The times, they are everywhere a'changin and it ain't all a bad thing. But at the same time, each piece of past is a small component of the puzzle that makes us who we are. As a boy, my brother and I would wrestle in the back of dad's Holden Kingswood station-wagon while waiting for him to fuel up, buy some spare part or simply chat to the local service station owner. By the time he got back, we'd wound the big window at the back down to get a bit of air in - wrestling in a steel box in summer was sweaty business! Of course it wouldn't go back up again and we'd 'cop a serve' about behaving ourselves and our propensity for 'car-stop-rot'*. The 'servo' was a meeting point for men in an era when bloke's and V8's were synonymous with some kind of street credibility. Nowadays, it feels for me like the Australian servo is a characterless place for school-mums driving oversize off-roaders to barp the horn at each other. Everything's so clean and plastic and shiny - that ain't no real servo.
As my wife and I walked past this old relic on our way into Williamstown, the memories of a childhood now kinda long ago came flooding back. "Would you give me a moment to poke around?" I asked my wife and got to work photographing all the wonderful imperfections. I guess next time we're in Australia, this old servo will be gone and there'll be a fence around a hole in the ground with "DANGER OF CONTAMINATION" written on it. Well, it's probably one of those good things about 'progress' but I'm glad I could capture that old memory refresher. As we walked away to find some shade and a Melbourne coffee, that busted old fuel station lingered in my mind.
*Car-stop-rot was the name dad gave to our antics whenever the car stopped long enough for us to unbuckle.
Leica M4 | Elmar 50mm 2.8 | Ilford HP5 @ 800 | Kodak D76 1:1 @20° 16:30
