This week for Sepia Saturday we're asked to highlight a photo that is 'blurred, scratched, undefined, and plain boring'. Easy peasy, I thought. But then I had trouble deciding on which of the many blurred and scratched photos to choose. Not one of them is boring to me because each captures a little slice of time in the life of my family.
I've chosen just one. After the war my parents, Angus and Mavis Wyllie, married and lived on a wheat farm at Laen, east of Minyip in Victoria's Wimmera district. I was three when they decided to sell the farm and move south to greener pastures at Homerton north of Portland on the coast. Dad wasn't a wheat farmer any more, he was a dairy farmer, and he didn't need the wheat farming equipment any more. So he held a clearing sale in February 1952. For several weeks prior to the sale there were advertisements in the paper.
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| Horsham Times, 25 January 1952 [Sourced at Trove] |
Clearing sales are usually held on the property and items for sale are laid out in rows on the ground as shown in the photo. The sales are usually well-attended by neighbouring farmers looking for a bargain. The photo is faint and blurred but I like that it records that event and that it shows how flat and dry the Wimmera is. The farm at Homerton was undulating, lush, with a creek running the length of it and incorporated acres of natural bush as well as pasture. Thirty years later mum and dad held another clearing sale when they sold the farm at Homerton and retired.
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| Wyllie's clearing sale, Laen, February 1952 |
You can see more blurry photos over at Sepia Saturday.
