individuals with different lives and different ways of thinking, thrown together by a need for a roof over our heads. Like family, we don’t choose our neighbours. But I, for one, am grateful to have them.

To find out more about the benefits of neighbours and how to become part of a local community visit Neighbourhood Watch - Community connections.