Things I shipped to Australia

As explained in another post, they actually haven't yet been shipped. But I ain't taking things **out** of the crates -- so for inventory purposes, they're as good as shipped.


The largest crate has an old, three-cushion sofa. When telling people this, the response is always, ''You're shipping a sofa to Australia???'' (Yeah -- and in that tone of voice, too.) If it was just a sofa, I wouldn't do it. But oddly, out of all the furniture in the house, it holds the most sentimental value to me. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a huge stash of comic books, resulting from my dad and his sibs subscribing to several comic book series each when they themselves were kids: the funny type (Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny...), not the superhereo type of comics. The sofa arms are abnormally wide (for a sofa), so they were perfect for stacking comic books on (two piles: a ''to read'' and a ''have read'' pile). (The photo is for illustrative purposes: different style, but the arm widths are about right.) The sofa arms are also wide enough to hold an adult tush (semi-comfortably), if the main part of the sofa was already filled up.

Because the ocean freight is charged by volume, not by weight (as long as you don't swamp the boat, the weight doesn't matter as much as how much of the ship's belly you're taking up), the ''seat'' area is essentially free of charge. So, I stacked a lot of boxes there, including three guitars and a wooden bench (which I otherwise would've left behind, due to its size).


Second crate is the overstuffed(?) chair that goes with the sofa. Again, sentiment, and the abnormally wide arms.


Third crate is two headboards and two footboards. One bed is an iron thing that my grandpa slept on when **he** was a kid. When he built his house (the one we're now cleaning out), he put it in the upstairs bedroom and my uncle slept in it while growing up. The other bed is made of wood, and he built it himself.


The fourth crate -- although technically not a crate, but just a bundle -- is eight metal bed rails. Two pairs belong to the ''headboard/footboard'' crate, above. The other four go to the bunkbed my brother and I slept in. The rest of the bunkbed is already in Australia, brought with everything else when we moved here. But somehow, the rails got left behind.


The fifth crate holds the wooden ''springy horse'' (like a rocking horse, but there are springs on each corner, which connect to a supporting framework). My grandfather had built a lot of wooden things over his lifetime, including this. Apparently, he had built it for my aunt (my dad's sister). Then, when we were kids, it was at our house and we all used it. Then it migrated back to my grandpa's attic. At the moment, my brother, the younger cousin, and myself are the only ones with little kids. My brother and the younger cousin each already have a ''springy horse'' for their kid. So, they deferred to me.



And finally, the sixth crate is filled with woodworking tools. I'll describe it in more detail in another post, but essentially it's the size of a footlocker, and is **very** heavy. I shudder to think of its actual weight...


As yet, no idea what this all will cost us. But I have a wonderful wife: The mandate given was, ''If it means a lot to you, get it.''

What a sweetie.


--GG