Tip Trip

Had one of those rainy day clean outs recently and despite the rain we’d agreed that we go from start to finish in one day – no leaving a pile of recycling by the door for the next few weeks – so even in the rain we set off to the recycling station with our flattened boxes, ancient cell phone instruction manuals, bits of polystyrene, shrunken t-shirts and a big old CRT monitor that no longer worked.

Recycling station doesn’t take computer parts or polystyrene!! Told us that the only thing to do was go on up to the tip, which we did. Up that mysterious windy pot-holed road with bits of plastic bag and newspaper clinging to the road-side shrubbery. Well. Great excitement! The car and cargo got weighed on the way in and out with a difference of 20kg – who knew a monitor and 2 bits of polystyrene weighed that much? Fun to find out that the car weigh 1600kg though.

Up at the tip face in the howling wind and rain we backed the car up to the edge between a big Ford transit van and a guy and his son with an old family trailer full of dirt and roots from the garden. We opened the boot and the Mister flung the monitor out into the concrete pit. What a rush! It landed face down in an eerie moment of silence with a deep guttural boom that we felt in our stomachs. All the tippers came to a standstill and we got a decent look up and down laced with distain and are-you-from-another-planet from Suburbia Dad, taking in the Diesel puffer, suede shoes, European car, woman driver and the fact that we tossed out what looked like a perfectly decent computer.

And we only had to pay $5 for the thrill!