The couple from Sydney bought the property sight unseen on the internet. Their friends said they were crazy, but when they drove down to start moving in, the place looked even better than the pictures.

Two storeys on solid poles, solar power, right on a permanent creek with birds singing. Of course the house needed a bit of work, but for that price what would you expect?

Friendly neighbours on each side, not too much land to manage, and town only five minutes drive away. It was just like the ad said.

They congratulated each other on leaving the rat race behind.

True, the owner had a slightly crazy look in his eyes as he handed over the keys to the couple, but they'd been warned people in the country were a bit different.

He wished the newcomers luck and drove away.

The wombats revealed themselves that night, sauntering over the green lawns and leaving their weird square droppings everywhere, as if they owned the place.

'How cute!' said the woman.

The man wasn't so sure. He'd heard stories about wombats. For now he'd give them the benefit of the doubt.

He'd always been a keen handyman, so the first thing he did was install all his tools in the shed. Then he set to work converting the unfinished verandah hanging out towards the creek into a sewing room for his wife.

He laid out a vege garden and built a fence around it.

He lined one of the unfinished interior rooms and turned it into a beautiful nursery, although they weren't yet expecting.

A couple of nights later, he and and his wife were getting amorous in the bedroom when there was a crashing sound outside.

The man grabbed his torch and raced out to find a large wombat demolishing his garden fence. Another one was in his tool shed making a mess – it had somehow dismantled the bottom of the door and knocked his drill press over.

He chased them away down to the creek, where there were a large number of burrows. He almost tripped in one, but the invaders were nowhere to be seen.

'Bloody wombats,' he said.

Next day he rebuilt the vege garden fence, stronger this time.

His sister and her little son were coming to visit that weekend, so he fitted out the guest room and got the water working to the second toilet.

When they arrived, everyone oohed and ahhed appropriately. They were settling down for afternoon tea when there was a cry from the yard.

The man's nephew said a wombat had tried to bite him.

'Nonsense!' said his mother, but then a large mangy creature came barrelling out of the bush and went for her leg. Shrieking, she grabbed her son and went inside.

The afternoon tea went cold as the visitors made a break for their car, too upset to stay.

The man borrowed a gun from his neighbour and spent that night on the verandah with his torch, waiting for the return of the dangerous wombat, but it never turned up.

All he caught was a cold.

His wife was bringing him soup in bed the next day when they heard the house moving. It felt like a small earthquake.

'That's strange,' said the woman. Suddenly there was a deafening noise of things crashing and falling, as though someone had dropped a piano outside.

The man put on a dressing gown and followed his wife outside to find her new sewing room had somehow collapsed right off the side of the house and fallen down the hill.

Her prized sewing machine had bounced and rolled down the bank and was right in the middle of the creek.

Investigating, the man discovered that wombats had excavated right around that side of the building, until there was nothing holding it up.

'I could have been killed!' said the woman. 'I'm not living here unless this place is safe.'

The next day she moved back to her mother's place in the city.

Not long after that, the new water pipe connecting the water tank to the second toilet was broken somehow, and turned the side of the house into a quagmire before the man could fix it. There were telltale large tracks near the scene of the crime.

He bought some camouflage gear at an army disposals store and took to crawling around the backyard at night, searching for the culprits.

For the next three nights the wombats seemed to know he was there, and laid low, but on the fourth night a large furry shape showed itself, moving through the shadows.

The man fired, and hit his target.

Unfortunately it turned out to be the neighbour's dog, who wanted his rifle back after that, and the money for a new dog.

The neighbour on the other side, who grew flowers for a living, heard what was happening with the newcomer. He came by for a friendly chat.

'You've got to live and let live,' he said. 'This place, it's wombat paradise. There's hundreds of them round here. Think laterally, you could open a wombat park.'

'I don't want a wombat park!' said the man.

'You've got to learn to chill mate.'

'I don't want to chill – I want my life back!'

The neighbour had to be rescued by his wife in the end. She called the town cop to 'do something'. After the neighbours left, the big man made tea for the newcomer.

'I used to have a place with wombats,' the constable said. 'Tell you what I learned. Your wombat, he's been here a lot longer than us. He's a survivor.'

'I'm gonna poison them,' said the man, gulping tea with a wild look in his eyes.

'You can't do that, they're a protected species!'

The constable took the man by the shoulder. 'Listen mate, I can see you've been under a lot of strain. Why don't you see the doc in town? He's a good bloke. He might be able to settle you down.'

'I don't want to settle down!'

'Would you prefer a night in the cells?'

The newcomer shook his head.

The constable smiled. 'I knew you'd see it my way. Got another iced vovo?'

In the waiting room of the doctor's surgery, the newcomer sat calmly with the other patients and read a story about meditation in Readers Digest. Then he saw a large toy wombat in the children's playpen, and his face turned to thunder.

Children screamed as he tore the thing to shreds, shouting about bloody wombats and frightening everyone. He smashed the other toys in his rampage.

The doctor came running, but the man wrestled him to the ground when he tried to rescue what was left of the toy wombat.

The town policeman had to be called, then the man's wife, then the hospital in the neighbouring town.

In the end it was decided that the psych ward was the best place for him.

Back at the house by the creek, the grass grew and the birds sang.

Beneath the ground, wombats were happily excavating.

***

I wrote this (mostly) true story in May 2020. Art created with Stable Diffusion AI.

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