Lorry Paessler and Lex Bennet with their neighbours at their yearly Oktoberfest celebrations
Meet the residents of one of Ipswich’s friendliest streets. The householders of Hallow Crescent, Augustine Heights, get on so well that they’ve been having regular get-togethers for an entire decade.
It all started with a Christmas Party in 2007. It was a new estate and for the past year, the neighbours had been moving in and starting to build fences.
“My neighbour Lorrie and I got together to build a retaining wall between our houses,” Lex Bennet said.
“Then we built the fence and when we were putting the capping on we thought it would make a good bar, so we christened it ‘the bar’. So from that time on, that is where we had our get-togethers,” Lex remembers.
Lex and Peta and their family moved in the same week as their neighbours, Lorry and Glenda Paessler and their family.
“We all landscaped at the same time, and were all outside at the same time and tend to have a chat,” said Glenda.
The events are big events with the weekend’s Oktoberfest celebration having two marquees, a band and heaps of people dressed in costume.
“Since our first Christmas party we’ve done cricket, Christmas in July, Oktoberfest, Easter, Halloween, sausage sizzles, curry night and we even had a volleyball comp we used to do: Our street versus the next street,” Glenda said.
“But we still do have small impromptu things in the garage too.”
Lex is affectionately known as ‘The Mayor’ of the street. “Probably because I’m the oldest.”
It is his front lawn where the street has congregated.
Shane Hogan lives across the road with his wife Renae and three children.
“I don’t know how many people knock on our door wanting to know if we want to sell and we just shuffle them on again. Why would we sell?” Shane said.
Shane is a fire fighter and has organised for the guys from the station to drop by before shift.
“It’s a bit of a PR exercise. They come down, we feed them up and the kids get to see the truck,” he said.
There was a time when the families had motorbikes and they had shirts made up that read ‘Hallow Hogs’.
They have a cycling club going now.
“All the families were involved for a while, we had trailers on the bikes for all the kids, and the kids on their small bikes, then the men started to get a bit too serious and so the trailers got ditched and they started to wear lycra,” Glenda laughs.
Even on the very rare occasion someone does move away from the street, they still return for their gatherings.
“We do get the odd ‘import,’ we call them, to our events,” Peta said.
When asked if they were planning on staying in Hallow Crescent all replied at once, “We will!”
Peta and Lex Bennet
Glenda and Lorry Paessler
Shane and Renae Hogan and their three children
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