Dave and the Magic Mushie Guy

Back in 1986, I lived in a fibro shack in Olinda with my mate Tom. Our hobbies were simple: smoking bongs, blasting music, drinking bourbon, and playing an inordinate amount of pool. The pool table had belonged to Tom’s dad, and after his dad passed away, Tom inherited it. He couldn’t bear to part with it, so there it sat in our lounge, taking up so much space that you basically had to sidle sideways to get anywhere. It was less “living room” and more “pool hall with a couch shoved in the corner.”

Tom also had an old Datsun 1600 that had once been a rally car. Full roll cage, stripped interior, the works. When he bought it, the deal came with a shed-load of spares and random parts, so naturally he shoved them all into the little corrugated-iron shed down the backyard.

Most Saturdays, we’d spark up a few cones, then take the Datsun out on the dirt roads through the forest. Tom could drive like a demon, and I’d sit there stoned, clinging on as we hurtled along goat tracks at ridiculous speeds. I don’t know how we didn’t die. Honestly, if there’s a patron saint of reckless young blokes, he was working overtime. But at the time, it felt like the best fun in the world.

One cold, rainy afternoon we came skidding back into the driveway when Tom slammed the brakes. There, lying flat on his back in the mud, was a bloke. Just stretched out like he was sunbathing, except it was pissing down rain and about four degrees.

Tom tooted the horn a few times, and eventually the guy sat up, gave us the vaguest of nods, and wandered off into the drizzle. We shrugged, went inside, and thought nothing more of it.

But over the next few weeks, we kept seeing him. Same guy, always doing something weird: lying on the road, lying in our driveway, lying in the rain. He was like a really shit magician whose only trick was collapsing in public.

Meanwhile, next door had come to life. Our shack was one half of a fibro duplex, two identical houses stuck together, mirrored copies, like the builder had only drawn one plan and couldn’t be stuffed drawing another. For ages it had been empty, but suddenly people moved in. A lot of people. Cars everywhere, constant comings and goings.

One Saturday morning, I got a knock on the door. Expecting one of my mates, I answered to find some rando. He introduced himself as the new neighbour. Polite enough bloke. He said, “Hope my drumming isn’t bothering you too much.”

Drumming? What drumming?

Turns out he practiced during the day, and since Tom and I were both at work, we’d never heard it. “Knock yourself out, mate,” I said. “You could have a marching band in there for all we’d know.”

But curiosity got me. “How many of you are living there? Looks like a lot of people for a two-bedder.”

He grinned. “Six of us. Seven if you include Thommo.”

“Who the hell’s Thommo?” I asked.

“Oh, you’d have seen him. He’s always hanging around. Wanted to move in with us, but there wasn’t room. Had a bad batch of magic mushies a while back, never been the same since. Anyway… he lives in your shed.”

I stared. “No fucking way.”

But he was deadly serious.

Now, this shed was not what you’d call liveable. It was basically four bits of rusty tin nailed together, with a roof flatter than a pancake. The walls didn’t even touch the ground. When the wind blew, the whole thing rattled like a shopping trolley. Inside was dirt, spiders, and Tom’s precious car parts. The idea that someone could live in there was ridiculous.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Nah, come have a look,” he replied.

So we trudged down the side of the house, pushed open the creaky door, and sure enough, there it was. Thommo’s “flat.”

He’d turned Tom’s rally spares into furniture. Tyres stacked into a table. Car mats laid out as a bed. A busted headlight as a lantern (not really but you get the idea). It was less “shed” and more “post-apocalyptic studio apartment.” And right in the middle of it all, looking proud as punch, was Thommo.

I just stood there, gobsmacked. A bloke was actually living in our backyard, in the shed we barely used except to dump greasy car parts.

As we walked back up the hill, the neighbour smirked and said, “See? Told you.”

And I guess the moral of the story is this: be careful with your magic mushrooms. Because one day you might come down, and never come back up. Next thing you know, you’re flat-sharing with a pile of tyres in a freezing shed in Olinda.

And the weirdest part? We interacted with everyone. Our place was a circus, mates dropping by at all hours, parties most weekends, randoms drifting in and out, even a sheep grazing out the back for a while. But Thommo? Only once.

We saw him that first time in the shed, perched among the tyres and car mats like some kind of backyard cryptid… and then never again. No g’day, no bong, no game of pool. Just silence.

So while the house roared with life, Thommo stayed in the shed. The quietest housemate we ever had, and probably the strangest too.