You can do an SES analysis of Minjup during verge pick-up week (aka Hard Waste Collection).
The well-off-ish -- we don't have "rich" -- leave all sorts of middle-class goodies on the verges outside their houses.
Things like working TVs and computers, and bits of furniture that not a few denizens would be (and are) happy to use.
I swear there are some folk who buy things just to stick on the verge to display the conspicuousness of their consumption.
The hardly-well-off leave hardly anything.
If they do, it's genuinely useless except for the scrappies who come around on the relevant Sunday night and take everything with metal in it.
Last year I chucked out an old vanity basin; they smashed it and took the taps.
The genuinely poor leave nothing on the verge but -- along with the few eco-minded members of our community -- go collecting before the Minjup Shire can expedite the official removal (which is rarely during the designated week as such).
I have to admit to a certain amount of treasure hunting myself over the last few days.
What I look for is used bits of carpet and rugs.
This stuff is great for killing European weeds (aka lawn).
The thicker you lay it on the ground, the faster the green stuff dies.
And with the hot weather and little rain (but see below), most of it's dead before the end of autumn.
Occasionally, the tougher types of grass will actually grow through the thinner types of carpet.
This is the time to hit them with the glyphosate.
Very occasionally (given the trend towards to synthetics), the carpet will rot down and combine with the thin layer of topsoil beneath.
All in all though, it's a pretty eco-friendly and chemical-minimising way to transform the garden.
Layer of bark chips and you're away!
Saturday evening I went scavenging and found a nice pile (no pun intended) of beige and hessian not far away in Upper Minjup.
The resident lady (interestingly covered in paint and smoking a Marlboro Red) was intrigued as to why I wanted her old floor covering.
I explained.
She said there was a container load of the stuff out the back of their property and, if I returned the next day, I could come over and take it all away.
Save them a tip pass, she said.
So yesterday evening, I borrowed a neighbour's big industrial diesel ute (plus its owner, Big John) and headed off down there.
I was greeted by the male partner this time, though he was expecting me -- the wonders of marital communication!
Big bloke in a blue truckie's singlet, chucking a piss up for his mates, their teenage girls taking turns to steer a beat up old orange -- or faded red -- Gemini SLX around the back paddock.
"Only allowed to use first and second", I was assuringly informed.
(This bit is a bit sad: a green Gemini SLX was once my pride and joy until it blew up just after its second clock and I had to sell it to an unsuspecting Croatian; but he got the best of the bargain when, at the wreckers, he found my missing Fender Tweed in the boot and sold it.)
As Big John and I were loading the Carpet-Formerly-Known-As-Axminster onto the ute, watched by the ensinglet'èd one and his mate (both pleading they had "bad backs from painting"), a big mob of Red-tailed Black-cockatoos (Calyptorhyncus banksii) descended from the hills and started their usual madness.
Naive self: "Cockies are down from the hills; rain tonight".Ensinglet'èd one: "Bollocks. I hate the buggers. Destroy the yard. Used to shoot them down Warnbro when I was a kid".
That shut me up.
Still, last night, about 3:30-ish, there was the biggest thunder storm I've seen here in a good while.
Temperature suddenly dropped 10 degrees.
The lightning lit up the place like daylight in less-than-a-second flashes.
The rain poured down so much I was considering collecting pairs of animals.
So this morning, all the good verge stuff was wet as buggery and not much use to anyone.
Surely, as Eric once said, there must be something better?
But at least the soggy carpets and rugs are looking productive:
