Made a dump lately?

Before I begin, this isn’t about whatever you probably think it’s about. Get your mind out of the gutter (or should that be sewer?)! Haha…

So what on earth am I on about? Well today at work, being a Monday and all, my boss & I exchanged the obligatory weekend stories about what we got up to (mine being the Food & Wine Show – which was awesome, btw… but more about that in another post; maybe later, if I get time).

My boss mentioned that he went to the dump (aka “landfill” or “refuse station” for the Americans) a few times as he’d done some cleaning up around the house… which got me thinking. I haven’t been to the dump in years! In fact, I think the last time I went to the dump would have been late 80′s or really early 90′s – when I was around 10 or something. The weird thing is that I remember the experience like it was yesterday (god knows why).

I remember cramming the back of the old landcruiser with branches, clippings and other random crap from dad’s shed / the garage and then my brother and I jumping in amongst it all and driving the 15 minutes or so to the Willawong Dump (see map below; these days I believe it’s either a housing estate or a bus depot – something like that ). Dad would carefully ease the creaky old fourbie over the dirt track and the bumps, over the cattle-grid and through the main gates, over the crest… and there she was. In all of her stinky, seagull-infested glory. The dump.

My brother and I jumped around in the back of the 4WD with excitement. A few more corners and then we pulled up at a ‘nice spot’ (I can’t believe I’m using the word ‘nice’ in a post about rubbish, LOL). Dad hauled the crap out of the back while my brother and I watched in amazement as a distant bulldozer effortlessly drove over the mountains of trash – slowly flattening it and then turning to do it all over again.

As dad got the last bits out of the car, my bro & I poked around some of the stuff near the car – old washing baskets, car parts, bits of fencing, etc. Nothing interesting on its own, but I’m sure our imaginations ran wild about what we could potentially build with all this crap. I’m sure dad had the same thoughts, haha. I think if it wasn’t for mum reminding us that we were there to get rid of stuff and not collect it, then we perhaps would have come back with an old lawnmower and a broken hills hoist or something.

As I said, I haven’t been to a dump in ages… and as far as I’m aware, they’re a very different story these days. Apparently you drive into a building and tip the stuff down a trench and a bulldozer occasionally comes through to clear it out or something – I’m not sure to be honest. I guess it’s also a safer place now – nothing like the old days when us kids could just wander around for ages looking at all the weird crap people had thrown out.

Oh well – I’m sure I’m not missing much… but I just thought I’d post about my childhood memories whilst the thought about a rubbish dump was ‘fresh’ (LOL) in my mind.

Close

Have you been recently? What are rubbish dumps like these days and how do they work? Did you, as a child, find dump-trips exciting too? What was the weirdest thing you’d found? Let me know via the comments below!