David Malouf

But the verandas are also a border.

And there are people who get up the front steps onto the veranda who never get into the house.

You know, salesmen would come selling sheets and towels and stuff.

And they would lay all their wares out.

They'd open their...

and lay the wares out there.

But they didn't get into the house.

Well, there was a border.

Even though the door was open, the front door was open.

Even though the front door was open, yeah.

There's that kind of invisible border.

Yes, there's invisible border.

And then the next stage of that was the interior of the house.

And the interior of the house, because it was surrounded by...

verandas was quite dark.

But one of the rules in those kind of houses, and I don't know why that was so.

Maybe it was that people thought that that was how breezes circulated.

I think it had a lot to do with the fact that you were not supposed to have a secret or private life.

And you could only have that life behind a closed door.

So the rule was that doors were left open or ajar.