#75 10 Creative Mailboxes & Trash Cans from Australia & Chile 📮 旅途中的10个趣味邮箱&垃圾桶

I clicked this picture with my phone on the way from Canberra to Victoria, somewhere near a forest in New South Wales, Australia. This’ll doo…

题图是我在澳大利亚新南威尔士州一处森林附近的路上用手机拍的。我觉得这一景象很有澳洲荒野的感觉，这个邮筒确实“可以将就……” =）

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The theme of @claudiaz’s photo fun contest this week is ‘No. 13’, and the place I live now is no. 11 on the street, so I just went out to the neighbor to take a picture of their mailbox, now I’m serving it freshly out of my camera! =)

And the mailbox reminds me of some other creative mailboxes I encountered in my travels, and 4 trash cans too. Okay, I know they are different, but you throw something to all these containers, and most of them are made of iron, so… ;)

The first 5 images are from my road trips in Australia, and the last 5 are from Patagonia in southern Chile. They are all original photos with little retouching, as I just want to show you these objects in real life…

我刚看到@claudiaz的“数字13”为主题的摄影活动，突然意识到我现在住的地方是这条街的11号，所以我就拿上相机去隔壁的门口拍了下面这张含有数字“13”的邮箱照片。

在西方“13”是个不吉利的数字，要是“13号”正赶上“星期五”被认为更不吉利，一般称作“黑色星期五”。但是现在北美更流行的貌似是感恩节后人们疯狂抢购的“黑色星期五”，由于商品打折，人们的抢购使商场利润大增，以黑笔记录盈利，因此被商家称作“黑色星期五”。

不吉利的“13”和“黑色星期五”据传是因为犹太教的安息日是从星期五日落持续到星期六日落。根据迷信的说法，每到安息日这天晚上，12个巫婆会举行狂欢，第13个在晚会高潮出现的魔鬼就是撒旦。一些人还认为圣经里的亚当和夏娃就是在这一天偷尝了禁果，而他们的儿子该隐也是在“黑色星期五”杀害了自己的弟弟亚伯。

I have no idea why this mailbox is so full of spider webs, but I think it fits pretty well with the rustic environment around…

What do you think of the number ‘13’ and ‘Black Friday’? I don’t have any superstition about this, and in China, the unlucky number is ‘4’, since its pronunciation sounds like “die” in Mandarin. But still, I don’t believe in that at all. I still remember that when I was in university, the mobile phone service provider offered great discount for phone numbers with ‘4’ in it, so I just subscribed to a number with plenty of ‘4’s, and saved some money for food… I didn’t see anything bad in that, hehe…

Also in China, you can rarely see a car plate number with ‘4’ in it, while some plate numbers with ‘8’ are sold in a high price, as ‘8’ sounds like ‘fortune’. Interesting right? In some buildings in the West, the 13th floor is missing. Likewise in China, you can’t find the 4th floor in some buildings.

当然，在中国又是另外一回事。有些人会忌讳数字“4”，因为众所周知的发音问题。反正我觉得无所谓。还记得当年上大学的时候，中国移动供应商还给含有数字“4”的手机号打折，所以我就去买了有好多“4”的手机号，哈哈，感觉省下了好多粮食钱。西方的一些住宅和写字楼里没有13层楼，就像中国的一些楼房不用4来标示楼层一样。这些迷信还挺有意思，虽然我是完全不信的。你是怎么想的呢？

The photo below was taken on Raymond Island, Australia, the habitat for koalas I once wrote about:

下图的邮筒拍于维多利亚州的雷蒙德岛，就是我曾经写过的野生考拉居住的地方：

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This very creative plastic mailbox was from a friend who built his own bungalow in a forest in New South Wales, Australia. He placed his mailbox at the entrance of a long rough road leading to his Utopia:

下图这个塑料邮箱虽然看着有点寒碜，但对一个朋友却意义非凡。因为他自己在森林里修建了一座大木屋，每天要开着越野车才能通过这条路况很烂的土路进出。而这个宝贵的邮箱就被他安放在长长的路口的一棵树上。听起来有点凄惨？但是天下哪里有真正的乌托邦，有得必有失，选你所爱、爱你所选而已。他就乐在其中，享受着自己的世外桃源呢。

I found this last mailbox from Australia at the Tambourine Mountain in the hinterland of Gold Coast. Seems this cow shape is pretty popular, soon you will see a similar one in another photo from Chile:

这最后一个来自澳洲的邮筒是在黄金海岸西边的内陆山区看到的。貌似这种奶牛外形的邮筒挺受欢迎，下面还有张来自智利的也是类似的设计：