When I was a child, the highlight of visiting my grandmother was being allowed to take her rubbish to the communal refuse room. The room had a chute that you could drop tied bags of household rubbish into, and they would travel down to a furnace somewhere.
My brother and I took it in turns to push the bag in, leaning over to try and watch it travel the length of the silver chute. Sometimes we’d try and pretend we could see the flames as the bag hit the furnace.
Gran lived on the seventh floor of a concrete 1970s public housing block and had uninterrupted views of the sea. Her flat was small but neatly kept and I particularly loved the smell of salty air and overcooked chops. The heater was electric and fitted to the wall, and when we visited in winter, Mum and I would fight over who stood in front of it, pressing our jean-covered legs against it to warm up.
There was a card table by the window where Gran kept her binoculars to watch for ships, and where she sat to do her crossword every day. Her handwriting was boxy and slanted, and she always filled in the little crossword boxes in capital letters.
Sometimes she’d ask us for the answer to a clue, and the thought of being considered old enough to be helpful was a thrill.
When Gran was finished with her crossword magazines, she’d give them to us to take to the refuse room which didn’t just have a chute for rubbish, it also had a long shelf for residents to leave their discarded magazines so that others in the building could read them.
Because our parents never bought magazines, my brother and I viewed them as the rarest of treasures. We didn’t care if they were weeks or months or even years out of date. As long as they weren’t crossword magazines, or Readers Digest with too many words or racing magazines with tips for betting, then we took them back to Gran’s flat, flipping through the glossy pages and reading articles about famous people and recipes we knew we’d never make.
The magazines would not have held the same value if we’d bought them. There was something magical in the act of rescuing other people’s discarded stuff that elevated that ratty copy of Women’s Weekly to a thrilling find.
The joy of rescuing things has never left me. And now I live in an apartment building with my own rubbish room. But we don’t have a furnace and we don’t have a magazine shelf, although I have been known to nose-dive into the bin and drag the odd thing out, like a ceramic pot or an unopened board game that should never have been tossed into landfill.
Recently the owner’s corporation organised a giant skip to be delivered because we don’t have access to the council-run hard-rubbish collection. The skip was delivered to the carpark on a Friday, and it didn’t take my son and I long to realise that people were depositing household objects that were not always at the end of their lives.
The first thing we found was a tan mid-century double-headed lamp leaning upright against one of the skip walls, as if it was waiting for us to save it. Except for a little dust it was in fine condition, so we dragged it out and carried it upstairs. Australian made and nearly as old as me, it now lives in the corner of our apartment, shining light over our dining table. Every time I turn it on, I wonder which of my neighbours it belonged to.
Next, we rescued a large, solid industrial mixer complete with dough hook, which we gifted to a friend, and an unused aluminium lightweight camping chair still in its bag.
The problem with being a rubbish hunter is that once you start, it’s hard to stop. It’s addictive, fuelled by the possibility of finding a unicorn.
And on the final morning before the skip was collected, I found my son’s unicorn – an original 1980s boom box with tape deck, radio and built-in speakers. The sort I coveted back in the day. I wiped off the dirt and took it upstairs. My son grinned as soon as he saw it. It was in relatively good condition, and we slid a bunch of fat batteries in the back, found an old Beastie Boys tape and turned it on. No Sleep till Brooklyn rang out in the apartment. A track from the 80s being played on a boom box from the same era.
Sure, we could probably have bought most of the found things in a vintage shop and they might have even been in better condition. But it’s never just about the item. It’s about saving something from the tip and giving it a new life.
And for me, it’s about momentarily reliving the feeling of finding the perfect magazine in the refuse room and chasing my brother down the corridor and up one floor to my grandmother’s front door to show her what we’d found.
Nova Weetman is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults, including The Edge of Thirteen, winner of the Abia award 2022
