.PROJECT.
.AMBIGUOUS.
.STUDIES.
.07.
The small fragile box sitting in the corner of my life. Gathering coffee stains as days fly by. The central piece of our lounge room. Watching families come and go. Locked full of secrets from past and present, watching all as we waste away days sitting in front of it.. The scratched little box full of memories. Waiting to tell its untold story of travel and heart ache.
In a small dusty town in the ‘south’ of Ireland on a rocky old little road the local black smith was working over time. With an enormous increase in travel came an increase in demand for travelling cases. The increased travel had caused a boom in the business and then came forth the massive production line of the common pine travelling case. A small case with cast iron handles and lock. The perfect item for the lady of travel.
It was the mid 18 hundreds when a young man by the name of William came into the shop and ordered a small travelling case. A case which he and his fiancé planned to use as they embarked on their trip to start a life together out on a small farm in the out skirts of Western Australia. The case endured the long and gruelling trip on the rough seas of the Indian Ocean and arrived at the young married couples homestead several months later.
Once arriving at the farm it was only a few years before gold fever first struck Kalgoorlie in 1870 so the struggling young couple packed up their travel case once more and moved down to the gold fields in the hope of striking lucky. After countless weeks of searching and not finding anything they realised they’d be here for a while and this is when the temporary towns started to take shape. In the small temporary house, storage became tight and the travelling case became home to store all of William’s digging tools and brushes.
It was towards the end of the 19th century when all their wildest dreams would come true and they would strike it big! With a dramatic increase in income and the year’s of hard work starting to take a toll on their now ageing bodies the couple decided it was time to sell their small homestead out west and move much closer into Perth to start a family.
Quite soon after settling down Williams’s wife gave birth to her first child, a baby girl by the name of Elizabeth. By the time her first child reached the age of 16. William’s wife had developed a deadly disease which after two weeks in hospital took her life. It was at this time her oldest daughter got engaged to a young farmer and with the blessing from her own father packed up her belongings into the trusty box and moved back out into the country side. But this time the gold rush was dying down and the new found wealth of Western Australia was starting wear away as the country as a whole became more farm focused again, this time moving back to a much wealthier farm for the start of a farmer’s wife’s life. At 19 she gave birth her first child again being a girl, named Audrey.
It was now reaching the early 20th century and as quickly as her married life had started, her husband was whisked away to the first World War. It was in this small country town and being so far away from her family she turned to her local church. it is here where she found comfort and solace. It was the box, a present from her now sick father in which she used to keep her most precious items in, her bibles. This is where she kept all her religious items from rosemary beads to bibles and they all lay safely locked in side the little, now aging pine travelling box.
With her husband being so far away from home and with now 3 young children on her hands she turned to the cheapest form of employment on the farm. This being aboriginal "slavery". From farm work to cooking and cleaning, the aboriginals basically worked for food and shelter with the amount of aboriginal people around the house and the racial ties that came with society at the time it became of utmost importance that her precious box stayed lock away from supposed prying eyes.
On her husbands return from the First World War the first signs of the depression hit. As the depression really hit home especially around rural Western Australia, times got tougher and tougher. As months went by the memories of war and the tireless ways of the depression hit home. Enough finally became enough on a cold crisp morning around 1932 Elizabeth awoke to the loud shot of a gun. She ran out to the barn just in time to see the blood spilling from her husbands brain, falling quickly on the hard dust ground that lay beneath him. At this time she also decided enough was enough and as her one remaining parent was now ageing fast, she decided to pack up her own family and move them back to her child hood house back in Perth. It was here in which her eldest daughter met and fell in love with a strapping young banker.
Her mother’s dad fading fast and the years on the farm starting to take their toll on her mother, she decided to remain at home and help out. It was a few years later that her grandfather passed away and within a few weeks following, her mother too passed on. By now she had a large house to herself and with the young banker still on the scene they got married and once again started to raise a family in the home stead. Once giving birth to 3 children and pregnant with the 4th it was time her husband thought (and with a big promotion on the way) that they pack up and move to Melbourne. With 3 kids primary school age and another on the way, they started the long tiring process of selling the house and packing up all their belongings. It was whilst going though all their belongings, Audrey came across the small pine travelling box she remembered her mother coveting when she was once a small child out on the farm.
After years and years of it sitting in their garage the box still remained locked but the key was long gone. With a need for so much storage and with so many kids around this was an item Audrey saw too much potential in (and with such vivid memories) to throw away. So it was packed up locked, and put on the removal truck as it again set out on a long journey this time to Melbourne.
Once arriving in their new home in the suburban town Glen Waverley, Audrey’s 4th chid was near due. So her husband Brian got out the axe and with one swift swing off came the locking device out of the case. Uncovering years of dusty worship and long lost love. The now very old case was not up to Audrey’s standard so then came the task of covering up the old pine case and covering it with floral wall paper, the perfect fit for a 1970’s nappy storage in the nursery of her new born daughter.
By the time her kids were at high school the chest once again got put back into storage. Years and years passed as the box did nothing more than gather dust as it lay life less in the shed. By this time Audrey and Brian had become grand parents and the once travelling box that had been passed on from oldest daughter to oldest daughter had lost its sparkle. With none of her kids wanting the now hideously tacky floral box, she became close to throwing it away. But when one of her son’s wife Heather, came to help clean up his aged parents garage, she could not let such a battered box with such history go to waste.
Once home Heather got straight to work, striping off the wall paper to bring the box back to its original beautiful stained pine look finish. By this time the box had come to be in a very fragile state and with Heather and her husband Mark now having young kids, they began the task of keeping their sticky fingers away from it.
Of course as nature would have it, it was not the kids that saw the boxes first household defeat but instead a tired father who decided to sit on the box breaking both original hinges off in one quick swipe. The box since then has now seen years of being a centre hall way piece boasting big bouquets of fresh flowers.
With a house renovation which brought into play many more antique wood style pieces, the box became more of a central living piece. The coffee table. An item we see daily. An item on which we thoughtlessly place drinks without coasters. An item which we sleepily walk past daily, look at from the kitchen and try not to fall over in the dark, without even slightly thinking about the places it had been or the times it has seen. An item that once saw the importance of bringing one family’s life to a new destination that now sits hopelessly placid in the heart of my home. From a sturdily, reliable inconspicuous travelling case to a fragile, contextualized centre piece this box has seen days of hatred and sadness to days of happiness and peace and will hopefully live to see the days of many more families to come.
.BRITTANY.
.CARVER.
.3135800.