Old litter

Another yarn from Spinifex

He was bubbling and burbling and carrying on like a nutter. "Come around, come around!" he chortled over the phone, "and look at what I've got!"
What he's got! Most likely a case of sunstroke at best, more than likely a incurable dose of stupidity. Still, he generally was more than generous with his quite decent collection of vin rouge and the visit held some promise of more than just his normally gushy conversation.
"Look, look!" he cried, prancing around like a gambolling performing bear. (He's overweight to hell and comeback but it doesn't seem to worry him. It worries everyone else - his dancing is not a pretty sight and what if he started to fall over? Look out for any small children beneath him.)
"What the hell is that?" I knew straight away but wasn't going to let on.
"It's an old hurricane lamp," he cried. "I found it out on an old dump near one of the minesites and just had to pick it up. Grandma used to read me Brer Rabbit and tell me fairy stories by the glow of one when I was just a little tacker!" He held the rusted frame, all bent and twisted, close to his bulkiness.
I couldn't imagine the dill ever having been a little tacker - about 200 kilos as a four year old, I'd estimate, but I didn't say anything as he flourished the corkscrew and waved around a particularly fine version of Hermitage. And I didn't start in on him till the cheering plonk of the cork exiting the neck of the bottle sounded through his littered shade area.
"You're a pillager," I snarled as the wine splashed merrily into the glass. "You are ravaging a cultural site, you are a vandal against our local history and natural heritage. There isn't much left out there anymore." I gulped at the fine wine and drew strength from its bouquet. "What little there is left, idiots like you come out and strip the joint."
"It's only rubbish, you know that and it's rotting fast. And," he drew breath and let fly at me. "And little kids have been busting bottles out there for years. I'm preserving what there is left!" He gestured around his shade area. Bottles, old sumps, strange pieces of mining machinery, tin plates all rusted through all lay scattered in confusion.
"You barbarian!" I snarled. "You don't know what you've got, you don't know where you got it from, you don't know what it was in association with, you've ruined an archaeological site." I poured another tumbler-full, making sure to give it a meniscus. I felt very self-righteous.
"Look," he said patiently. "I just pick through places where the different mining companies have bulldozed the litter into piles with dirt and rocks and that. They were the vandals in the first place." He was very defensive.
"Yeah, they didn't know, didn't appreciate what they had here." This more in sadness than in anger. "We had for a while an incredible potential for archaeology, for archaeological tourism, for heritage and local history."
"It's not all gone!" He leant closer, fumbling with another bottle and its tough cork. He whispered confidentially. "I know where there are a lot of places, little dumps out there, some near and some a long way out, that are perfect." He pumped himself up self-righteously. "I've never touched them and never told anyone about them. They could be the next sites for some student to do their thesis on the conditions the miners lived under in the thirties and forties, they could tell an awful lot about lifestyle and their access to, well, everything they had access to." He was starting on a rant - I'd better look after this bottle, spare him a hangover.
Those dumps are an incredible resource. It is all litter and rubbish, good for nothing. Except it's our heritage. It's our reminder of the early days of European habitation in the town. And that litter would be a brilliant resource for some history or sociology student researching the times back then and the development of the mining industry. Some of the mines and the litter around them are incredibly valuable resources in the research of industrial archaeology.
But Boofhead prefers the research into people and their living conditions. Those dumps give an insight into things we've forgotten about. The economy might have gutsed-up, there might be high unemployment, the mines might be closing down but hell! They did it a lot tougher than we could ever imagine. We're still a lucky country, compared to back then.
"You see bits of old suitcases and busted old beds and bits of pushbikes and rotted boots and broken plates and twisted forks and bottles of tomato sauce and bottles of pickles and preserves and millions of tins. Rusted old tins of herrings and sardines and bully beef - Anchor Brand food and Elephant Brand. No fresh tucker, just tinned stuff." He looked reflectively over his collection of rusted rubbish. "These old things tell you heaps of what those people went through and how they lived. These old things sort of make you feel a bit closer to them, make you understand how they lived and how desperate things must have been that they'd put up with what they did. The depression years...hard hard times."
I could feel myself softening a bit. The twist of the cork in the third bottle helped a bit too.
"You know, one of the things you see out there all the time is hundreds of busted jars of Barrier Cream or something like that. You know, skin conditioner. Those poor bastards must have just shrivelled up when they first hit this place. Lizard-skin country!" He never swore. He must really feel strongly about this, I thought.
"And you know what else?" he slurred. "Millions and millions of old beer bottles. Poor bastards." He slumped into his chair, almost asleep. "Poor bastards. Hadda have someshing, nushing else for 'em except a drink after a bloody hard day in the boiling shun. What a life!" He slipped onto the ground and started to snore.
Let him keep his bloody old rusted hurricane lamp, I thought as I tucked the rest of the bottle under my arm and headed for the door. No sense in wasting it. Yeah, let him keep his hurricane lamp. At least he cares.