Precious tools and children’s toys were mistaken for hard rubbish on Tuesday when a Bendigo man left belongings unattended while moving house.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Graham Cocks had piled the contents of his Nolan Street home onto the nature strip before delivering a load of boxes to his new address.
He returned an hour later to find the pile of property had already been searched by over-enthusiastic passers-by looking for a secondhand bargain.
Among the missing items were tools, a car’s distributor, the engine from a remote control plane and several of son Toby's beloved matchbox cars.
The mother of Mr Cocks’ children, Tanja Collins, said the situation had distressed Toby, who suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was easily upset when belongings got lost or misplaced.
Ms Collins said it would be easier to know exactly what was missing once Mr Cocks had settled into his new home, but she estimated the value of the lost property at many hundreds of dollars.
"When you're moving, everything's sort of a schamozzle," she said.
Ms Collins accepted picking through other people’s hard rubbish was common practice, calling the activity “nature strip shopping”.
But she said there was an etiquette that people needed to follow.
“There's a certain courtesy. If it looks like it’s more than someone cleaning out their wardrobe, or it’s really amazing stuff, you're supposed to knock,” she said.
“You just knock on the person's door and ask, 'Is it OK if I take stuff?'”
She said people should think twice about claiming children’s toys like bikes and scooters, which young people often left unattended outdoors.
“If your kids don't want to use it, then it's a fantastic idea, but there's circumstances where you think, 'I better go and check here'.”
It was another blow for a family who had already been struck down by disaster when fired razed their home to the ground in 2008.
Mr Cocks and Ms Collins’ then four-year-old autistic son set the house alight, destroying all all of their belongings.
At the time, Ms Collins told the Bendigo Advertiser about her local community’s generosity.
She hoped the nature strip scavengers in possession of the missing goods would afford her the same kindness and return what they took.
