Wish you were here (instead of me)

'Workers' lunchroom | Laverton'

Just because no one else makes postcards of your hometown is no reason you shouldn’t. Or maybe you live in a popular tourist town that’s flooded with postcards, but you think they’re all pretty stupid. Take your camera for a trip around town, photographing anything that you think really captures the spirit of your home.

Get 4x6" prints of the best ones and grab yourself some postcard backs (you can get these at craft stores or off the web), or make your own by gluing thin card to the back of your snaps. Give each postcard a caption (‘Drunks ogle female passersby, Blarney Stone, Yarraville’, 'Pile of discarded rubbish grows mouldy, Badwell Ash', 'Witty grafitti tells it like it is, Pierz') and send them to friends, telling them what a great time you’re having and expressing your wish that they were also here.

Show some civic pride

Yeah, yeah, you heart NY. Big deal. Everyone hearts NY.

But what if you heart Goulburn, Cockermouth or Yuba City? It’s not so easy to let everyone know. You can’t just stop by some unlicensed roadside souvenir seller to grab a t-shirt or pick up a stubbie holder for your beer. If you really love Goulburn,Cockermouth or Yuba City, you’re going to have to do a little work. But remember: love you’ve worked on is worth so much more than love you’ve bought.

What is it about Yuba City that really cranks your dial? What do the people who live in Cockermouth know about it that no one else knows about? Is there an in-joke about Goulburn that out-of-towners just won’t get?

Stick it on a t-shirt.

If you like a bit of glamour, pop into your local craft store and get yourself a Bedazzler and some puffy fabric paint. Or maybe you’d prefer iron-on varsity letters. If you have a printer, you can design a t-shirt on your computer and print it out onto iron-on transfer paper. If you don’t, go low-rent with a Sharpie and a white t-shirt.

You might be surprised how many people stop you and ask where you got the t-shirt (this is less likely to happen if you’ve scrawled on a white t-shirt with a Sharpie, of course). It feels pretty good to say, ‘Oh, I made it myself’. Alternatively, if the person is really desperate to get one of their own, you can claim to have bought it at some tiny shop about two hours’ drive away that’s only open on weekday mornings.

Performance art

Everyone has some skill, some talent, that makes them stand out from the crowd. Even you. Perhaps you can really capture a likeness with charcoal. Maybe you play guitar like Slava Grigoryan. Perhaps you have an amazing way with kids. Whatever your talent is, it’s time you took to the street to do something completely different.

There are far too many street performers who are good at what they do. No one needs to hear another beautifully finger-picked cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish you were here’ or see their child lovingly rendered in cheeky pastel colors. What we need more of is inadequacy.

Get down to your local shopping strip and strut your stuff. Dress as a clown, blow up a couple of balloons and tout yourself as a master of the balloon animal (‘But Mr Clown, what is it?’ ‘It’s a jellyfish, poppet. Would you like a paramecium to go with that?’). Can’t even draw a stick figure? You need to set up an easel and churn out some caricatures. Won't mummy smile when she sees how you've drawn her little treasure? Borrow your brother’s guitar and make up some chords, loudly. Spray yourself silver and stand around fidgeting. Whatever you do, do it poorly, and do it with great enthusiasm. Then get out of town.

Snowed under

Snow domes, snow globes, snow shakers; call them what you like, these little beauties are a souvenir no package tourist can resist. Who doesn’t want a poorly rendered plastic representation of an over-exposed tourist spot stuck in a leaky plastic dome filled with anti-freeze and gummed-together glitter? Well, maybe you don’t, but the rest of the western world, apparently, does.

The Internet is awash with snow dome collectors, each of whom, it’s rumoured, owns two to three hundred of these overpriced dust collectors. But do they own a snow dome of your special little corner of the world? Unless you’re George W Bush, Queen Elizabeth or the Pope, the answer is probably no.

So if you want to make a packet on EBay (where ‘a packet’ equals about $12.99), make your own snow dome. You can do it the mass-produced way—pick up a snow dome kit from a craft store or the web, take a cheesy picture of your dog wearing a hat sitting under a sign that says ‘Welcome to [your town name here]’ and stick the two together—or you can make a truly unique expression of the individual charm of your home (‘Limited edition! Buy now! $13.99!’).

Here’s what you do.

1. Get a clean jar. If you can only find a dirty jar, clean it
2. Get some glitter
3. Get a cheesy photo of your dog wearing a hat sitting under a sign that says ‘Welcome to [your town name here]’ and laminate it
4. Get a lump of plasticine, stick it in the jar lid and stick your photo upright in the plasticine
5. Fill the jar with water
6. Pour in the glitter
7. Screw on the lid
8. Shake. Ooh and aah. Congratulate yourself.
9. Sell on EBay. When it fails to sell, give to Grandma for Christmas.

If you’re feeling super-creative, eliminate step 3 and instead make a model of your favourite local thing (the bar you go to when there's nothing else to do, the parking lot where you used to have shopping trolley races, the cute girl who works at Safeway) out of modelling clay or flour-and-water dough, paint it, spray it with clear lacquer and continue as above. Then give it to the girl at Safeway and really freak her out.

Stop motion

So you reckon nothing ever happens here? Let’s see if science agrees with you.

Grab a camera; if you have a tripod for it, so much the better. Stand somewhere you visit frequently (outside your front door might be the ideal spot) at a time of day you usually have a couple of minutes spare. Note your position carefully, open the lens up wide, and fire that shutter. Well done.

Here’s where it gets hard. Next day, at the same time, come back to the exact same spot and take the exact same photo. Repeat, daily, until you can bear to repeat no more (if you think doing this every day will drive you to the brink of madness, how about coming back once a week instead). Twenty photos should give you a nice cross-section, but if you really want a statistical sample, perhaps you should spread your recording over all four seasons.

Once you’re done, print your photos. Have a look. What’s different from photo to photo? Anything? For added impact, you could staple your photos in date order into a little book; flipping the pages will give you a better idea when something moves or changes. Why stop there? This is exactly the kind of conceptual art that trendy cafes lap up: why not print the lot in reasonably large format and ask your local latte spot (or public library) if they’ll exhibit your work?

Outdoor Alphabet

Whether you’re gluing together a ransom note or working on the Great American Novel, you won’t get far without the alphabet. You may not know this, but close to 100% of words are made up of letters of the alphabet. And yet how often do you stop and think, golly, aren’t letters nice? How often do you even really look at letters you see on the street?

Today (and probably for the next few days) you’re going to. Look at letters, that is. That’s because you’ll be collecting your very own alphabet, one you can treasure for years to come. As a side effect, you might also come to appreciate some of your town’s fine signage.

Traditionally, the alphabet starts with A, so that’s where we’ll begin. Head out onto the street and find yourself a letter A. Found one? Right: don’t steal it (I know it’s tempting, now you’ve seen how lovely it is). Take a photograph. Then look for a letter B. After that (you guessed it!), you want a letter C. If you’re only up to D and you see a particularly choice letter L, then go right ahead and photograph it, we won’t tell anyone.

Now you’ve got your alphabet, what are you going to do with it? You could use your imagination, or you could do as you're told. If you’ve taken Polaroids, you’ve just made yourself an art installation: spend the next few months convincing someone to show it. If you’ve used digital, then you’ve made yourself an alphabet you can use on your web page, on your mum's next birthday card or as the basis of that ransom note we mentioned earlier.