The Big Milk Can

Two Big Things at one business is a small pattern in this catalogue rather than an oddity. Narrabri Fish Farm has Wal the cod and the yabby; Bowen has its mango and the mini mango it was given after the theft; Kingaroy has three separate peanuts. The second object always costs less attention than the first and works chiefly by making the site feel like a place rather than a stop.

A milk can is the better historical subject of the pair. Before bulk refrigerated tankers, dairy farmers filled steel cans and left them on a stand at the farm gate for the morning truck – and those stands still exist along roads all through the Blackall Range and every other dairy district in the country, mostly empty, mostly forgotten. The can is the vanished technology of the industry the cheese factory continues.

It is also the most reproducible shape in dairying. A cylinder with a tapered shoulder and a lid reads instantly, which is why milk-can objects turn up in dairy districts worldwide.

Not documented anywhere: a measured size, the fabric of it, the year and an attribution.