The two-tone squeak of the fly-wire door is to be heritage listed, and a recording stored in the National Film and Sound Archive.

The first tone, barely a second or so, says
Hello
Welcome back
Good to see you again
It’s been a while
Why so long?
Come in.

The second tone says
Do you have to leave?
What draws you away?
Why not stay?
You know you don’t want to go.

The first of the sounds is an inhalation, a savouring of what’s ahead for the next few days.

The second is the sigh of goodbye, the reluctance of farewell.

The silent handles of the fly-wire door are orange plastic practice golf balls which our father may have struck at the beach at low tide. In his latter years, especially those seven after Mum died, he played nine holes of golf on Tuesdays at a course 40 minutes away. Not a flash, fancy golf course by any stretch of the fairway’s imagination. A flat course bordered by flat farmland.

At the end of his round, played with one or two friends, he would order two counter meals at the local pub. One he would eat there and then, the other he would take home to warm for dinner.

As he opened the fly-wire door he may have thought “I need to put some oil on those hinges”. Or he may not have heard that two-tone squeak at all. Rather, he might have heard himself saying “Margaret? Are you there, dear?”