INTRODUCTION
To me, it was unnerving. It upset some part of my
brain to see things just ignored and left to rot. I hated it. I would rather
see a cleared piece of ground covered in gravel or tar rather than something
ignored and wasted. In the country, on our school holiday banishments to our
cousins’ farm, where building abandonment and dereliction were rampant. Huge
old barns and hay shelters, even farm houses, would lean at dangerous angles,
so near to collapse, even though they were so close to roads, whilst bridges
that once had a use would be in pieces over creeks and gullies, with me
wondering what their purpose was in the first place.
It's strange how I remember how vividly I felt about
those sorts of things back then, because it is not how I feel now.
Most of the angst was replaced when puberty arrived
like an asteroid slamming into the moon. More important things took over:
girls, music, cars, money, every shiny
trinket under the sun. And, after a lot of life living, book reading, and
appreciation, I began to notice all these ruins again, but in a different
light.
I wanted to know the story behind the abandonment, why
it was there in the first place. What is the history?
This became a
bit of a hobby, now with the internet and easy access to local history via
social media and, of course, the reliable local library. I would visit old
buildings and properties in the area where I live and its surroundings. Not
just the ruins, but old buildings that had once been prominent and had now been
sold once their original purpose had become redundant. Such as Post Offices,
Milk Bars, or local factories that once employed many local residents.
I would spend days off in reclaimed building developments
trying to picture what the dismantled houses looked like, and if they had
gardens, before everything was reverted back to nature. I would return home and
research everything I could to get pictures of places in the before times, back
when these properties were people's homes and what they may have considered
their future.
It was a very satisfying project, and I would often
take old pictures and morph them into current-day photos I had taken to show
the changes over the years.
In time, with each property, building, or place, I
could put together old photos to go along with some historical narrative or
social media memory. I would also discover how or why they became irrelevant,
failed, or were sold. Of course, the majority didn’t tell too much of the
glorious beginning, middle, or end. It was plain old progress, changing times,
and technology that rendered most defunct. While others survived through the
ages and hung onto their importance, and became iconic. Their past is recorded
in great detail and treasured in the history of the area. Some, not many.
Progress rarely takes everyone along on its fast and furious path ever forward.
During all these visits, one of the things I started
to notice about myself was that when I researched the places I visited, I found
I envied the people who wrote posts remembering what it was like when the subject
they wrote about was in its prime. something I could never do because those
memories aren’t mine, and that time is gone. Albeit, sometimes I don’t think
the writer's memories were entirely accurate. As we all know, our minds tend to
cloud things and sometimes recreate the way we recall them in our later years.
Never in my wildest dreams would I believe that I would be able to confirm these memories, but in real time.
I would discover time travel.
In a manner
of speaking.
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