I’m not a hoarder or a collector, but I have kept my mother’s hat box. My Mum was a German war bride and she set sail to Australia with her English husband in 1949.

The case was her prized possession full of millinery extravagances, and never left her side. That’s why it doesn’t bear the marks, the stickers and stamps, of a long journey in the ship’s hold.

The last part of Mum’s journey was an undignified haul to Shepparton in the back of a ute perched on a fruit box with her husband and the hat box by her side.

The box has been with me on many of my adventures too, moving wherever I went. Now I use it for storage, but at the bottom I keep an old nighty that has it’s own history. Chris — St Kilda