YOU never know what antiques you will find when you dive to the bottom of a river.
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Eric White would know. The Bendigo resident has been plumbing the depths for 40 years.
He dives for the fun of it and sells his discoveries to pay for what he believes is the biggest existing collection of Bendigo, Eaglehawk and Sandhurst bottles.
"I dive anywhere the paddle steamers used to pull up, because they used to throw everything overboard," Mr White said.
"They didn't have cars back then to take everything to the tip."
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Central Victorian rivers like the Loddon and Campaspe are too small to fit a paddle steamer on, but you can sometimes find a cache in them if a historic homestead was once built nearby.
"Sometime they would throw things in the water instead of burying them," Mr White said.
"You can't see in many of those rivers so we use a probe, about a foot long, with a handle on it.
"You push it in the mud and you can hear the difference between glass or brick. You can dig them out.
"If it's limestone or sandstone on the bottom the bottles will just be sitting there, even after 100 years."
The most Mr White has got for a river bottle is $6000, though finds are getting rarer because more people are hunting for them.
Among his most prized pieces are eight milk bottles made by Bendigo-based Sandhurst Dairies in the 1950s.
Each features advertisements from local companies, including Ashman's Dry Cleaners, Bendigo Radio Taxis and, "for your local news", the Bendigo Advertiser.
"The Bendigo Advertiser bottle is actually the rarest one," Mr White said.
"I don't know if they only did a few or what. I've seen others in people's collections but you just don't see the Addy's around."
Sandhurst Dairies stopped printing the names of local businesses on their bottles in in 1958, just three years after they started the promotional campaign underlining its roots in the community.
"Someone invented a machine that could read the milk and make sure it was OK. It couldn't read the milk if the bottle had this kind of labeling," Mr White said.
This article is part of a weekly series about hidden gems lying around Bendigo homes. Click here for another uncovering how Bendigo cornered the tomato trade before the local industry's dramatic collapse.
He is unsure where people would originally have bought the bottles. Perhaps they would have found them at one or several milk bars, given how rare they are.
Sandhurst Dairies was eventually bought out and, by the 1990s, was in the hands of Queensland group QUF, the purveyors of Paul's milk.
That company would eventually morph into what is now called Lactalis Australia.
Lactalis still has a factory in North Bendigo, located on Bannister Street.
Perhaps you've rediscovered something while locked down during the pandemic. We'd love to hear about it: addynews@bendigoadvertiser.com.au