Teresa Tan

It's April 1992, and Carol Ryan has just welcomed her baby son Mathew into the world. For all intents and purposes, the Ryans exist in an exceptionally normal pocket of the Australian experience. The western Sydney suburb of Plumpton is rapidly developing from a semi-rural area to a bustling, diverse residential hub. It's brick and mortar family homes. It's rectangular areas of green space to kick around balls of varying shapes and denominations.

Australian petrol prices tend to follow predictable cycles, but they've all gone out the window in recent weeks. In the early days of the Middle East war, petrol stations across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne hiked prices faster than the rise of global oil prices, in what several leading experts say was an attempt to maintain their profit margins. But since then, there has been a complete turnaround — the profit margin on petrol has been squeezed to almost nothing.