There’s no fortune to be made, but there’s a reason we keep looking for these glassy treasures down in the mud | Mic Looby

My family and I have a weird hobby. We like to dig for old bottles. It’s something we stumbled upon, quite literally, one soggy weekend.

On a visit to the family farm, we were exploring a shady gully below the house, where an occasional creek meandered down the hill. One of the kids tripped on a jutting ridge in the mud. Dug up and sluiced out, the object revealed itself to be a round, honey-hued medicine bottle.

The rest of the afternoon had us coaxing more old bottles from the rain-softened shadows. Up came another medicine bottle, this one flat and wide as a hip flask, with a raised row of tablespoon measures down one side. Then it was a narrow-waisted soft drink bottle, crystal clear and busily textured, that told us it once held “Orange Sip”, a “Box Pure Fruit Drink”. These glassy time capsules had survived decades of shifting slurry and pummelling. Now they were surfacing like so many cicadas, encouraged by the rain.

The kids’ grandad was our original bottle digger. He’d directed us to the gully that day. His treasured bottle finds had lined the farmhouse window sills for years, born again as vases for his other delicate passion – native orchids. He’s been gone four years now but, like those bottles of his, he’s still catching the light around the place.

We finished that first day in bottle gully by adding to grandad’s window sill arrangement; the newfound ambers and pale glassy greens glowing in the setting sun as we ate dinner.

Those bottles came with questions, naturally. The kids had dollar signs in their eyes and were especially keen to know what their finds might fetch on the open market. We couldn’t help but wonder too. We Googled and we scoured, but there were no shouts of “Eureka”. The general consensus was that there was no fortune to be made in this old glass game of ours. But there was fun to be had spotting lookalikes online for sale or in museum collections. This was history reclaimed, embossed with stern warnings and declarations from its makers: “Poison: Not to be taken” or “This bottle always remains the property of Ballarat Brewing Co”.

We’ve done plenty of soggy bottle digging since. It’s turned into a summer thing, when the days are long and a splash of rain is welcome. The dogs are always happy to join us. It seems that rummaging around in the gully ties in nicely with their side hustle of salvaging long-forgotten cow bones.

Some of our digs yield nothing, others a broken promise, a slender neck and nothing else. Little by little, our collection grows. The gully has surrendered miraculously intact bottles of all shapes, colours and sizes.

Sure, old bottles might lack the cache of gold nuggets or gemstones, but there’s personality glinting in every one of those wonky glass curves. Round shouldered or square, pale or dark, slender or stout, they emerge with stories to tell. Once commonplace, they have stood the test of time. They have endured. And hey, they’re not plastic.

Like many hobbyists before us, we know we’ve barely scratched the surface of this glass-half-full pastime. The art of bottle digging goes way back, and way down.

Historically situated somewhere between the dunny and the rubbish heap, bottle digging has a whiff of garbology about it. Also known as privy digging, it wends its way to the modern day from the outdoor toilet, or privy. Since the loo of old was little more than a hole in the ground, it was also pretty handy for tossing your empties. In the bush, creeks and gullies served the same purpose. Over time, these pits were covered over, or blessedly rinsed by the passing years and waterways.

As humble hobbyists, we realise we’re lucky to have our own little private bottle gully. It’s more than enough. But dig around among the fossicking fraternity and you start to see the Australian landscape through their eyes. It’s dotted with divots and hollows where previous generations flung all kinds of potentially valuable vessels. This has even led to unscrupulous bottle diggers plundering sensitive cultural and archaeological sites to turn a quick profit. Thankfully, the general bottle-digging vibe seems to be that whether it’s a gold-rush era rarity or a humble golden-brown long-neck, the beauty of these glassy gems is in the eye of the bottle digger.

For us, sifting for bottles together never gets old. It’s in the thrill of the chase and the wash-up and reveal afterwards. It’s the chance that something lovely might just decide to be found after laying hidden for generations. It’s the idea that something so fragile could have survived for so long in one piece and in one place. We’re catching the light, and we’re raising a glass to grandad.