Australia's National Garage Sale is Today

The yellow ones were bartered for in a
2nd hand bookshop here in Hobart.
The rest all came from garage sales. 

Australia is participating in a national garage sale today to raise money for charity.  I think there should have been a lot more publicity about it as many people I spoke to didn't know anything about it.

I was listening to the ABC (Aus) radio this morning, there is a gardening program on every Sat from 9:00 to 10:00 and they were broadcasting it live from the ABC studios live and talked about the garage sale that had been set up there.  The announcer kept saying how many people were selling books.

The aim of this national sale is to encourage everyone to hold a garage sale, do a big spring clean and donate a portion of the money earned to charities of your choice.

The wind, as is usual for the past 4 weeks here was howling up a storm and I, for one, am sick and tired of the noise.  So I put on my motorbike gear and off I went in search of garage sales and fresh air while doing a bit of Penguin hunting.

The Ship is new to me and I can never have too
many James Thurber books. I love him.

I visited some second hand book shops as well but had much better luck at the garage sales and even the local Tip shop had some Penguin books on their shelves.  As the garage sales and Tip shop were only charging 50 cents a book I picked up anything vintage, first published by Penguin that I could find.

To put it mildly I think I hit the mother lode.  I was leaving the Tip shop, my last scheduled stop of the day, the wind was still blowing but now it had started to rain, I was getting tired after having walked all over Salamanca market and around the ABC studios. Also it looked like snow clouds moving in over the mountain.

I cranked up Beverley (my scooter's name as it is a 350 cc Piaggio Beverley) and headed towards home. I only had 1.5 km to go.  As I steered my way out of the Tip shop and down the road, there in front of me was a large sign in a driveway that said "Book Sale".  It was up a steep hill of a driveway and it was raining but I could see a lot of books in their carport. So I pulled up, popped the helmet onto my mirror (as you do) and climbed the hill.

Very strange cover for Owls & Satyrs. Going to
have a good look at it.

I immediately found 2 orange Penguins.  I then asked the  man if they had any more Penguins.  He said, "There are some green ones around here somewhere."  Sure enough there were some green ones. When he saw me pick up the bunch of them (50 cents each- I didn't care if I already had them as any duplicate books I have I will pass on to a friend or sell them myself on eBay or at auction). After all they are green.  The man seemed surprised as I held these Penguins and he ran up the stairs into the house and next thing I know down the stairs comes the wife with another big stack of Penguins in her hands.

So all in all I ended up with a bagful to now transfer to their new home.

I have noticed that as the Baby Boomers continue to downsize their large family homes the first thing they seem to get rid of are their books.  Yes they do hang onto their favourites but many of them seem to be appearing around here. The other day a local woman rang me and had put aside 33 books she knew I didn't have by reading my inventory on this blog site.  So this week has been exceptionally good for Penguin hunting.

After the Penguin drought of the winter spring cleaning is looking better and better.  Now it is time to put them onto Library Thing, onto Travellin Penguin's inventory and shelve them.  I might even get to read them.


Anybody else buy any books this weekend?