How long ago is it since you went to the dump — or, as Victorians call it, the tip?
My memory of dumps past is of a large, lumpy area swarming with crows, vagrant seagulls, lean scavenging cats and the odd furtive rat, and littered with every kind of cast off — disintegrating furniture, stained and gutted mattresses, whitegoods spewing their innards, black garbags bursting with unmentionable putrid stuff and acres of rusting galvo, old cans, and paper idly rising and falling in the redolent breeze.
From this random mountain range of human detritus rose a smell combining the acridity of smoke with the sweetish unbreathable stench of rot and decay. And around the whole expanse, as if it were a park or nature reserve, stretched a cyclone wire fence to which the prevailing winds had plastered an unlovely, peeling skin of newspapers, food wrappers and grotty plastic bags.
Well, that was about ten years ago. Being forced over recent weeks to make a number of 'dump runs', I was stunned by the sight that greeted me on my first visit to the local — not dump anymore — but transfer station. A curving, nicely cambered roadway led me to the administrative centre, where I was greeted by Steve, clipboard in one hand, biro in the other and a cigarette waiting behind one ear for, no doubt, a lull in business.
Steve, an amiable bloke in a sunhat pulled down low over his very dark glasses, took a practised glance over my ute load of stuff, assessed how much 'air' was in it — which meant was it piled higher than it needed to be and therefore more costly — then relieved me of $21 and waved an arm at the rows of colour-coded dump bins.
'Cardboard and paper in that white one, general garbage in the red one, glass in the brown one, bottles over there in the crate and then take your metal and wood across to the other side.'
Steve ambled across as my mate Rick and I began to unload. We were patronising the cardboard and paper bin because I had a lot of books which, having spent five or six years in sealed boxes, were bent, chewed or in other ways seriously