Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

The main highway in the state snakes along the coast, where most of the population choose to reside. Over the years it's been upgraded in order to bypass every possible place of interest to stop at. Not only that, it's been split apart into two seperate roads for each direction of traffic. That's a brilliant idea for avoiding being ploughed into by the bastard travelling in the other direction who's fallen asleep from the boredom because without landmarks to keep you interested it all looks the same. However, when you have an avid mailbox hunter such as myself hurtling along at possibly more than a touch over the speed limit the dual carriageway is the most impractical invention ever devised.



A few kilometres down the road to an emergency vehicle only turning bay. A few more kilometres back in the opposite direction, beyond my target and to the next illegal turning bay. All for a shot of a surfboard turned mailbox.

Was it worth it? Fuck yeah!

Mailbox Monday

It's been a while. Not that I've stopped the hunt for mailboxes - I just keep forgetting that it's Monday until Monday is over.



So this one appears to have it's own crash barrier. Did it get run into too many times? Or is the owner a go-cart driver?

Mailbox Monday

There's a proliferation of these ugly little cherub things around here. All they do is stand around and hold up the mailboxes. They don't appear to be any good for anything else other than that. They're fat, lazy little examples of bad taste.



Somebody has taken the project of eradication of these offensive little critters into their own hands. Three cheers!

Mailbox Monday

And now for the budget version:

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

This particular shot was taken recently, during a brief visit to my stomping ground of the past eleven years. What we were doing when we found this particular specimen of the mailbox genus was, and still is, one of my favourite pastimes. Driving around looking for anything interesting that takes my eye.

My friends in Armidale were great for this hobby. Weekends were mostly boring spaces of time reserved for being hung over, or working towards the next bout of being hung over, or generally complaining of there being nothing to do. Not many of them had cars, so when an opportunity came up to get out to a national park or just cover some country away from the highways, I could usually count on having at least somebody to take along for the ride.

The best adventures had no set destination. I would have a direction in my head, and a clear idea of where the surrounding main roads were, and that was all that was needed. You could wander around on small roads between the properties for half a day, and then branch off toward a highway when you were done exploring and be home to dodgey up a curry for everyone before dark.

I'm looking back at those days with an unfair lust at the moment. The lust is because I was confident in my knowledge of my surrounds, familiar with the country. I knew without a doubt that I could point my car in a particular direction and have a rough idea of what I was going to find on the way. It was also that I was in control of the game. I was the driver, I was trusted by my passengers that I would know where I was going, and most likely find something different and interesting to beat the boredom on the way.

That kind of lusting is unfair to myself, and the good thing is that I know it. I don't have the confidence in this far larger city to find my way about efficiently. What's more interesting to realise is that I miss the control. We go for a drive, and me being new to this place I just get to sit back and take it all in. It should be great, but suddenly I've become the passenger when for the past eleven years I've been the one that picks the direction. My mind interprets this as a loss of control, a flaw because I do not have the knowledge of this area yet. It's downright irrational. Of course I can't replicate the local knowledge of eleven years in a place I've only been in for a couple of months. Step one is realising the problem. What the hell do I do next?

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Machinery seems to be colour coded for easier identification.

Big tractors are green.
Little tractors are red.
Earthmoving gear is yellow.

In case you couldn't figure it out by looking.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday

Dear Ladies, Gentlemen, Non-specifically gendered, Midgets, Dolphins and all other intelligent life-forms of blogville,

For years I have not written a personal letter. Application letters, yes. Plenty of those – my technique must be pretty shocking because I’m still writing them and not hearing back. But personal letters… I fell into that bottomless pit of “I’ll just call”. I think the same has happened to far too many people. In fact, Dive had a rant about it not long ago.

I’ve been getting a few letters lately, and I’d forgotten the happiness that holding a personal letter can bring. These pieces of paper become fragile to me. I hold them gently and with total wonder. I smell them. I keep them safe once I have read them, and look at them frequently. It is a gift I need to pay out more often.

So I’m brushing off the cobwebs on the letter-writing skills. Mostly, my letters consist of drawn-out prattle about daily goings on, and a few questions about health and happiness of the recipient. Am I going to bore this person? I don’t know. Sometimes I have given up on a letter for that reason, with a re-read and the decision of “Vic, you sound like a self-centred prat.”

In conclusion, I hope this letter finds you all in good health (and probably a state of mild bemusement at this post). All the best for whatever activities you may choose to fill your day.

Regards,
Vic

Mailbox Monday

I've been driving around in the country the last couple of weekends, doing my normal thing of looking for weird and interesting stuff.

Something I've always taken for granted is the random letterbox. Occasionally I'll notice one and think hey cool that one's made of plough discs, but I've never put much more thought into it than that. The mailbox has become a little more symbolic for me lately. It represents home in a way. A fixed address. I have a somewhat lengthy temporary address, rather than none at all, but my mailbox is a fading green velvet pinboard in a dining room that I share with a hundred or so backpackers and travelling workers. If I receive something that cannot be pinned on the board, it is an announcement from the human bullhorn who is our camp caretaker for the entire workforce to know that I need to get my arse to the office before it closes, if I want to collect my parcel. The ritual of checking the mailbox has lost it's personal touch.

So... I've decided to start a Monday thing for mailboxes. The Monday Melee got old and face it, I'm over thinking that much about what I hate first thing on a Monday anyway. Mailbox Monday it is. I even came up with a logo just for shits and giggles. Feel free to join in - just drop me a link so I can go look at your box...

It seems that out in this area (somewhere along the middle of the border of New South Wales and Victoria) most of the mailboxes for properties are welding experiments. Pieces of old stuff from around the yard slapped together and welded solid. Slap some paint on it and it becomes a personal feature that marks the entrance to your property.