A MATERIAL BOY

A couple of material things this week literally gave me material for today’s column.

First, a glossy bulging book arrived in my mailbox from Christie’s Australia – announcing an upcoming auction of expensive, antique, exotica.

It told me how I could buy a “George III sterling silver wine funnel” for around $15,000. Or a Jan Van Dou Dutch school 19th Century still life of roses and tulips and other flowers for between $20,00 and $25,000.

On the same day I read in the paper that John Elliott, on his downward financial spiral, was also about to feature at Christie’s with an auction of the family silver.

(Bankruptcy administrators want to get their hands on any proceeds from the sale of Elliott goodies that, reportedly, include some antique silver beer tankards worth about $15,000 each).

Now, I can’t be a hypocrite here. If you can afford a George III wine funnel or a $25,000 still life of roses and tulips then that is your call.

In my more hedonistic days I once spent $40,000 on a Percival painting of my wife’s first singing teacher.

And some of my charity night auction expenditures were equally as reckless – but for good causes. Five thousand dollars for the last Leyland mini-Moke ever made in Australia. Five thousand dollars to the Variety Club for a Billich sketch – of me.

At the recent Grand Prix I bid $11,000 (and won) a motor scooter signed by Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart and Mark Webber. The money went to a cancer charity.

Not trying to big note here – just getting to a point. When I went broke a few years ago and had to sell my Toorak house (a la Elliott) and then my vineyard and farm I realized just how much expensive clutter I had accumulated in my life.

Tonnes of it. Literally. At one stage, in the 1990s, I had thirteen tonnes of stuff in storage in three storage places in two states. My Mt. Macedon farmhouse wardrobes and cupboards were filled with stuff I hadn’t looked at or used in years.

Look around your own house or apartment. I would bet you that there are kitchen utensils you haven’t used in years and clothes you will never wear again.

Rusting rubbish in the kitchen drawer. Clothes you will never fit into again – or want to.

When the bank forced the sale of my farm I literally walked out, partly in pain, but partly with a feeling of relief and starting again. I had a garage sale – which I didn’t attend – at which everything from the era was sold. Even down to coffee mugs and knives and forks.

There were autographed footballs and stars’ footy jerseys and bottles of port signed by people like Rodney Marsh and a favourite rocking chair. But, to tell the truth, it was quite cathartic and it wasn’t for the money that the sale raised.

It is an easy excuse to say when you have hit the wall that you have “simplified my life”. But I did.

There was a time in the luxurious Toorak days, with a mansion the Yarra and a pool and a spa when, before you went on holidays you had to sort out timetables with the housekeeper and the pool cleaner and the gardener and the driver.

Now, living in a secure apartment, I just lock the door and leave. Last weekend, on a whim, I went to Sydney to see Jacki Weaver’s stunning new one-woman play called “The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead”. Didn’t have to clear it with anybody.

Christie’s and Elliott obviously got me thinking about expensive clutter. We fill our lives with it. And it’s not just that rubbishy kitchen drawer filled with pens that don’t work, dying rubber bands, and keys that we haven’t the foggiest idea where they came from or what locks they once opened.

Do we obsessively hang on to stuff we don’t need and will never use again because we are scared we might lose everything? It is bizarre. I mean, think of the rubbish your Dad kept in his suburban shed.

When Jacki and I moved out of the Toorak house to have it transformed into an absurdly expensive mansion we put 155 boxes of books into storage. One hundred and fifty-five. Why? How many books in your bookshelf do you ever read again? Why don’t we give them away? As a writer of a few I can’t burn them but why keep hundreds of paperbacks you will never open again.

We are pathetic squirrels at times. Saving “stuff” in our own little bunkers. And that is fine if they are family heirlooms you want kids and grandchildren to have.

But I would bet you again – in this Hinch sackcloth and ashes phase late in life – you could go through your house and dispose of thirty per cent of everything in it. And not miss a thing.

I have probably thirty coffee mugs in my kitchen cupboards. I can’t remember the last time I used more than four at once. There are saucepans with wonky handles. Shonky corkscrews. And cookbooks that have not been opened, let alone consulted, in twenty years.

I have a pile of "files” on a desk that I have not looked at in ten years. Why don’t I just ditch it all sight unseen? I won’t. Creatures of habit are creatures of habit. But I am trying. Or at least writing about it.

March 28, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004