Weighing up the Odds

I never thought I'd write a blog post about scales, a device used to physically weigh goods. That said, here's an interesting image I saw recently.

It's hard to judge the age of this set of scales - the Otago gold rush started in the 1860s in Cromwell so I guess these scales would be around 150 years old.

W & T Avery is a company founded in the early 18th century before officially taking the name 'Avery' in 1818. Since then it has been taken over and merged many times - it's now called Avery Weigh-Tronix and although that might sound like a shift in direction, its core business remains the same, the manufacture of precision weighing machines. The company is based in Smethwick, in Birmingham.

I grew up with this brand name. Somewhere in my early years I became aware of the name Avery. I think I was once weighed at school on a giant Avery scale, I remember all the local shops using great white Avery scales in their businesses - they were everywhere in those days. So imagine my surprise in finding an Avery scale sitting on the floor of an old stable in Cromwell, a historically important gold rush town in the South Island of New Zealand.

This is not the first time I have seen this familiar brand name in my travels. I photographed a (slightly newer) set of Avery scales in a tea plantation in Madagascar, of all places, and have seen them in India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. In many ways the fact that you can find these scales in such a diverse range of locations is testament to the durability and accuracy of the product. It's also a nice reminder of a time when products were made to last!

A set of scales made in Birmingham used in a Madagascan tea plantation

And while we are in Cromwell looking at scales, here are a few photos of what the little gold rush settlement looks like today (in the rain).

Cromwell pier - early miners used to dredge the mud along the river in search of gold. It started with prospectors panning for the elusive yellow stuff and finished with huge mechanical buckets that were used to dredge the river and its banks.

Many of Cromwell's original buildings have been carefully restored and now some house an eclectic collection of historical artefacts while others retail more modern wares like local artworks, hand made products, food and suchlike, Cromwell at least retains some of its history. Nearby Arrowtown, another gold rush village, has been totally converted into a tourist mecca selling everything from gold jewellery to home made meat pies - and there's a lot of useless tat inbetween.