Helvi Oosterman
We took the two grandsons out for a shopping trip and lunch on Sunday. This was meant to take our minds off the election misery and poor Milo’s hospital stay. Being rightly stressed by these two happenings on the same weekend and seeing seven abandoned shopping trolleys at one intersection on our return home in this most gentile and green suburb added to my irritability.
Of course these ‘stolen’ trolleys have already previously driven one family member into an almost heart attack causing rage, so the boys responded to my complaining about ‘I don’t understand this kind of low-life behaviour’ in their own instinctive ways; Thomas by burying his head in his newly purchased book wanting to give a miss to this typical family lament, and leaving the seven year old Max to air the third-generation views.
‘They are red-neck hillbillies, lazy Bogans, stupid bullies’…and to please us, after all he is our smart people person who knows the right thing to say in any situation: ‘They are Abbott Lovers!’
If Hung is our chief political writer, little Max can be our own social commentator, our Hugh MacKay !
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Banksy has an interesting take on shopping trolleys. Try these.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/200806413351236
http://www.banksyunmasked.co.uk/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=502
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I love Banksy’s work, Waz. Many thanks. These links lead to many more pics…. as you can see on the Home page.
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Most interesting Warrigal, we watched a documentary of another English ‘artist’ who fooled art experts with his work but can’t remember his name.
This Banksy bloke seems more creative though , so I’ll have find out more about him.
This afternoon we walked to pick our car and I noticed a couple of trolleys in a ditch in Moss Vale just like in Banksy’s picture. Luckily people are better behaved in Bowral 🙂
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And then there are those trolleys that end up being used by the home-less. They often hold a person’s entire wordly holding, which they wheel around from bin to bin, hoping to find something edible which is not at all rare.
We were at a Westfield shopping centre and almost entire take-aways were left on the tables. Someone had left a smooth white ice-cream 90% intact melting or resting inside a crunchie cone. I was most tempted.
In Rotterdam, many years ago, the local coucil provided water proof carton boxes for the homeless to sleep in. There were howls of protests but sometimes the home-less do not take to organised shelter.
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I’ve often seen shopping trolleys chained up in the supermarkets; maybe this was a small herd of trolleys making a bid for freedom?
😉
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The Aldi trolleys are always returned; the shoppers want their two dollars back. Why don’t the other supermarkets adopt the same system I often wonder. I must add it on my list of mysterious things…
Asty, I noticed that your smilie sign got a lot of attention on UL 🙂
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In France those deposit trolleys were in use 20 years ago. Plastic shopping bags were banned in The Netherlands at least 20 years ago as well. You can’t shop unless you bring own bags.
All glass bottles including glass jars have a deposit in the form of a credit ticket when glass is placed into a machine which reads each glass item as they are put in and spews out the credit ticket.
All manufacturers and all retail shops are obliged to accept all used white goods, tv’s, printers, all computer paraphernalia etc. There are no rubbish tips anymore for the public to dump goods.
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Deposit trolleys have been in use in Australia for well over 20 years, too. The problem is that most trolley dumpers are too bloody lazy to take the trolley back to get the two bucks. It probably needs to be ramped up to, at least ten!!
Still,the Netherlands is way ahead in terms of recycling.
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Helvi, over at Leichhardt, they have big trolleys – some with strap-in kiddie seats – small trolleys AND the two dollar kind. Nobody uses the $2 kind, and Leichhardt is not so bad as far as lost trolleys go.
Weird, but understandable for the folks who never carry change – unless I’m planning a street derro run.
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Big M, where?
I have only seen them at Aldi, there you can also buy a round tag and use it instead. Keep it in your car…
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Emmjay, we still shop at the Italian fruitmarket when in Leichhardt, no coin trollyes there.
Mr Oosterman says he often sees lost or rejected looking shopping trolleys there as well, he’s got a good eyesight 😉
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Helvi, they were in common use on the northern beach suburbs of Sydney, when I lived there over 20 years ago.
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Well Big M, I believe you, you grew up in an enlightened place… 😉
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Asylum seeking trolleys are not totally unknown around the inner-west. Sometimes you can see helicopters hovering overhead trying to spot them. When they get rounded up they inevitably end being corraled up in underground confines . There are also rewards offered for their return, pinned to telegraph poles.
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Max forgot about “ockers, ockerinas, widgies and bodgies, boofheads. I suppose they were well before his time.
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Come on Gez, I’m sure you can do better than this… 🙂
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Ok, Trolley trash.
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My youngest used to lament graffiti. “What a waste, can’t they join the library, or find some constructive activity?” Max’s ‘Abbott Lovers’, however, takes first prize!
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Thank god for the little ones to put things in perspective, to make us realise what’s important in life.
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