Just finished wallowing in

"BLOKES & SHEDS" - Mark Thomson (Aust 1995)

        I'm an old bloke, an Aussie, I've always had sheds, I come from a male line of engineers and farmers, all shed-lovers, so what can I say? - I LOVE this book! Best $2 I've ever spent! Bless you Salvos.

        Mark Thomson is an Adelaide bloke, and this simple book from Angus & Robertson has been reprinted at least 8 times and deservedly so.

        If you want to look inside the head of a traditional Aussie male over the age of 30, read this book, a collection of photos of shed interiors (with shed-blokes attached) accompanied by a short text on the "shed philosophy" of the owner and what goes on in there. Shed and head. Simple truths told simply, of sheds big and small, some tidy some chaotic, every one of them a retreat and a haven and a secret-men's-business place.

        But each one still a place where things are made (including beer, wine, olive oil, bread, even some illicit gin and stuff for smoking - not featured) and repaired, where tired male spirits are rejuvenated, footy listed to, and where kids (and a few grandkids) are inducted into the arcane world of fix it and make it and collect it because it might come in handy one day. And usually does.

        I grew up with bloke's sheds, my Dad's was a picture of order and engineering, my city uncle's was a hobbyists dream, my country uncle's was quintessential farmer's workshop-cum-blacksmith-cum-farm stuff heaven that evolved over several generations and endless changes in technology, examples of which were still to be found in or around the shed. And I loved them all. Men and sheds.

        But I think I love farmer's sheds the best. Back in the mid '60s I was Field Serviceman for Chamberlain Tractors on Eyre Peninsula, so I saw a lot of farmer's sheds, came to respect the chaos and the longevity they each had, where men had to learn to be self-sufficient, fix anything with a length of fencing wire and a chunk of 4" x 2". Farmers' sheds are an institution and rightly so. Cherish them.

        I've had a bunch of sheds myself, big, small, new-ish, old-ish, and within two weeks of moving in they all looked pretty much the same. Not that the untrained eye would've picked it. But they each had my handprints on them, and populated by tools (some I made myself in 1956) and bits of stuff of forgotten origin, and an array of nuts bolts nails screws grommets computer parts radio parts car parts and in my current one the world's best collection of crown seal bottle tops.

        I think I want to write my own Shed Story. Hmmm - why not. And it would be more than the sum of the parts. As all bloke's sheds are. But, I realise that I actually have three sheds now - my shed where I go to fix things and make things from scrap, my study where I go to create with scrap words, and the one in my head, where I go to make ideas. Something like that.

        Okay, that's enough self-indulgence. Find a copy of this book if you want to know what makes a shed-bloke tick, or if you are one.

        Cheers.....

 

                T.R.E.

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