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wiredInUSA - August 2013
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The Spalding Hotel in the Australian mid-north
is the showcase for one of the largest
collections of barbed wire in Australia. The
owners have set up a museum in the hotel
featuring barbed wire from as early as the
1800s.
Owner of the ‘Barbed Wire Pub’ as it is
known, Geoff Tiller says the collection first
began with a local enthusiast: “The more
I went down and looked at the collection,
and realized how extensive it was with 500
pieces of wire mounted on boards as well
as another 1,000 pieces just in buckets that
I still have to sort through – it sort of just got
me and I guess you can say, I got hooked
on it.”
Geoff says most of the barbed wire dates
from the 1860s and earlier, because the
Americans started to patent it after that.
“A lot of different sorts of wire in the west
of America [were] used by sheep farmers
to see how good they were in retaining the
stock, but there was a plenty of wire put
together to define people’s boundaries,”
he said. “Station owners had their own
wire made under patent so it defined their
boundaries.”
He says he’s not sure how many different
types of barbed wire exist, but new pieces
are being added all the time. Apparently
there could be collections of up to 2,000
pieces with private collectors in the US.
ASIA / AFRICA NEWS
INDEXPub landlord hooked
on barbed wire
Photographer: Jakub Krechowicz - http://www.sxc.hu/