A good wire collection better than a pub full of pokies

 

 

The owners of the Spalding pub in South Australia wanted to do something different, so instead of filling it with poker machines, they bought a wire collection off a town local and put it on display. 

When Geoff Tiller took part ownership 2 years ago, he had been turned off poker machines after managing pubs with pokies in the past, so with his co-owner, Josie Watson, he bought a collection of 500 pieces of wire and other fencing paraphernalia from “Barbed-Wire Bob's” son Leon.

Among the collection of fencing wire, barbed wire, razor wire, military wire, snake wire, spacers, strainers, twitching tools and 150 different varieties of star droppers, Tiller’s favourite piece is a C.A. Hodge 10 point spur Rowell wire.

Far from being an obscure collection of shaped metal that was bought from the son of a salt and pepper shaker collector, the wire in the Spalding pub is a rare collection of historical artefacts dating back to the 1850’s. Snake wire from Texas is from circa 1853 and a barbed net fence that was used for hog pastures, was patented by Dodge and Washburn on January the 4th 1882. There are also WW1 and WW2 Concertina Entanglement Wires and Korean War wire.

A bloke from a small town trying to fix a social problem by putting up a display of wire in his pub...

Where else?