If this is Monday it must be Bexley, in the Rockdale council area. Greg Nabke, his grey hair tied in a ponytail and long beard grown past his chest, drives a 15-year-old trusty Mazda truck running on biodiesel and scours the footpaths and nature strips for treasure among the trash.
His volunteer colleague, the laconic Tait Burrows, who hit the snooze alarm twice this morning before tumbling out of bed, sits in the cabin beside him, wearing wrap-around sunglasses and sipping a large coffee, scanning the opposite side of the streets.
Oh, the things Sydneysiders will throw out on council hard-rubbish days: kayaks, acoustic guitars, kitchen sinks, antique dressers, wardrobes. And how about that 1950s chunky dentist's chair left in the gutter, only to be eagerly bought by a dicey looking brothel in Marrickville. Who knew tooth extraction could be kinky?
This morning's first find: a white windsurf board and its sail, still intact. That should find a home when it is taken back and priced at The Bower, a nine-year-old co-operative centre at a former army base in Addison Road, Marrickville. Its shopfront, in Sydney's first commercial building made of strawbale, is open to the public.
The Bower - "traders of the lost artefact" - has a strong reuse and recycle ethic. A dozen councils encourage residents who think their junk might have resale value to ring The Bower, and Nabke, its paid driver who has been a member of the co-op for eight years, will come and pick it up.
The makers of the Hugh Jackman film Wolverine did just that, and Nabke found himself picking up spooky mannequins and a consignment of size seven steel-capped boots after the film shoot finished. Movie and theatre designers often scour The Bower's shelves for period props, alongside sly second-hand dealers on the prowl for bargain collectables such as rare dinner sets.
Mostly the gems are found on the side of the road as The Bower's truck combs the streets on hard-rubbish days. This means if The Bower does not get there first, resaleable stuff gets picked up by council trucks and crunched into landfill.
Sydney, incidentally, dumps 1.5 million tonnes of waste into landfill each year. That equates to the weight of 30 Sydney Harbour Bridges.
"It's a bit of a race," Burrows says. "You also see people with their vans driving around the streets looking for the same stuff at the same time." These people include retiree hobbyists hunting for new projects, or people convinced they could make a go of collecting and selling scrap metal.
By the time The Bower's truck makes Blakehurst, many of the streets seem bare. "Jeez, the council must have been early this morning," Nabke says.
On cue, a Kogarah Council truck comes over the horizon. "Speak of the devil," Burrows says. "Oh, shit," Nabke says.
Onto Allawah, near Hurstville, to pick up a wardrobe phoned in by a resident - it is chipboard but in good condition, so Nabke and Burrows take it, although such cheap woods, veneered or not, are usually rejected because they age poorly and the glues that hold them together can be toxic if prized apart.
The Bower also usually will not take electrical goods such as computers or TVs - little resale demand - nor white goods such as microwaves and washing machines, which are too time-consuming and difficult to test to Australian standards.
The rejects - a rotted ladder, a holey bucket, a rusty barbeque - seem great this morning. But by the time The Bower's truck reaches Oatley, there have been good roadside finds: a bathroom sink, a small trolley, a white gate, a suitcase, a punching bag.
Pieces of timber are left on the roadside for council to take to landfill. Unfortunately, many councils tell residents to cut their wood into small pieces; The Bower however says wood for the resale market needs to be at least one to two metres long.
The final destination this morning is a storage facility a little out of the way at Padstow. A middle-aged man and woman meet The Bower's duo at the gate, and show them their offerings: all the shop fittings from their former Surry Hills CD store, Sound and Fury, which went bust because it could not compete with the buying power of the bigger stores.
Nabke politely tells the couple he cannot take the shelving because it is made of chipboard, with virtually no market for such custom-made fittings. The couple smile wearily, and then tell their story of how, in this instance, the corporate goliaths had defeated David.
Nabke and Burrows take away two boxes of CDs for the shop. The spoils of the vanquished retailer should provide a little cash register music to the ears of their non-profit cooperative, at least, and help fund The Bower's planned library of books on sustainability.
The Bower is at building 34, 142 Addison Road, Marrickville, 9568 6280 www.bower.org.au info@bower.org.au
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