Update: 377 Albion Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

Well, well. Remember the very first property we featured on this blog? Ah, the nostalgia. Well, we took a wander past it yesterday. Back in early February's entry, I suggested they could pick up a lawnmower cheaply from eBay or pay a local child an utter pittance of small change to make the lawn all nice and tidy. And what do you know? They actually have mown their lawn!

Here's the proof. Before (i.e. 18 January):

And after (i.e. 19 March):

No weeds, no spiders, no snakes.

Yes, it's a somewhat half-hearted attempts at lawn mowing, what with all those epic weeds still sprouting merrily, and I sure hope they didn't PAY for it, but it's a bloody good start. It's obviously not a lawn you could tackle in just one go by yourself anyway. I suppose they got sick of being unable to reach their front door; now the path is clear and nobody's going to accidentally step on a brood of vipers on their way out to the letterbox.

Now you can more readily see the front of the house and the somewhat rundown paintwork, which needs a clean at the least and possibly a nice new coat. I wonder, is somebody preparing this place to renovate or sell? Because it could be so gorgeous. Spruce up the front, get rid of all of those weeds, and plant a nice little front garden and it would look wonderful. This is proven by some nearby houses built to the same plan - they are stunning.

Rating: Revised down from Damnable to Unpleasant.

19 Melville Road, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

So, you're hungry. You're craving a nice big pizza from one of Melbourne's many delicious independent pizza shops. Well aren't you lucky that you stopped at Hot Pizza House on Melville Road near the Albion Street intersection (some of the best damn pizzas in Melbourne!), rather than continuing south down Melville Road to be horribly misled by “Gibbi's Pizza”.

The first time I saw this place was about five years ago. It isn't a pizza shop now, it wasn't a pizza shop then, and I don't bloody well know when it actually was. Nonetheless, it still appears in some business directories that need urgent updating. The shop occupying the other half of this lot, “Melville Road Physiotherapy”, is a similar story – except, perhaps, for the fact it looks disused for even longer. Gibbi's Pizza appears to be somebody's studio; somebody who is clearly too lazy to actually take down the old signage and make the place appear anything other than dingy. Melville Road Physiotherapy now looks like it's either 1). abandoned or 2). an illegal den offering other forms of “physiotherapy” with imported girls from southeast Asia who are almost certainly underage.

At least Gibbi's Pizza looks like it was, once upon a time, a decent, functioning shop. The Physiotherapy, on the other hand? That small door and those narrow windows at the top of a soulless brick wall were not attractive when they were first put in place, and the passage of time has not been kind. It looks like it was built to keep customers – and prying eyes – out. It makes you think that even in its days of business, it was a shonky “physiotherapy” akin to those dodgy “Thai massage” places you see in Sydney's Chinatown with mildewed curtains covering the windows, and lights that are only ever on after about 11pm.

Rating: Damnable (Gibbi's Pizza side) / Condemnable (Physiotherapy side)

377 Albion Street, Brunswick, VIC, Australia

To start this blog, here is a quintessential example of what Mow Your Lawn! is all about. It may not be the most ramshackle property we've seen, and it's not an architectural abomination, but it has so many of the classic qualities of a neglected, intriguing property.

Firstly, the lawn. Mow your lawn! There is just no excuse for a lawn being this overgrown. You can easily pick up a lawnmower for $50 on eBay and it'll use just a few precious moments of your weekend to make your house look presentable. If you aren't physically up to mowing a lawn, I sympathise, but if you can forego a couple of stubbies a week, you can get yourself a gardener to do it cheaply and quickly. Or even cheaper, put an annoying local child to good use behind their father's lawnmower for a ludicrously low amount of spare change.

Secondly, the incongruity of the house. The front looks neat enough – the paint isn't hopelessly dull or peeling away, in stark contrast to the lawn or to the miserable letterbox. So is somebody looking after this place? It's hard not to be intrigued. But if they are, well, you can't exactly get to that front door.

Thirdly, the neglected rear of the house. Through a gate that's just lazily resting open, you can see all kinds of stuff lying around at the back. Including a hose that's still connected. I'm just even more mystified. It's hard to tell if somebody's living here and has no sense of tidiness or lawnmowery, or if the property has – fairly recently – been left to fend for itself against nature and the triffids. Whatever the case, a bit of lawnmowery, some fence repairs, and a big old tidy-up could make this place a star on Albion Street.

Rating: Damnable.

So with our quintessential example established, join us to see more fascinating places from inner Melbourne and elsewhere, including a few forays to New Zealand.

Update (20 March 2011): The rating for this property has been revised down to Unpleasant after the lawn was mowed; see this entry for details.