Since moving an hour and a half away from home, hitting the op-shops with my mum has become a fond memory. On any given week, that's where you would find us, particularly at opening time (if you know, you know).
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Yes, I'll admit it. I planned my week of holidays in July just so I could go to Bathurst and take mum op-shopping. To say I don't miss it would be a lie.
It didn't take much (any) convincing to get mum to agree to go bargain hunting. If anything, she had counted on it.
Picture a kid looking through a lolly shop's window. That was us, peering through the heavily tinted windows of an op-shop just before opening time to see if anything piqued our interest.
During her scan of the store full of discarded memories, mum spotted something; a pram.
The doors opened and off she went, making a beeline to the bundle of prams that had been tossed over near some furniture.
The brand was right, the model was right, the exclusive pattern was right but could it be?
"No", we thought, "it can't be".
We carried on looking through the shop. Mum went for the books, I went straight to the clothes, but for some reason we kept finding ourselves glancing back over to that pram.
After trying on my fair share of clothes/shoes, I scanned the store for mum and there she was with tears in her eyes on the phone with my dad.
"Are you sure that's the one?" he questioned. "Yes" mum replied with both excitement and disbelief.
It was the one my parents had been gifted 24 years ago, but how did we know?
When I was six weeks old, my mum and I caught the train from Westmead Station to Bathurst to meet up with my dad who had just got a job in town.
During the panic of caring for a baby on public transport, a wheel fell off the pram.
Now, as determined as you might be, pushing a pram around without a wheel is neither clever nor a good look so my parents sought to get it replaced.
A different set of wheels on that pram, my friends, is how we knew.
After much toing and froing we headed straight to the counter and were all too happy to pay $30 for a pram we got rid of 11 years ago at a market once my youngest sibling (there's five of us) had grown out of it.
"But what are you going to do with it now?," you ask.
I am not a mother nor am I expecting, but one day I dream of pushing my child around in that pram much like my mother did with me.
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Jay-Anna Sleeman
Reporter for the Western Advocate. First began as a sports journalist with ACM in 2018 before moving on to cover news and court.
Reporter for the Western Advocate. First began as a sports journalist with ACM in 2018 before moving on to cover news and court.
