Unreal Estate
People come to Byron Bay to die. They come many years before it will happen, but the idea is in the back of their minds, unburying itself through the weathering of the years. If the idea wasn’t with them always, they would never buy such tiny houses solely for the location. Sometimes, they buy without ever seeing in person the place they will live. This was the case for my Aunt and my Uncle, who, in 1989, achieved the Australian Dream: they bought a home.
He didn’t die there, but close, in Byron Central Hospital. Flying to Ballina I became abruptly aware that I was unprepared for the environment I was walking into. I was stressed over the onslaught of emotion I was about to experience, but also, I didn’t know how we were going to navigate the drive to the hotel. The plane dropped like a fast stone and the small airport floated into view, white and remote.
Passing out of the air conditioning and into the car park, I was hit by the afternoon sun like a gong. Already, Byron Bay was different from what I had expected. I could see why my Aunt and Uncle had chosen it as the basis for their imagined life together. In Real Estate, looking down the barrel of life as a sixty-year-old divorcee whose children have moved out, Deborah Levy fantasises about a home she would like to own. She adds and removes a fountain, pictures intimate gatherings with friends, and transposes her unreal estate onto various geographical backgrounds. Just like anyone else with a Pinterest board dedicated to vintage furniture, Levy’s mental exercise resonated with me. But I am an inheritor of a different world. For Levy’s generation, property ownership was seen as inevitable if you ‘worked hard’. For Gen Z, the notion is dreamlike. What, if anything, can we really call our own?
I couldn’t buy a home in Byron Bay, but I could still have control over a piece of it. Climbing up the hill towards the lighthouse, our hire car lurched past stunning ocean vistas. There was a rainbow which had doubled itself by the time we got right to the top. “Stay there,” I said to my sister, taking a photo where she was underneath them. I took photos looking out from every side: towards Wategos Beach, down the hill, and across the flat expanse of the ocean. I thought about posting one or two on my Instagram story. I thought also about how I might be perceived, taking a spontaneous trip to Byron Bay, and having the freedom to do it. It wasn’t the same as owning a home. It was the next best thing; the belief of others that you could.
When speaking of her rented writing studio, Levy suggested that although it wasn’t hers, she “owned its moods.” By building my online space, maybe I was asserting my control over moods of my own — my personality, and how I wanted others to see it. I could still be the curator of my own space. Every Spotify screenshot, tableside story, and book cover flatlay revealed my digital self from a new angle. She felt less like an uncanny double and more like a role I could step into, anytime I wanted.
At my Uncle’s funeral, the eulogies were long. Friends spoke of days spent swimming, where he would be in the pool looking up at the house, or else in the house looking out to the pool. Outside and inside are both intimate spaces, and the boundary between them is less rigid than it seems. I didn’t belong in Byron Bay, but I didn’t feel outside of it, either. I had been worried about coming to the funeral, but I could deal with death now that I was amongst it. Without me noticing, I had entered some other realm. The idea reminded me of air travel — passport queues, security screenings, and liquid limits. Questions of yes or no, of being or non-being, and of death or life aren’t so much binaries as destinations to be passed through. It seemed to me that owning a home, having a place in the world, allowed a person to travel freely. My Uncle’s reading glasses were still folded on top of his nightstand; he could return at any time. It seemed impossible that he wouldn’t. His home belonged to him, but he also belonged to it. In any case, I could still say that I was going to Byron Bay to visit him, couldn’t I? All the evidence for his life was there.
When reflecting on her life and her imagined home, Levy concludes that she doesn’t own it, but she owns herself. Looking to her body of work, her children, and even a banana tree, she decides that real estate can encompass more than just a house to be all of these things. Touching down back in Sydney, I turned my phone off aeroplane mode and sent a text to my boyfriend. “I’ve landed.” When I spoke of wanting a home, I meant that I wanted a place to belong, a place that was mine. Losing someone forced me to reflect on my own place in the world. I knew I was home: I was back with people who knew me, for more than my Instagram feed. Wasn’t that what I wanted? A place that kept me?