Swap Meet Weekend

The first Sunday in February always heralds the Bathurst Swap Meet hosted by the Bathurst Historic Car Club. We are quite involved in the organising committee, so spent a very busy weekend down at the Showground.

It was a really busy weekend in town.  As well as the Swap Meet, yesterday there was a rodeo at Rockley and a motorcycle show in town, and all weekend there has been racing up at Mount Panorama with the big 12 Hour Race.

Yesterday was terribly hot and windy for setting up stalls, but after a couple of short showers in the evening things cooled down nicely for this morning.

This year we had a bit of a cull in some of our cupboards and had a little stall of our own.  We have collected just too much for our house.  Mick also had a bit of a clean out of the shed.

We took our camper trailer down and set the stall up in front of the awning.  It was a perfect setup for us.  I am delighted to say that most of our bits and pieces have found new homes.  I will do the same again soon with some more “treasures”.  We were so very lucky with the weather.  It was cool, which brought out the public, with just a couple of tiny showers, which didn’t affect us. 

I was extremely restrained and didn’t spend any money on collectables.  I didn’t even go for a walk around the other stalls (the first time in nearly 20 years of being involved in the Swap Meet). I just won’t think about the wonderful treasures I missed out on.  The only thing I brought home we actually swapped for one of our items.  It is very rare for an actual “Swap'” to take place at a Swap Meet.

Unfortunately, I was never a Brownie or a Guide when I was growing up and I always coveted the wonderful camping poncho/blankets that the girls had with the badges they had earned for various achievements. I now have one of my own, albeit showing someone else’s achievements.  Sorry about the poor photo, but it is quite grey here at the moment.

The young lady who originally owned this must have been quite active  as there are a large number of badges, dating from the early to mid 90s.  The blanket is only polar fleece and rather worn, so I may transfer the badges to an old grey army blanket I have, and covert it to a poncho more in the style of the ones I remember from the 70s. 

A friend in the Car Club has offered to give me some more Guides badges that he has at home to add to the collection.  I think it would be a great blanket to have in the camper trailer and could even be used sitting around a camp fire as originally intended.   It would also be fun to add some badges to the back from places we visit with our camper trailer over time.  We’ll see what happens.

Mick did get a couple of spare parts for the bikes and was given Edition Number 1 of Road Rider magazine to complete his collection.  He was more than thrilled, as it is in mint condition and so terribly hard to obtain.

The Toowoomba Swap is always on the same weekend ours and it was interesting to see that Kris attended that one.  Pop over to see what lovelies she took home.  I was rather jealous when I saw them.