I’m an early-bird but there’s not many events that would have me bounding out of bed, grabbing a stupendous strawberry, white chocolate and coconut muffin from Proud Mary and lining up with hundreds of other people at 8:45am at Southbank.
But this was one very special garage sale. The Melbourne Theatre Company were moving, and everything had to go for one day only. I wanted to be part of the fake food buying frenzy!
The main area in the large warehouse was taken up by furniture and props, but I (and a million other people) made a beeline for the clothing section. Oh. My. God. It was like walking into one giant dress up box explosion. We’re talking racks and racks of super-cheap period costumes, contemporary clothing, shoes, handbags, scarves, gloves, stockings and fabric. I was trailing a woman behind me who I think must have been a vintage store owner, because she was putting literally every second item into her voluminous bags without looking twice. In a panic, I thought I’d miss out if I stayed behind bowerbird woman so I too started shoving stuff into my plastic bin bag.
Amongst the more unusual and interesting items on sale:
This man lined up at 7am and scored this Naboo turban. Later I saw him with a big black cape as well. Cool.
I like this enterprising girl’s approach. Wear the giant hooped skirt you’ve picked up while sifting through the other clothing. Then you can knock any other contenders out of the way.
A rack of Robyn Nevin’s pyjamas (presumably from August: Osage County)
Horses hooves! Great with skinny jeans.
Toilet fittings for Marcel Duchamp inspired interior decoration.
Crucifix and coffins. Perfect for your next Halloween party.
This big pink hippo was going to be re-gifted.
Fake food! I’ve found our perfect wedding cake. Noice.
Styrofoam map of Australia. They even remembered Tassie.
Magical angel’s wings.
One dusty ride-on mower.
Beautiful light fittings. If only I owned a restaurant.
A tired shopper taking a break from the mayhem. She was up for sale too. Along with the chair. And the stuffed bird, the helmet and the crutches.
My haul was very sedate by comparison and consisted of various wollen scarves, delicate leather gloves, a cummerbund, a Ted Baker replica of the Audrey Hepburn little black dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, an ivory chain-mail Oroton handbag with a deliciously bright purple lining and a massive frilly collar/neckpiece. The best thing – it cost $5. It was definitely worth getting out of bed.
I went too! We were more there for the experience then to buy anything specific, although if we lived with a bit more space we definitely would have come home with a fake Marshall amp stack!
Twitter: JackieCupcake
| November 14, 2009, 5:03 pm
Hi Jackie
I didn’t have anything in mind but I had a lot of fun – especially once I’d given up trying to find clothes in amongst the hoards of people and just started taking photos of the weird stuff on offer. I never did ask those girls what they were going to do with the horses hooves.
Jetsetting Joyce
Love these garage sales – not so much of these in Scandinavia as I was used to when living in US – but none the less – so much “handy” stuff you could find there
Sometimes you can find hidden gems in these type of garage sale. One’s junk is someone else’s treasure.
Looks like a lot of fun. We don’t really have things like this over here, wish we did.
Wish we knew about this, would have been a fab place to pick up costume bits. Where did you hear about it?
We don’t have anything like this in the UK. Very cool!
quite nice garage sale indeed, many funny things are around
Hellooo there, I just love such kind of garage sales. That little tractor was soooo funny. I would happily bought one