The small town of Dimboola is fast becoming the place to be for fans of curiosities, oddities and rareties, with the opening of an antiques and collectables store on Lloyd Street on Thursday.
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Dimboola Vintage owners Jo and Bruce Donnelly have spent a lifetime collecting, and are looking forward to spreading their love of vintage items with everyone else.
The idea to open a business developed organically, Ms Donnelly said.
"We wanted to renovate our house, so I just wanted to move a few things out," she said.
"I was trying to think of the best way to move things on, and it was to open a shop. I was just looking at maybe renting a shop, but then this (location) came up."
"We just thought it could be a good venture, and it went from there."
"Our first business, who does that at our age?"
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However, more than just a mere shopfront, the couple intend to use it to showcase parts of their personal collection.
"We thought it might be a good opportunity to showcase some of the things that can be done with old equipment," she said.
"It's been really nice, because it's brought us together on a project."
Mr Donnolly is an avid collector of technology, with everything from a genuine Russian geiger counter - that still works - to vinyl recordings of plays and radio shows - the very first podcasts, according to Mr Donnelly.
When he was 12 years old, Mr Donnolly was given an air rifle as a birthday present, which he promptly swapped for an old radio one of his friends had.
"It was old then, it was made in 1936. But I thought 'I've got to have that' because I could just see more potential in that than an air rifle," he said.
From there, Mr Donnelly's collection has grown and grown, to even include fragments of a meteor that landed near Dimboola in the 1940s.
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"I've always had an interest in old technology, and in recent years I've been able to lay my hands on some marvellous pieces.
"They all work, to varying degrees. Some I wouldn't use, but they still work.
Mr Donnelly said he sources his collection from all over the world, such as a morse code kit "from a local gentleman"
"I like to restore things to work, because you don't just want to show off things dilapidated and completely wrecked."
Some of the items Mr Donnelly has restored include an old VFL time keeping clock, the aforementioned geiger counter and a multitude of radios,
Other "quackery" he owns include a home shock therapy kit and a glass tube used in German radar equipment during the Second World War.
"That's a really rare item," he said.
"They don't even have one in Germany in their museum, all they've got is a drawing of one."
"I'd love to give it back, so one day it'll end up going back to Germany."
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But the interactive centrepiece of the display is two old phones from the 1920s that Mr Donnelly has restored.
Visitors to the store can ring each other from the phones, which work via a magneto.
"It's really nimble technology; they're so simple and take very little technology to work," he said.
Farmers were still using these phones up until the 1990s, Mr Donnelly said, adding that the workmanship in creating the phones was superb.
Workmanship that Mr Donnelly seeks to emulate in his own project; a series of clocks made using nixie tubes.
"I create art from old technology," Mr Donnelly said.
The clocks range in size, but can take up to six months to make a single clock, and emerged as a way to help Mr Donnolly recover from surgery.
"It started after an operation on his hand, as physio," Ms Donnelly said.
"He likes to tinker with things, he likes knowing how things work and he loves a challenge."
Ms Donnelly's own love of collecting came from an early age.
"My mum and dad both collected antiques in Perth; my mum used to work in antique shops and things like that; she always had lots of lovely things around," she said.
"We've always lived in Federation houses as well, where all of our furniture and fittings have always been older ones.
"As you move, like some things don't fit in your new house you know but you don't want to get rid of them, so you store them away."
Ms Donnelly said that COVID-19 had provided lots of people with an opportunity to declutter and sort through old things.
Dimboola is shaping as an ideal spot for an antiques shop, Ms Donnelly said.
"Dimboola is really becoming a bit of a destination; we're off the highway but people actually make the effort to come up the highway to go to Dimboola."
"I think it's probably to do with a lot to do with Jamie and Chan at the Imaginarium as well."
"(Dimboola) is such a good destination because we've got the river, you know, and the caravan park is a great resource.
"There's lots of people that are in that baby boomer category that are traveling around, especially in the lead up to Christmas."
"We're all getting a little bit excited about our town now and we're proud of it."
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