A cicada clings to a dream catcher, once authoritative bullhorns droop otiose from a pole, Panpipe Magic mingles with Jagged Little Pill in boxes of dollar CDs plonked on top of rabbit scratchings.
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For one unsettling hour, I'm the youngest person here.
I do the right thing and use my phone to scan the QR code over at the showground's ad-hoc COVID station, dutifully informing Big Brother I'm at a swap meet in country NSW; officially the only person in attendance based on the fact no one else appears motivated to follow my civic-minded lead.
This may be the most technologically uninitiated - or uninterested - cohort in the country; a subculture of collectors and hoarders for whom the internet is a blunt instrument of accumulation rather than anything to be adopted for more highfalutin pursuits, such as culture or communication or public safety.
If not grand, life is good for this paddock of boomers and war babies (more than one pair of long white socks and belted dress shorts will cross my path today); an argument fortified by the van loads and trailer loads and ute loads of stuff laid out before them in bazaar and, in some cases, bizarre fashion.
After months of corona-cancellations, thawing blood is once again beginning to pump through the trash and treasure trail and today's car boot is one of the first to emerge from hibernation.
I'm manning a stall with a friend who's keen to rid himself of accreting garage ephemera, maybe return home with a few bucks and a few extra items, which quite possibly will one day come back to this very place to be offloaded all over again.
I'm sceptical his bower of electrical items, power tools, paperbacks and reproduction oil lamps will attract much interest but within a couple of hours I'm proven wrong, even though he says the turnout of buyers is paltry compared with more normal times.
After a Ryobi router "used only once to do some skirting boards" goes for $40, he feels entitled enough to "do a lap" of the other stalls himself and returns with a pair of brand new Taipan leather lace-ups.
"Sixty bucks," he declares proudly and quite justifiably given such footwear costs about $200 retail.
"Nice," I say.
He stashes his score and settles back into his fold-out chair (sourced from a tip) and the business of selling and yarning with the stream of good-natured buyers, who love a chat while forensically scanning - always scanning - for that special item or 28.
Everyone here seems content, at ease, as if privy to the secrets of the universe; participants who've paid site fees on the eternal loop of existence. This is the place where Nietzsche meets American Pickers and, going by the vibe, it's a safe place, unencumbered by ambition and envy (although, a little greed seems good).
Fundamentally, it's a place of acceptance.
Considering one explanation for their origin, swap meets might be better called "swap meats" because they apparently came about in small communities when a beast was being slaughtered. Villagers would bring other food and items to be bartered for parcels of flesh, an important act of protein harvesting which ensured bigger families and a better shot at dynastic survival.
Of course, there's precious little "swapping" going on today; we're paying cash money, the only eftpos-equipped facility is the coffee van to which I now gravitate because, although it's well past 8am, no one seems to be selling any beer.
Lining up for a dose of inferior foam, I speak with a flea market devotee, who like a fisherman, is only too happy to boast of her biggest catch.
"A tiger table," she says.
"Like the ones Copperart used to sell... the tiger's made of resin ... the glass top's this thick ... my brother's still jealous I found it, you can't get 'em anymore."
No doubt, given the planet's finite collection of big cat-themed furniture is these days cornered by Elton John and the estates of Liberace and Michael Jackson.
We chart the sad, entropic journey of Copperart to Homeart to oblivion, before I leave to undertake a maiden lap of the stalls and search for the equivalent of my own tiger table (which, to be clear, is definitely not a tiger table).
Each stop buzzes with inchoate conversation along with the gathering flies.
"I went online and had a bit of a Google ...
"Getting dry, sposed to rain this arvo ...
"It's worth 500 but you can have it for 10 ...
"Someone stole our water when we evacuated ...
This is all comforting; the unassuming language of my past and, increasingly, my present.
Many of the items for sale promise the similar embrace of simpler times and you wonder whether that's not the whole point and we're engaging in a market of emotion rather than physicality.
I flick through musty stacks of Alistair MacLeans, double-take at an edition of Hoofs and Horns, which appears to have Outback versions of Robert Wagner and Bo Derek on the cover, and am drawn to bulging bindings of Paul Hamlyn-published Australia's Heritage magazines from the '70s, the type of omnibus resource to which I'd refer when doing school projects, usually committing the unforgivable by taking a pair of scissors to prints of wattle and photos of surfers to haphazardly embellish my icky, glue-smeared cardboard in a vain grab for that elusive 18 to 19 out of 20, instead of the perennial 14 to 16.
Abundance is key here - a bewildering abundance of ceramic owls matches an abundance of wide smiles; trays and trays of turgid succulents stand like incandescent coral in a sea of positivity, a small army of firies throws dashes of yellows and reds among the still grateful, still partially traumatised crowd.
But unlike many of these box-lugging bargain hunters, I'm not seeking bulk today, I'm just after something cheap for the house. We tend to keep an eye out for flotsam from the 1920s and '30s, the period that seems most fitting for the home and the time when its foundational family - to whom we feel very close - was at its most tangible.
At the terminus of my tour, I find just the thing; a pedal bin-sized Fowlers 'Vacola', a tin vessel for sterilising fruit preserving jars.
I beat the vendor down $5 and carry my nugget of domestic Australiana back to the van, where my mate is packing up, knowing the wind has gone from the day's spending.
"How much?" he asks.
"Twenty bucks."
"Nice."
- B. R. Doherty is a regular columnist.
