The houses that cried

This essay revisits physically and metaphysically the houses of the author's childhood, in an attempt to discover and recover a sense of self from the architecture of her past. From suburban houses in the Eastern and South Western suburbs of Sydney, to the Gothic turrets of Dalwood Children’s Home on the Northern Beaches (which, in the 1930s and 1940s was advertised as ‘The House on Happiness Hill’) and to a foster home now found to have a Child Safety House sign on the front veranda, the discrepancies of time and memory are conjured up in narrative, and hand-drawn image and photography.