Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of an icon.
Today marks the day the final ever Australian-made fridge rolls off the production line, as the nation’s last remaining fridge factory – the Electrolux plant in Orange – moves to close its doors for good.
The humble Aussie fridge. The food locker. The great storer of raffle-won meat trays. The tin you put your tinnies in.
A lot can be said about the demise of refrigerator manufacturing in Australia; about how lowered overheads in emerging markets is an opportunity too good to pass up for manufacturing companies; how labour-intensive warehouses are nigh on unsustainable in a union-heavy nation in 2016; how Australia’s hopes to have a thriving manufacturing industry have been a long-drawn bow since World War II, and how we’re far better off utilising those skills in the innovation and agricultural sectors, rather than clinging on to the outdated ideal of building entire towns around industrial manufacturing plants that offer lifelong careers from the moment you step out of high school to the day they give you your retirement watch.
But it’s more accurate (and entertaining) to blame the death of the Australian fridge on modern design principles that aren’t suited to the Australian palate.
Take, for example, the average fridge of the 1970s.
Tough. Reliable. Built like a steak and could house a thousand of them.
That’s the fridge for Australia. One that looks like it weighs a metric tonne and takes a full day of swearing to move into place.
There’s plenty of them still operating in houses around the country, because they were built to last and no one could be even remotely fucked trying to move them. When new houses were built you put the fridge in first and built the house around it. They were part of the foundations. A big, fuck-off space of cold that you’d chuck snags in for the time between getting home from the shops and firing up the grill 30 minutes later. A place where many dice were rolled over which open carton of milk wasn’t halfway to cottage cheese. A spot where you’d lob a full bag of carrots so you could eat one half whilst watching the other slowly rot.
The brick shithouse of fridges.
Now look at them. Modern fridges. Sleek. White. Easy to move. Many different components. User friendly.
Just look at this shit.
You know what else has all the whizzbang gadgets under the sun?
Goddamned nerds. Loser nerds. Big ones.
Modern fridges haven’t even kissed a boy. The fridge of the 70s is up at Lover’s Gulch getting fish fingered by cool Billy Fitzgerald who smells like Old Spice and has his own car that he borrowed from his Stepdad.
Modern fridges are at home on a Saturday night watching Dallas reruns and sipping cod liver oil with their Grandparents. The fridge of the 70s is shitfaced on one-and-a-half lemon ruskis and is daring their meek friend Patti to spray-paint “EAT PUSSY” across the Principal’s office window.
Modern fridges:
The fridge of the 70s:
So today we say farewell. Farewell dear, sweet Australian fridges.
Gone forever are the days of having your foodstuffs chilled by a machine who looked the part and got the job done.
Because after all, what’s cooler than being cool?
Ashes to ashes, rust to rust.
Photos: Miller, Alex Wong/Getty.
