The Postcard Files: Shepparton

I like to get postcards in the mail, but not many folks send them these days. Text messages and mobile phone snapshots are instant but spiritless, and a postcard, no matter how dorky, carries a faint whiff of the place from which they were posted. For the last few months, I've begun buying them to send to members of my family in the United States, and to good friends in Germany and Belgium. At the start, I bought only postcards that "looked nice" but that got boring fast. So now I gravitate to the ugly ducklings, which is more fun and makes the task easier. Here are a few I found this weekend while I was in Shepparton and Wunghnu, in the farm country of northern Victoria.

I found these first two at the news agency in downtown Shepparton. "Shep", as it's called by most people, has a few interesting elements but, for the most part, it's kind of a dump. Outlet stores and fast food joints are the connective tissue holding the town together. The sales clerk seemed a bit puzzled as to why I'd want to send a postcard from this place, but my American accent probably explained enough. These are the most expensive postcards I've ever bought, at AU$2 each. Ouch.

Lesser Shepparton didn't warrant their own postcard.

This one is just weird. Had I not read the caption, I might have guessed this was, in fact, Lesser Shepparton. But it appears to be a museum diorama. I have no idea who Bangerang is. I assume it's the fellow (?) on the right touching a wooden pole to a rock, and that this is what constituted housekeeping in days of yore. I'll have to look for it the next time I'm in Shep.

This is Wunghnu's only postcard. It depicts an instructive graffito scrawled on the north side of the water tower, across the street from the town store where I bought it.