TasWeekend: Nation’s character on full display on buildings, buses and billboards

IN every town you can find signs – on everything from buildings to bridges, sheds to water tanks – all offering insights into the country’s character, history and development.

The Nestle’s Bus, on the Tasman Peninsula, from Brady Michaels and Dale Campisi’s new book Signs of Australia: Vintage signs from the city to the outback.

LAST year, we took road trips around Australia in search of old signs. It was a great way to discover what this big country has to say about itself. Signs come and go, but the ones remaining are a record of Australian social history. They preserve a history of commercial ­sign-writing and typography, too.

In our search for vintage signs, we drove more than 40,000km and visited hundreds of villages, towns and cities. We didn’t know what we’d find or even where to look. But there they were – a beer-drinking emu in outback Queensland; an ­entire shed advertising Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills in a paddock on the outskirts of Maitland, NSW; a large neon-pink poodle ­promoting a Gold Coast motel that no longer exists; a four-­storey dingo on the side of an old flour mill in Fremantle, ­Western Australia; and many ads for Bushells, revealing ­Australia’s love affair with tea.

They are often handpainted advertisements on brick walls for old brands and products that belong to the advertising age before the internet. There are fading ‘ghost signs’ in every town in Australia. We walk and drive past them every day, but unless you’re looking out for them you might not notice them. Some are just a shadow of their former selves, visible only in the right light or weather conditions, such as the Zebra Stove Polish ad high on a sandstone wall in Liverpool St, Hobart.

GALLERY: IMAGES FROM SIGNS OF AUSTRALIA

Signs are made from all kinds of materials and methods, from the convict-carved sandstone on Ross Bridge, to curious hillside signs where giant letters are made from painted stones and old tyres. Perhaps the most famous local example of this sign-making is the huge advertisement for Keen’s Curry in ­Hobart, which was first assembled in the foothills of kunanyi/Mt Wellington in the first decade of the 1900s. Now partly ­obscured by trees, it is here to stay thanks to a heritage listing, hovering over Hobart’s CBD like our version of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles.

Tasmania offers a wealth of vintage signs, including some of Australia’s oldest. Hobart and Launceston are full of great signs, with the latter one of the best hot spots in Australia.

In towns all over the island, fragments of local history can be found. We arrived in Burnie to find a partially revealed Voss Supermarket sign and were excited to find ads for Cascade, Boag's and other Tasmanian companies from the days before multinational ownership.

In Fremantle, the four-storey Dingo Flour sign has adorned the brand’s now heritage-listed mill since 1940. For generations of locals it has signalled proximity to the beach. But almost 80 years of salty winds have taken their toll and so, in 2016, the corrugated iron panels that comprise the sign were removed and repainted. We arrived from an epic Nullarbor drive just in time to see the last original panel being taken down. That’s the thing about sign hunting, you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time.

Signs of Australia: Vintage signs from the city to the outback, By Brady Michaels and Dale Campisi.

We searched old pubs, milk bars, train stations, behind shops and above awnings. We looked along disused railways, old city laneways, in industrial areas and the dusty streets of sleepy towns. We captured thousands of signs along the way, many more than we could fit in our book. Finding great vintage signs feels a little bit like striking gold. While composing a shot of a sign in Darwin, we glanced up at the inside of the awning and noticed the handpainted words “Sue Wah Chin”. Born in China in 1901, she trained as a teacher, had five children, survived a typhoon at sea, the Japanese invasion of China and the bombing of Darwin to become a successful ­entrepreneur. The building named after her is one of the last remnants of Darwin’s 19th century Chinatown. And here was possibly Darwin’s oldest sign, obscured to allow a new business to display its own.

Taken together, the signs of Australia tell us who we are, where we’ve been, what we ate and drank, and washed ­ourselves with. They reveal the boom and bust of mining towns and the changing styles and trends of Australian life. They tell us that we used to love playing squash, that we’ve always loved beer, baked goods, coffee, fish and chips and so much more.

For more signs and the stories behind them, follow Signs of Australia on Facebook and Instagram. Signs of Australia, New South Books, $32.99