The July 13 Edition

There was a vacant block near my friend Robyn’s house when I was growing up. It was our favourite place to scamper to; away from adults, full of trees to climb and redolent of my favourite book at the time, The Magic Faraway Tree. There was a derelict home nearby, too, that we called Witchy Poo’s house. I was petrified of it, and never took up the dare to breach the gate and go inside. These were outliers in an old-fashioned area full of family homes – magic to kids precisely because of their rarity. Today, judging by Greg Callaghan’s cover story, such vacant blocks and derelict houses have mushroomed across Sydney and Melbourne – this at a time of dire rental shortages and spiralling home prices. In his meticulously researched story, Callaghan asks why this is so, what can be done about it – and why there’s not more of an outcry about it from the political class. Editor, Katrina Strickland