A GOOD TIP

Years ago we didn't have rubbish recycling centres where household rubbish is dumped out of cars into a sunken concrete pit and immediately scooped away by massive graders. We had good old-fashioned rubbish dumps. These became known as land-fills and were used to do just that - fill in valleys and sunken areas that could then be topped off with soil to become parks, reserves and schools. Unfortunately these land-fills often contained heavy metals, paints and chemicals and all sorts of toxic materials that are now leaching out into water supplies and sometimes finding their ways to the surface. But enough of that .... my memories of the old-fashioned rubbish dumps (then called 'tips') is great. The first one that I remember was in Houghton Bay at the south coast of Wellington. Dad would perhaps once per month on a Saturday load up the truck with rubbish - old paint tins, wire, broken concrete, broken bits of timber, old furniture etc., and my brother and I would set off with him. While Dad was unloading Terry and I would scuttle off like pack-rats and fossick through the acres of really interesting stuff. This remember was before the days of garage sales, roadside inorganic collections and Trade Me so we were able to legally pick over the contents of other peoples basements and garages. Fossicking wasn't forbidden then and there was little thought to the danger from metal, glass and rotting material. It was fun. We collected all sorts of stuff and loaded up the truck again much to Dad's amusement and annoyance. Most of it of course was returned to the tip the next month. We made sleds and trolleys (4 wheeled sit on things that we would hurtle down the Vogeltown streets on) from the bits of old bikes and prams we found. One memorable find was a corrugated iron canoe. Someone had built this out of two pieces of corrugated roofing iron, shaped around pieces of 4x2 wood. It was incredibly heavy but we managed to load it onto the truck. After a bit of dodgy repair work using tar products to fill in the holes we talked Dad into taking us to the coast to try it out. We went to Princess Bay a nice little secluded spot that was dad's favourite. Terry ad I pushed the canoe out a ways and climbed in. The waves at first pushed us back in but then the undertow carried us out a bit into fairly deep water. Just as we thought that things were going well the canoe filled with water and sunk like a stone fortunately leaving us on top of the water. We left quickly. I sometimes shudder to think of that rusting iron at the bottom of Princess Bay and hope that it didn't hurt anyone.

A few years later when I had met Tony and Noel I discovered that they too had a healthy interest in fossicking. We used to go to the Lower Hutt tip on Sundays. This was a big day out for us (no wonder we couldn't get girlfriends) and used to look forward to it. Richard didn't come with us. I don't know why. Maybe he was too proud although those red bell-bottom trousers he wore looked like they came from the tip. We found many great things there. Some I remember are the record player and Marty Robbins record that were the sole assets of The White Sport Coat and Pink Carnation Society; a WW2 army greatcoat that Noel never afterwards took off; a WW1 long leather pilots coat I found but which never lost its 'tip stink' so got returned later; a brown canvas jacket that I wore for years thinking it was cool; furniture that Tony decorated his Hergreaves Street house with- all sorts of treasure. Ah. The Good old days.