Found in a Box

The box was not a very special box but then it was not just an ordinary box, it was not very big but then not very small. It was not very new nor was it very old. The contents of the box is what might be special or ordinary.

I think of the relativities of special and ordinary, big and small, old and new, these are all adjectives that describe some sort of continuum so what could be the most special or the least special, the most ordinary or the least ordinary. Is the least ordinary in fact special and the least special ordinary. Let me try big and small, while big and small are obviously on a continuum. Of all those big boxes, the least big might be a small box and of all those small boxes the least small may be a big box. I do not want to say the smallest of those big boxes or the biggest of those small boxes, that is just nonsense, either the box is big or it is small. What complete and utter nonsense get back to the box or what was in it.

There was to be a clearing sale, an old and long established family business had come to an end. The family had been in the district for as long as it had been a district. You might say that this family was the most famous family in the district, yet was it a family at all. There were no heirs, the oldest son had married but had no children, the other son and two daughters had not married, it was the end of the line.

My parents had some fascination for such sales, maybe there was a bargain to be had then again maybe it was just to be there. Who would bid on the cedar furniture, the property had been sold now there was the matter of the clearing sale. A small community , they all knew one another. Even we children were familiar with the old man who drove so slowly around the district in his old blue Buick always sitting so straight and always with his hat so square on his head. He must have bought the car new, his only car, it must be at least 40 years old. Was the car to be sold at the auction too.

Come the day of the sale, I was just a teenager, Mum and Dad got dressed up, the auction was on Saturday afternoon at 2.00 pm. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, Mum made sure of that. I was amazed, although the family was legendary in the district, I had never been to the property, only heard stories about it. We parked under a peppercorn tree next to the cellar, the road, more a track went on and the house was out of sight over the brow.

When we arrived there were cars everywhere, parked in every available space, all higgledy piggledy, just stopped where ever they could. There was such a crowd waiting outside the house for the auction to begin. I seen my Grandfather's ute, my Uncle's car. Dad and Mum seemed to know most people but I only knew our immediate family. It seemed like a very social occasion, no wonder Mum got dressed up.

The house, old and never seen a coat of paint at least for many years, had a shingle roof and a veranda all around. It was the only house in the district to have had a piped gas lighting system. A large carbide gas generator was located just outside the house and the acetylene piped into the house to gas lights in every room. I had never seen such a system but Dad knew a little about it and said that it had not been used for many years because of an accident. He explained it was really just a bigger version of the carbide gas generators on the early cars which sat on the running board to supply gas to the headlights or the even smaller ones that were used on motor bikes.

The auctioneer started in the house, I did not get to see any of this as there were so many people, I think only serious bidders were allowed in. The auction in the house finished and the mob moved to the cellars. Wine barrels, grape presses and other old equipment, each piece was labelled with a lot number and all offered in turn. Who had bought the place anyway, everything was so rundown, was the cedar furniture sold there was an air of mystery about this sale.

People were drifting away, there was not much interest in the old winemaking equipment in the cellar. Dad bought a couple of the grape presses, big wooden things with like a picket fence around to contain the grapes, a large steel or cast iron screw up the centre and a mechanism of cast iron to wind the press down. It turned out that as there had been no bidders for the grape presses Dad had bought them just to salvage the brass nut in the cast iron mechanism. He would sell it for scrap metal; at the scrap dealers next to his sisters place in Marrickville.

The weekend after the sale we went and borrowed Grandfather's Dodge lorry to go and collect the grape presses, Dad had bought 3 of them. We arrived at the cellar, it was really only a fairly open tin shed, quite long and low. There were a couple of rows of logs on the dirt floor with rounded notches hewn out, this is where the wine barrels had sat on their sides and there was a stench of stale wine. Dad remarked that it reminded him of his childhood when his father had worked at Penfold's Wyndham Estate at Dalwood.

The grape presses were in the corner on the right as you came in, the highest corner of the cellar. In the bottom left corner was a separate room with a locked door. This was the still or more correctly the distillery where the spirit was distilled for the fortified wines. Locked up and I knew that the contents had not been part of the auction. Curious as a teenager is, I went exploring and found that an outside window of the still room was open and I could climb in.

There was no still, it had long gone and I wonder what it consisted of. There were shelves along the western and northern wall of the still room. Not much on the shelves except a couple of boxes, one contained several bottles of wine and the other, well it was a nondescript box and had just a few odds and sods in it. Again curiosity drove investigation. The only thing that I remember of the contents was that there were two small brass gauges about the size of a large pocket watch, a glass front, there was a small protruding point at the bottom and a fabric insulated wire coming from what on a pocket watch would be the winding knob with a similar point on the end. They were complete with a small brass ring just as you might see on a pocket watch.

Both gauges were the same except for the markings on the face, they were obviously a pair and were in quite good condition save a little fraying of the fabric insulation. The brass casings had been well polished originally but obviously they had just sat around in a box for many years. These pocket sized gauges, one with " Volts " neatly printed on its face, the other with "Amperes", somehow found their way into my pocket.

The grape presses were dismantled and eventually loaded onto the lorry and we took them to my grandfather's farm and unloaded them below the dairy where they sat for many years. I can vaguely remember Dad trying to break the cast iron from around the brass nut, I am not sure if he succeeded.

Some years later, having never found any particular use for the, what now I consider antique, voltmeter and ammeter, I put them in a partitioned box, my Great Grandfather's nail box, that sat on the bench just inside the door of Dad's garage. There they sat for many years I don't ever remember a discussion with Dad or anyone else about them. I wonder what happened to Audrey Wilkinson's matched pair of Volt and Amp meters that I found in the nondescript box on a shelf in his distillery room at Oakdale, the now famous Audrey Wilkinson Winery.