Carl Stanojevic got a text asking him to take his Queensland neighbour’s bins out. So the 54-year-old Mackay photographer took wheelie bin number 6 for a spin around the town
Last modified on Fri 24 Dec 2021 02.23 EST
Australian man Carl Stanojevic might be the world’s most considerate neighbour after he was asked to “take the bins out” and dutifully followed the request – to the letter.
The practical joke began when the 54-year-old photographer from Mackay, in Queensland, received a late-night text message from his neighbour, Nick Doherty – who works remotely – asking if Stanojevic “would be able to take my bins out please”.
Stanojevic then joked about taking the bin out to local restaurants and bars. The next morning, after it was emptied and cleaned, Stanojevic decided to follow through on the banter.
“I’ve known Nick for two years,” Stanojevic said on Friday.
“We catch up for a beer when we can and have a chat and a few laughs. He’s a beautiful person. You’d do anything for him. He said take my bin out. If he had said put my bin out it would have been just a normal day in Mackay.”
Grabbing his camera equipment and thinking like a tour guide, Stanojevic proceeded to take the number 6 wheelie bin on a big day out on Wednesday. To start with, they took a walk by the duck pond before taking care of some chores, stopping at a hardware store to pose with the staff, doing some shopping at the local supermarket and making a quick trip to the local tip.
After this, they took in some sightseeing and a bit of self-care.
“We went for a massage and then to the tattoo parlour to get a couple of extra 6s on the bin. A bit of a tattoo, then stopped at the pub for a coldie,” Stanojevic said on Friday.
Along the way, the bin stopped for a selfie with a band of local cleaners, a surf lifeguard and a garbage truck driver. There was a quick trip through the drive-through at three separate restaurants and to make a call at a phone booth.
“It wasn’t really talking to anyone,” Stanojevic said. “It was just talking trash.”
Stanojevic said that though he and number 6 were on their best behaviour, at one point they were approached by two local council workers who were concerned they might have stumbled across a theft.
Stanojevic said after a five-hour jaunt he reported back to Doherty to say he had completed his task. As proof, he sent through an album of photos he had taken to preserve the memories.
Doherty was reportedly blown away by the favour, though Stanojevic says that since his bin has become a celebrity, Doherty is now afraid to put it out again for fear it may wander off on another adventure.
“The whole idea was to put a smile on a few people’s faces, but I wasn’t expecting this to go around the world,” Stanojevic said of the media coverage his joke has attracted.
Stanojevic, who often works for free documenting local events in the 80,000-person town almost 1,000km north of Brisbane, said Mackay had been hit hard by a loss of tourism during the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s good that it’s taken the focus off all this heartache with these lockdowns and Covid and that’s the idea of it,” he said. “We’ve definitely put a hell of a lot of smiles on people’s faces.”
