199 – Life In Your Backyard

Walking in Morialta. Preparation for Japan.

Listener survey underway. Go to theadelaideshow.com.au/survey

Mark Thomson is one of those important human beings who devotes time to making sure we don’t forget our pasts or the skills that got us here. As research director of the Institute Of Backyard Studies, Mark has compiled an exhibition at the West Gallery in Thebarton entitled, Advice To Travellers. It brings together the many strands of interest that Mark is engaged by, ultimately becoming an elaborate wake-up call to all of us to spend more time paying attention to our journeys and not just our destinations.

Links discussed in this interview:

Mark’s exhibition at West Gallery, Advice To Travellers

The Institute of Backyard Studies

The SA North East Suburbs Maker Space

Mark, who are the travellers?

There are many road signs in your exhibition. Are these just photoshop creations, or actual signs

Describe some of the works for us

You don’t want to be called an artist, why not?

How does this connect to your world of the Institute of Backyard Studies

You have a long history of exhibitions. Rare Trades brought together tradespeople who used traditional methods to do traditional things like haystack building. Why?

Why is it important to do things by hand?

What is the optimal way to be a backyard dweller

Some listener comments:

The Cardinals Book Club on how they use their backyard: Hang a sheet up and project a film on it, have a BBQ or spend a weekend trying to tame it. Our top 3 uses.

Vintuitive says: He grows veggies.

Joy White near Mannum says: Our neighbour has an airstrip in his backyard. We like to watch him mow it.

We have a question from Paul Rees from the National Motor Museum: I’d be interested to know Mark’s views and opinions on repair culture and the fix-it movement? What barriers does he see to people forming community-based repair fairs / shops / meetings etc and fixing each other’s stuff for free or at low cost and learning something in the process?

How would more backyard usage affect our community

You’ve also created a stir with Heny Hoke. The inventer of the metric shifting spanner, the wooden magnet, and the random response generator. Take is into this Aussie style of humour and legend.

You have spent some of your life as a speech writer. Who for?

What is the key to a great speech?

Do you think your backyard work is a way of squaring the ledger after using your talents to spin?

What next?

Nigel challenges the panel to pick the fake story from three stories from South Australia’s past.

Northern Argus – April 1912
FAULTY SPARE PARTS FROM BACKYARD DEALERS.
Backyard dealing in car parts is a new phase of the motoring business which has sprung up in Adelaide and suburbs. Unsuspecting motorists are caught by ridiculous “economy” prices. Faulty parts and bad equipment such as perished tyres and tubes and almost collapsed batteries fire skilfully camouflaged and sold, and when placed in use invariably burst or break down. There are one or two old established firms which deal in spare parts from junked cars, and they are of real service to used car owners, particularly to those who have purchased old cars of “orphan” or obsolete makes. Many owners of such vehicles have been able to put their cars in use after breaking vital parts such as axles, pinions, or crown wheels, of which new spares were not procurable in Adelaide.

News – July 1931
MANY OLD BIKES ON ROAD
Little Business for Dealers
ALTHOUGH it is contended that the number of bicycles on metropolitan roads has increased, dealers say that there has been no improvement in business. They ascribe the increase to cyclists using bicycles that have been patched up after having been discarded for years. “Even in second-hand machines there is little doing,” said one dealer today. “In an effort to save train and tram fares people are bringing out old machines that they- would not think of riding in better times. There is a great deal of junk on the road at present. Old bicycles are being fitted with new tyres and made to carry their owners to and from work." In new machines only about a quarter of the business is being done. today compared with two years ago,” He said. “Then I had three or four men building bicycles. Now I have one.”

The Advertiser – March 1937
SCRAP IRON FOR JAPAN’S FURNACES
Strange Cargoes From Port Adelaide
In the wide range of merchandise which appears on the manifests of ships outward bound from Port Adelaide, there is no stranger cargo than the heterogeneous mass or old scrap iron and steel which lies in rusty dumps behind Birkenhead Wharf awaiting shipment to Japan. From motor wrecking yards, deserted mines, ship-breaking yards, farms. country smithies, suburban backyards, and a: hundred and one other sources, collectors gather old iron and steel and sell it to one of the two or three dealers who ship junk metal from Port Adelaide. Almost all of it goes to Japan, where, with the hundreds of thousands of tons, of scrap metal imported annually from other parts of the world, it finds new life in the furnaces of the great Industrial works near Yokohama and Moji. From it toys are made, ships are built, and new machinery, constructional girders, motor cars, needles, and farm implements produced. Some of it is made into sheet piling to strengthen the foundations of buildings against the shock of earthquakes, and some of it finds its way to the naval dockyards, where it plays its part in the scheme for Japanese naval parity.