5 minute read
Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love – How did we recycle in the 1970s
Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love
HOW DID WE RECYCLE
IN THE 1970s? WORDS DORIAN MODE
No weekend would be complete in Sydney in the 1970s without ribbons of smoke billowing from backyard incinerators. Each weekend my neighbourhood was like Dresden after a carpet bombing. Moreover, these backyard crematoriums were a source of entertainment for the whole family.
Dad, on the cans, would start off sensibly, burning old newspapers and tax receipts, a sprinkling of dry garden leaves as a garnish. A few cans later and the backyard would descend into Chernobyl, burning old prams, ukuleles, plastic milk crates, even a mannequin. Before we had an incinerator, I never knew smoke could be green, orange or blue.
Sometimes, late into the evening, Dad would run out of things to burn. Gold can of KB in one hand, and a withered Styvo in the other, he’d say to himself, “I never did like that patio furniture.”
The following morning your mother would walk into the backyard after breakfast in fluffy slippers saying, “where’s the hell’s my banana lounge?”
We had two Greek families living either side of us and unintentionally we always seemed to time our burn–off with one of the neighbour’s washing on the line, pegged with those wooden pegs like cigars. By the time Dad would get around to burning an old doll’s house or something, the neighbour’s smalls would be like kippers in a smokehouse. Then we’d hear a torrid of language in Greek that would make Socrates blush.
Another fun thing we did with the incinerator was to burn spent Fabulon or Mr Sheen aerosol cans which would explode and shoot out of the incinerator like ballistic missiles. Indeed, a green Cedel hairspray can could take out a light plane.
These incinerators were always made of Bessa Blocks. For millennials, these are hollow, rectangular concrete building blocks that were used in the construction of houses, offices, outback dunnies, and industrial buildings in the 1970s. They are the ugliest of building materials. They are the colour of industrial strife, power cuts and week old Margaret Fulton French Onion dip.
Indeed, you easily assembled them (often sans mortar) like Lego. Department stores like David Jones and Mark Foys sold them as kits. I can still see Dad in his green floppy hat and flared stone–washed denims, assembling our ‘recycling centre’ one weekend. He finished the task by burning all packaging as a victory pyre.
Some enterprising families put a grill on their incinerators. As they cheerily burned a miscellany of plastic suitcases, vinyl jackets and sundry building materials, the flame grilled meal would take on a distinct flavour.
“Dad, these chicken wings taste of asbestos”
Or other families used to paint stumps on their incinerators to use the old brick pit as the end of a backyard cricket pitch.
Another reckless thing dad did in the 70s (that you never see now) was to simply burn a pile of leaves in the gutter out the front of the house. It would be nothing to ride your bike around the neighbourhood and see little fires in the front of people’s houses like a suburban offering to Vishnu.
FLASHBACK
My wife Lydia in her backyard in the 1970s next to the Hills Hoist
Whenever we did this our Greek neighbour Mrs Yiannopoulos would feel the urge to water her lemon trees in case we set her house on fire.
Interestingly, we have a history of incineration in Australia. In the 19th century, we used to dispose of our garbage by sea. Until the tide kept bringing it back again. So in 1900 they built beasts like The Destructor (which sounds like something from Transformers) Here, Sydney happily torched all the rubbish and chemicals it wanted. And, this helped with the mouse/ Bubonic plague at the time. Moreover, it spawned a bevy of incinerators across Sydney. So incineration was a way of life for Sydney siders in the early part of the 20th century. Eventually, these giant incinerators were demolished and we buried our trash.
However, in 1982, the NSW Pollution Control Commission identified backyard incinerators as responsible for half of Sydney’s “brown haze”. So we couldn’t use our old gal anymore.
But what do you do with a rectangle of Bessa Bricks? Nothing. You can’t dispose of them easily. So you still find incinerators in some backyards like mysterious 1970s temples.
Millennials no doubt buy an old house and say to the agent, ‘what the hell is this thing in the backyard?’
Don’t you think in some ways the fire pit is simply a hipster version of an incinerator? I adore my fire pit I bought from Aldi, recently. But I do find myself resisting a nostalgic urge to burn a Jason Recliner in it.
DORIAN MODE is a jazz pianist, author of funny books published by Penguin and travel writer for NRMA Open Road Magazine for the last 15 years. His jazz trio performs each fortnight at Avoca Beach Pasta Café 7 – 9:30pm. With Covid restrictions they are performing outside (undercover) in the courtyard.
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