Some
decades ago some developer bought up a passel of single fronted cottages in
Camberwell. The plan was to tear them down and provide a carpark for a new
supermarket or retail complex or some such.
There was
one little old lady who said “hell no, I won’t go”. No amount of money was
enough, because she was not interested in money. She had lived in the house all
of her life and, although many of her friends had passed on and she had lost
her “community” she insisted she was too old to move and restart her life
somewhere else.
For years
there it stood, her tiny little weatherboard house smack bang in the middle of
a huge carpark, defiantly “giving the finger” to developers. I wish I knew her
name, or could find a photo.
This
carpark is the home of Rotary’s famous Camberwell Sunday market. Camberwell is
a nice suburb, and the market attracts a huge number of potential buyers who
are actually prepared to buy something if they like it.
Setting
up a stall at a good market is a great way to promote a new product, like a
gourmet chutney, or artworks, or photographic services. It’s a chance to market
stuff to a very specific demographic.
I haven’t
been to that market for a very long time, but back in the day there were some
stall holders who had piles of what looked like crap but which appealed to
people for various reasons. In a long established suburb like Camberwell, some
of the crap had nostalgia value - set designers would come looking for anything
from kitchen appliances that no longer worked, to old tools from a particular
era.
It was
also a market which helped me survive for months, one year, when I was
struggling to find a decent job. Living only a few minutes’ walk away, it was
easy for me to queue up before cock-crow and grab an “unbooked” stall.
For
months, my flat was knee deep in crap. It would have made a great setting for a
doco about hoarders only the crap I had was not crap; it was my stock in trade.
Acquiring stock was easy: there were always stall holders having a once only
clean up around the home. They carted their stuff to the market and there was
no way they were going to take home anything that hadn’t sold. They never
offered me money to help them dispose of the rubbish, but they were usually
happy to give me their left-overs for nothing.
Jim
Cairns was there every Sunday, trying to flog his books. I suspect he was quite
lonely, and really looking for someone to talk to about any of the burning
issues addressed in his books.
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One day I
made the fatal mistake of setting up a stall at a northern suburbs market, held
on the grounds of an old drive-in picture theatre.
A man who
had booked three stall spaces opposite me pulled up at about 7.30 am driving a
large station wagon, and towing a trailer big enough to carry a car.
I had not
seen such a huge pile of non-biodegradable rubbish in my life, nor have I seen
one since.
He
removed the tarps holding his ‘stock’ down in the trailer, put the tarps on the
ground, and proceeded to unload the ‘stock’ and spread it out on the tarps. By
about 10 he had unloaded the trailer and the station wagon, then sat down on a
folding beach chair, and poured himself a cup of coffee from a huge thermos. He
then opened his ‘lunch box’ and pulled out some sandwiches. At about 11 am he
started loading all the crap back into the car and the trailer.
All of
that effort netted him about $40. I won’t say “only” $40 because his takings
were about 4 times the size of mine. There’s a different type of customer in
the northern suburbs.
He wasn’t
in it for the money, he explained. He collected the crap to annoy his wife. She
would shoo him out of the house on Sundays, telling him to get rid of it. This
was his way of getting permission to spend a day by himself.
He was a
born people watcher, and grinned from ear to ear from the time he arrived until
the time he left.
Amongst
the detritus spread out on the tarps, some woman had found a piece of brass
chain – the sort used to attach plugs to sinks in Victorian bathrooms.
She
picked up the chain, examined it, fondled it, held it for a while, then put it
back down. After three laps of the market, she seemed committed.
“How much?”
she asked.
“20 cents”
said the trailer man.
“I’ll
give you ten” she said, reaching into her purse for a coin.
“No, 20
cents,” he said.
“It’s
only worth ten cents” she countered.
“Oh no,”
he corrected her, “that is actually worth 40 cents. Even 20 cents is too cheap.”
She put
the chain back down, stared at it for a while, then tore herself away. Two more
laps of the drive-in market, and she picked it up again.
“10
cents.”
“30”,
trailer man said.
Her
eyebrows shot up. “You said 20 before!” She sounded aggrieved.
“It was
an investment. I held on to it for a while, and it is now worth more than it
was before.”
Trailer
man had a ball that day. Chain woman never did buy the piece of chain, but I
bet she was kicking herself later. She really was convinced she should be able
to put one over on him. No doubt her self-confidence was shattered, that day.
I discovered,
that day, that having a stall at that particular market was pointless. But I
really enjoyed myself, and the company of trailer man.
“No point
to bring anything good here,” he explained. “Here, they just want shit. And still
they won’t buy unless they think you are stupid”.
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In the
Franger area and, in other less sophisticated suburbs than Camberwell, regular traders
do the rounds of garage sales on Saturday mornings, bitching and moaning and
haggling over ten cents for stuff they can sell at a profit at a Sunday market.
There are
some that move in packs – while there are only one or two householders setting
up or selling, a swarm of 5 or six will arrive an hour early, and lift as much
as they can for nothing.
I’m all
for people being careful with their money, but if there’s one thing I can’t
stand it’s a scab. Another one thing I can’t stand is a tea-leaf.
So we’ve
learned to just put crap out for the first hour or two of a garage sale. If
somebody knocks it off, good riddance. By about 9 am the people coming by are
having fun rummaging, and willing to pay a bargain price for something half way
decent if they want it. That’s when we bring out the better ‘stuff’.
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Another
way people acquire stock is to follow hard rubbish collections from one suburb
to another. Some people smash open old TVs or PCs because there are small parts
from which they can salvage bits of copper or who knows what. There is one
couple who come well equipped - while the chappy whips out his electric
screwdriver and dismantles appliances, his chappette loads their ute or van with
panels and parts, presumably for sale to scrap metal merchants.
These
teams tend to specialise – knick knacks, flower pots, retro clothing. I think
it’s good that this stuff can be recycled, and find it silly that it’s against
the law to remove stuff from a hard rubbish collection. It’s the careless way
some of them spread trash and rubbish all over the place that’s objectionable,
and it’s this trashing of a street that ought to be illegal, not the recycling end
of business.
All we
had to dispose of this year was a dead microwave, which disappeared after about
two hours.
What
astonishes me is the amount of furniture people dispose of. Patty O’Furniture,
for example, that’s no longer the latest fashion. Beds and dining suites.
Lounge suites bought at a good price not so long ago, upholstery still as new,
and with no wear or tear because it was once in the home of an older, possibly
lonely relative.
In
between collections, some people use “the corner”. A broken office chair, for
example, can be plonked at “the corner” and within two days someone will have
taken it. There is a rental property on “the corner” which is an eyesore, so
the abandoned rubbish doesn’t look out of place.
