teddy bears

A strange girl

Posted by hil

My friend Lynda would like to know seven strange things about me… Thanks, Lynda.

  • I disliked dolls as a child, but loved teddy bears and other animal toys. My favourite was a panda I was given when I was about 4. I was fluent in Panda talk. Another favourite was a little German-made bear that I was given to keep in my pocket on the plane when my family moved from South Africa to Australia when I was seven. (I don’t think he is a Stieff bear, because I don’t remember him ever having a stud in his ear, but he is a dead-ringer for Peter Bull’s bear, Theodore, that sold for a fortune in 1995.)
    Edward Bear
  • When I was little I used to save up my pocket money for 10 weeks to buy little felt mice from a tiny shop called The Acorn in the Adelaide Hills. They had tartan clothing, and you could get girl and boy mice. Later I started to make them for myself, and I had a whole family of them, all with alliterative names like Miranda Mouse. I also made them things like tiny books, bags and babies. I still have some, and I still make them occasionally. There are notes on the photo if you follow its link through to Flickr.
    Felt mice

  • When I was about 12 I went through a phase of carving rabbits in the ends of matchsticks.
  • Another early foray in craft was making miniature gonks in football colours for friends at school. Gonks were a 60’s fad, essentially humpty dumpties with big hands and feet, and a fuzzy tuft of hair.
    Gonks

  • At about the same age I started making soft toys from patterns in women’s magazines, only I often made them straight from the miniature pattern on the page, rather than scaling them up
  • We have a couple of treasured crocheted blankets made by grannies in the family, but on the whole I dislike crocheted objects. Amigurumi drive me nuts. I don’t know why.
  • I find it very difficult to tag people; not sure why. (I also have a telephone thing, have to push myself to telephone at times). So if any of my blogging friends would like to take up the meme and run with it, please do, and let me know in comments here.

Roadside teddies at Bungendore

Posted by hil

Roadside bunny

Just out of Canberra on the Kings Highway to the coast, especially on the part between Queanbeyan and Bungendore, there are lots of teddies and other soft toys nailed and tied to trees. Often they are quite high up, and some of them have been there for some years. Its easy to drive along and not see most of them, unless you are particularly on the lookout. I’ve heard there are some down near Moruya, too.

Roadside soft toys

It’s curious, and although there a few theories around, no-one really seems to know why they are put there or who puts them there.

I find them interesting and quite thought provoking, and I would like someday to photograph more of them. Overall I find them rather sad and poignant, as teddies should be loved and cuddled, not tortured and abandoned to the elements. Do the nastier teddies on the market deserve this, or should I remember that for the most part kids can imbue even a mere cloth or stone with character and lovableness? Is there a war going on in teddy land? Are these teddies free in spirit even if their bodies are nailed to one place? I also like that it is unexplained, and that the number is growing gradually, an silent unordered social activity. And I am interested in the weathering patterns and process on the teddies, and how it changes their character.

Roadside soft toy

Roadside teddy

Roadside teddies

More in my photoset at Flickr. LaRuth also has a couple more.