The Hoarder House Of Camberwell
Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2022 11:24 pm
And you thought YOU were drowning in tapes, magazines and cds?
Think again!
Here is the incredible tale of a wealthy Australian man who for 50+ years hoarded every imaginable aspect of everyday culture, from cereal boxes to magazines to records and... tv and radio shows!
This is a man so obsessive that at the end of each day he would write down the day's events on a sheet of paper and put it in a manilla folder along with any bits of paraphernalia he had acquired that day: leaflets, labels... all sorts of stuff! He would buy records and keep them in their original shop bags, and while at it collect a copy of every flyer relating to the current bands in the store and keep those too. He collected magazines, toys, and even food labels and tins of soup!
The big news though is that - being wealthy - he had a massive collection of video and audio recording equipment going back to the early 70s and beyond. After his death they found literally tens of thousands of umatic, betamax and every other imaginable format of recording tape stacked to the rafters in his rambling home. He taped complete runs of science fiction series going back to the early 1970s, plus radio, movies, music shows and everything else under the sun. The guy was a one-man equivalent of The British Library.
Now the horrible part!
It seems that when the gent went into a decline (apparently he'd been sleeping on the floor because his home was so overdcrowded with stuff) the family sent him to respite, and while he was there they went through his precious hoarded treasures and binned 27 tonnes worth of it! And no, that isn't a typo. Apparently there was a line of trucks down the street there was so much of it. And with it went literally thousands of umatic tapes that probably contained tons of lost tv not just from Australia but Britain too. By the time the right people found out what was going on, a huge amount of material was lost, but even so there were still tens of thousands of betamax and other formats of tape in the house.
It turns out that when his will was finally read, he specifically stated he didn't want his stuff to go into public archives, but to his "friends". And then we get into the shadowy world of hoarders and collectors... but I won't spoil it. Listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
There may be a silver lining in that there were also found thousands of hard drives and dvdrs, plus literature on how to digitise material. So did he at some point transfer some of the tapes to digital? Or did he just keep recording off the tv but use hard drives instead? He apparently was a big Dr Who fan so would have been fully aware of the 1970s purges at the BBC, but had no desire to share his hoard with anyone else. Did he just tape and tape and never ever even watch the stuff? Or did he occasionally find time in the middle of all this to actually sit down and enjoy it. Only time will tell. They say that even with what remains of the collection, it will take 10 years to go through completely.
There were times when I almost wept listening to this, not just for the possible loss of precious cultural material but for the misunderstanding of what this man had accomplished among his family members. They just saw a load of rubbish to be cleared. In fact it was a pricless cultural archive that would have filled a museum. So much of his life's work destroyed.
Surely one of the most interesting stories you will ever hear!
Listen here:
http://tinyurl.com/ozhoarder
Think again!
Here is the incredible tale of a wealthy Australian man who for 50+ years hoarded every imaginable aspect of everyday culture, from cereal boxes to magazines to records and... tv and radio shows!
This is a man so obsessive that at the end of each day he would write down the day's events on a sheet of paper and put it in a manilla folder along with any bits of paraphernalia he had acquired that day: leaflets, labels... all sorts of stuff! He would buy records and keep them in their original shop bags, and while at it collect a copy of every flyer relating to the current bands in the store and keep those too. He collected magazines, toys, and even food labels and tins of soup!
The big news though is that - being wealthy - he had a massive collection of video and audio recording equipment going back to the early 70s and beyond. After his death they found literally tens of thousands of umatic, betamax and every other imaginable format of recording tape stacked to the rafters in his rambling home. He taped complete runs of science fiction series going back to the early 1970s, plus radio, movies, music shows and everything else under the sun. The guy was a one-man equivalent of The British Library.
Now the horrible part!
It seems that when the gent went into a decline (apparently he'd been sleeping on the floor because his home was so overdcrowded with stuff) the family sent him to respite, and while he was there they went through his precious hoarded treasures and binned 27 tonnes worth of it! And no, that isn't a typo. Apparently there was a line of trucks down the street there was so much of it. And with it went literally thousands of umatic tapes that probably contained tons of lost tv not just from Australia but Britain too. By the time the right people found out what was going on, a huge amount of material was lost, but even so there were still tens of thousands of betamax and other formats of tape in the house.
It turns out that when his will was finally read, he specifically stated he didn't want his stuff to go into public archives, but to his "friends". And then we get into the shadowy world of hoarders and collectors... but I won't spoil it. Listen for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
There may be a silver lining in that there were also found thousands of hard drives and dvdrs, plus literature on how to digitise material. So did he at some point transfer some of the tapes to digital? Or did he just keep recording off the tv but use hard drives instead? He apparently was a big Dr Who fan so would have been fully aware of the 1970s purges at the BBC, but had no desire to share his hoard with anyone else. Did he just tape and tape and never ever even watch the stuff? Or did he occasionally find time in the middle of all this to actually sit down and enjoy it. Only time will tell. They say that even with what remains of the collection, it will take 10 years to go through completely.
There were times when I almost wept listening to this, not just for the possible loss of precious cultural material but for the misunderstanding of what this man had accomplished among his family members. They just saw a load of rubbish to be cleared. In fact it was a pricless cultural archive that would have filled a museum. So much of his life's work destroyed.
Surely one of the most interesting stories you will ever hear!
Listen here:
http://tinyurl.com/ozhoarder