A hot day today, 39 °C, windy and dusty! Probably not the best day to try and sell your house, but when its booked in advance, that’s what you’ve got to do. Off we went at noon to lend moral support as Marko and Lesley’s house is being auctioned… Lots of people around, lots of people wander through looking at the place, are they potential buyers, are they sticky-beaks, or are they just neighbours and friends like us!

Half-past twelve and the auctioneer calls it to order, there’s the pro-forma legal blurb, then the desultory start to the bidding. Nobody seems interested, the auctioneer opens with a “vendor bid” – a peculiar form of legalese that they can use to get things moving — apparently still legal so long as the bid is declared as being a vendor bid. Still not much interest, one couple bids, the auctioneer makes another vendor bid, the two of them go to and fro a few times and the property is handed in under the reserve price.

Well call me naïve, but over a drink afterwards the auctioneer reveals that the bidding couple were actually his “friends” — dummy bidders in other words. Unknown to us, undeclared to the auction, and unknown to our friends whose house was being sold! This is quite clearly illegal here in Victoria, but is still widely accepted as happening everywhere. According to the auctioneer only the stupid or the unlucky are caught and prosecuted. The real-estate agents just manage to confirm my opinion of their place in life, somewhere down there below computer and used-car salesmen.