Page 66 - Microsoft Word - miniz-digest-104-109.docx

A very sad story

I live in Australia and have been buying some rare old Australian mini bottles recently. I was trying to
capture a bit of Australian Mini Bottle history for MBL - that’s my story anyway!

So.........15 bottles appear on eBay
and I am excited to see a few very
different Australian bottles. They are
in good condition so I buy
them. Instead of waiting a week for
delivery I had to wait more like three
weeks and then they arrived in a
sealed Australia Post clear plastic bag
bearing large red stickers “Danger –
Broken glass”.

Inside is a pig swill of alcohol, broken
glass, broken Bakelite caps, labels,
etc.

Why has this happened? The turkey
who sold them to me had placed 15
mini bottles in a bubble wrap satchel
without even individually wrapping
them first. All unwrapped in an
unsealed satchel they were then
placed into an Australia Post plastic satchel to move at random and grind against each other, let alone
trying to compete with the pressure from adjacent parcels. What on earth was he thinking? He must have
seen the Australia Post promotional documentary where all the baggage handlers wear soft woollen
mittens and place each parcel gently into a warm cotton-wool lined
transport box. He must have missed the recent you-tube postings of postal
workers throwing and kicking parcels into the back of a large truck? (In the
mid-70’s I lived for a time behind the parcel office in Brisbane. I can attest
that any parcel that said “Fragile” on it was thrown and rarely caught. I
NEVER put fragile on any parcel – editor).

I gingerly opened the whole shebang over the
kitchen sink and rinsed bottles, re-attached labels,
got rid of hundreds of small slivers of glass and left
the survivors to dry.

One bottle was literally smashed into a thousand
small slivers. Only the labels survived and photos are
attached. Another bottle had its neck top broken off
and lost its contents. Another bottle had a large
chunk of its Bakelite screw cap smashed off but
miraculously the contents didn’t leak. Damage to some labels was horrendous,
minor to others and I think that of the remaining bottles, every one of them
suffered damage of some sort to the lid/cap. Two of the bottles have rusted caps
and others have just got lots of dents and distortion.
- 5 -