Deep down the gully, there it was, the abandoned shopping trolley.
It was during a walk while feeling a bit at a loss that I came across this scene. Mittagong where I live is built on top of a series of natural springs which are now mainly channeled into large concrete storm-water drainage pipes running under streets and buildings. The springs are being fed subterranean water running from two mountainous hills on either side of Mittagong.
This lonely trolley drew my attention as I crossed an exposed section of this spring. I looked down pensively into the running water, trying to clear a somewhat troubled mind, when I spotted it. It is laying on its side almost prostrating itself as if into submission. It made me wonder what on earth possesses a person to throw a trolley down a springs embankment. What has this trolley done to deserve this fate? How many times did this trolley fulfill its simple obligations and help the shopper deliver food to their cars? Why do people take trolleys outside the shopping centers? Is it some kind of punishment, a failed marriage or relationship? A blind rage? I bet they are mainly abandoned by men. I wonder if a good psychologist could find a link between the trolley abandoner and domestic violence? There is a lot there!
One often sees shopping trolleys being discarded miles away from shops. It isn’t the first time I have seen them being discarded. In Europe you can’t take them outside shopping centers . An alarm goes off or they have deposit systems like the famous Aldi shops have. I now feel I should clamber down the embarkment and retrieve this poor trolley. It looks a bit tricky though and I don’t want to fall. I know shopping trolleys are inanimate objects but there are often connections crossing over to us humans on our present state of abandonment and lonely discarded trolleys.
A good friend suggests I should take a bone density test first. The trolley looks very much intact. I don’t want to risk ending up next to the trolley, prostrate and all.
Tags: Mittagong, Mountain, Prostrate, Shopping trolley, Spring
Oosterman Treats Blog 
January 5, 2022 at 5:25 am |
If you can figure out what store it’s from, just let that store know where it is.
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January 5, 2022 at 10:13 pm |
Yes, I can’t see as yet from which store it originated from. I will have another look but with the rain the spring might well be flooding now. Poor trolley.
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January 5, 2022 at 7:34 am |
Time to call RESPCT – Royal society for the prevention of cruelty to trollies.
At least this one can be saved, Gez. I’ve seen tragic trolly drownings in the Cooks River. Sleeping with the fishes 😢
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January 5, 2022 at 10:16 pm |
Yes, I haven’t been to the Cooks river but I have no doubt people take their anger out anywhere. The trolley can’t fight back or defend itself.
Thank goodness for Respct, Thererese.
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January 5, 2022 at 7:48 am |
Yes, it’s sad to see the trollies abandoned and so far from their home. 😦
I do wonder, too, if how people treat useful objects is also how they tend to treat people, too. ???
I assign human emotions to certain objects 🙂 and worry about those objects and how they are treated. Ha. I probably need to be treated! 😉 😮
But, be careful, Gerard…don’t help that trolley if it might be dangerous for you.
(((HUGS))) 🙂
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January 5, 2022 at 10:22 pm |
Yes, I suppose the trolley is an easy object to take life’s frustrations out on.
I once saw a trolley that had been heaved over a traffic sign. A “no parking” sign. Did someone get booked and the person took revenge.
It must have been through a lot of effort to heave the trolley up and then lower it down the traffic sigh allowing the post to enter through the flap at the back of the shopping trolley. Quite a feat really.
No, I will not try and get it out of its predicament, Carolyn. It is probably flooded now with all the rain we are getting.
Hugs to you and Cooper
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January 5, 2022 at 8:21 am |
An allegory for our times – poor innocent beast of burden!
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January 5, 2022 at 10:24 pm |
Indeed and such an easy target too. Do they abandon trolleys in Switzerland, surely not?
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January 6, 2022 at 2:59 am
They all demand a deposit so the frugal Swiss all bring them back!
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January 5, 2022 at 12:50 pm |
A trolley that trundled away
found itself lying down in the hay.
It never had meant
to be used and then bent,
but “That’s life,” it decided to say.
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January 5, 2022 at 10:27 pm |
Beautifully put and so pertinent, the anguish of the trolley and its plea for respect ‘down in the hay’.
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January 5, 2022 at 7:34 pm |
Good Morning Gerard, Thank you for the early morning laugh. A good way to start my day. Susan
Sent from SKH iPad
>
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January 5, 2022 at 8:09 pm |
Thank you Susan.
That trolley all on its own. So sad.
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January 5, 2022 at 9:21 pm |
I can see there in your “troubled mind”, Gerard, a kind of sorrowful sympathy for that trolley..and certainly, as an individual item, the humble shopping trolley does not deserve such abandonment and treatment…but beware!…there is a cruel streak in those innocent looking machines..there is envy and vengeance toward the car they are pushed toward to unload their burden…the car may be also of 4 wheels, but it drives away!…to exotic places the trolley can only dream of!
While not wanting to tangent away from the header subject on to shopping trolley “weaponisation”, I would still like to relate a most tragic moment that happened to a relative of mine some years ago concerning a shopping trolley, that has affected him up till this day…:
He had just bought himself his first brand spanking new car…a Holden Kingswood..bright lime-green..he was a gregarious chap..and being super cautious to not have it scratched or knocked whilst parked up at the local mega-market, he made it a point to park the car way-away in the bottom corner of the car-park.
This one day, he decided to have an expresso coffee before shopping…Sitting there in the cafe at the big window, he could see his bright lime-green Kingswood parked in splendid isolation at the bottom of the car-park..he sipped his coffee whilst admiring his beautiful toy…when movement at the upper end of the park caught his eye…
You know..Lady Fate has a cruel streak in her…in that she will first draw your attention to her intent to do you harm in a most un-nerving way and with awful premonition, she will taunt you with an unease of the certainty of disaster and yet allow you no chance of stopping it…like watching a train-wreck in slow motion, she will gleefully torture you with a cruel certainty of inevitability.
My relative watched a young, frustrated mother wrestling with baby on hip, boot open, loading bags of shopping into her car whilst obviously attending the wrestling infant..slamming the boot-lid down and then angrily shoving the shopping trolley away without care or concern…My relative watched with both mesmerising curiosity and horror as the trolley cruelly performed a slow, predictable, parabolic curve of most pure mathematical precision, and , guided by the tyrannical hand of cruel Fate, gathered speed down the gentle slope and made a bee-line to a bright lime-green Kingswood..set there now looking as big as a barn-door just waiting for a projectile….and with all the emotional tempest of a Heathcliff and Catherine moment from Wuthering Heights, of rushing toward each other’s open arms..they did indeed find each other…
We can draw the curtain of sympathy down over my relative’s facial expression at that moment…sufficient to say that from that day forward he ceased to contribute to ANY charitable religious collections…concluding, quite correctly, that there is no good God!
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February 8, 2022 at 11:47 am |
I just read this story again. I must say, it is wonderfully well told. I very much enjoyed reading it again. I am not surprised that this guy in the story would resort to blaming God for this major disaster!
Congratulations, dear AQ, you produce such great writing! Do you have some more stories in store, perhaps?
Love, Aunty Uta 🙂
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January 6, 2022 at 5:32 pm |
Perhaps it tired of going up and down the same aisles filled with food and kids with wet pants, and tried to head out for a life in the wild. I used to work in a grocery store after school and summers, etc. and the canned music they’d play over & over again was maddening. I hope it gets back on its wheels and makes it to the outback.
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January 7, 2022 at 5:07 am |
Yes, Robert. I suppose people also buy more food. In the past people carried shopping in bags. Now they load up trolleys.
There is an American Cosco shopping Emporium in Sydney. It is huge, and they have enormous trolleys. I am sure some get stolen by dishonest entrepreneurs’ and sub-let them to small families in need of a temporary home.
I have yet to see them being abandoned.
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January 7, 2022 at 4:38 am |
Maybe the trolley wanted to go for a swim. Perhaps it escaped the shopping centre and got lost.
There are some shopping centres around Sydney where the shopping trolley’s wheels lock if someone attempts to leave the shopping centre. Most don’t though.
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January 7, 2022 at 5:10 am |
Yes, those locking wheels I had forgotten about. It really also comes down that people are proud of the environment and not leave them in rivers and around trees and traffic signs.
Some homeless people at least use them to wheel their meagre possessions around.
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January 7, 2022 at 12:17 pm |
I just came across this article and thought of you immediately. Maybe the love of a good walk is part of your DNA, or your heritage. In any event, others have discovered the same thing you’ve commented on from time to time.
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January 7, 2022 at 10:54 pm |
My parents often used to ‘walk around the block’. You are right, Linda. The Dutch do like to walk and blow out ( uitwaaien).
In fact walking around the block was a neighborhood thing as well. It gave a chance to combine excise and catching up with the latest gossip.
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January 8, 2022 at 5:42 pm |
Shopping carts around here have a tendency to wander off as well, Gerard, often becoming part of a homeless person’s way of transporting his or her goods. Sometimes they are so full, you wonder how a person could push it up a hill, or whether it would become a get away on a down hill. Yours sounds like something a kid would do… And yes, we have to be more careful in our exalted age. –Curt
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January 10, 2022 at 1:18 am |
I suppose the economics of trolleys going astray and the option to prevent that from happening would have been carefully considered by the shopping Corporations, Curt.
Clearly allowing shoppers to take trolleys and leave them abandoned to the disadvantage of the environment has been the chosen preferred option.
It makes more money!
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