When I was young one of the highlights of the month was the dump run. Growing up in rural town we had no garbage collection services and we had to transport our own rubbish. A trip to the tip also was a time of adventure and destruction. Our local tip was still a dumping ground of old cars, machinery, animal carcasses and everything else that people wanted to get rid of. The competition from other boys of who had the best throwing arm while smashing beer bottle that laid in the one large bit that everything was thrown into.

Even at the time you could see the amount of waste of everyday items that were reusable, old bikes furniture ect. Though there was recycling back then I dont remember any one taking it to seriously except for aluminium cans as there was a cash back.

As it is that time of year when things are starting to warm up every body gets the bug commonly know as spring cleaning. This is one of the fads that over the years I had a remarkable knack of missing. But this year was a little different. Over the time I have a accumulated quite a bit of fitness equipment for my home gym. This includes a power rack, a couple of rowing machines, a roman chair and an assortment of odds and ends. The back room of the house was sufficient for quite a time for this equipment but no longer. I have decided to move all the equipment out to the shed and that is were my problems start.

Over the years my shed has been the place to put everything that was to good to throw out but not good enough to be needed in the house. Old furniture, no longer used sporting equipment and a grave yard of unfinished projects. It had so much junk that I can not remember the last time I actually parked a car in there. With the assitance of a freind and my boy and a hard days work it was a time to take the rubbish to the tip.

When I got out to the now named 'Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre' i was very surprised. It had been a few years since I had been out there and on my last trip it was still just a landfill. Boy how things have changed. The new facilities are excellent. The first building you come to is Aussie Junk building. A drop off point for any goods that could be reused, there was also appeared to be an area to drop off hazardous waste like old paint tins.

The second area is were you dispose of you waste. It is a covered concrete area with well allocated parking. After backing the ute up and starting to unload we were met with an employee on the other side of the wall. They were there to sought out our waste. and on the other side of the area you could see a collection of items that people like my self believed ready for the garbage heap but to them were salvageable for another purpose.

Over all for the $16 it cost to dispose of the waste i believe it is well worth it.