Mick Burgess was a piggery manager in Armadale, Western Australia, in the early 1990s, when his daughters came home with a simple Father's Day present — a large brown ceramic pig.
Mr Burgess was quite chuffed about the present.
Despite working with pigs for years, it was the first pig-related ornament he had received — but it would not be the last.
"Probably within a month I had quite a few [pig-related items] given to me, and I just kept on going," he said.
"After the first hundred — it just snowballed."
Almost 30 years later and Mr Burgess has an entire shed dedicated to his collection.
With more than 3,600 items now on display and a bit more in boxes, Mr Burgess is happy to open his home to anyone who wants to wander through the collection.
"A lot of people give them to me as birthday presents or as Christmas presents, and now that people walk through the collection, they actually bring some back," he said.
"One day I actually had a big pig actually just dropped off at the front veranda."
Pigs that sing
The collection is large, varied and at times, overwhelming.
There are talking piggy banks, dancing plush pigs, pig pens, pig toilet roll holders and even the tusk from a real pig.
Some items have been donated, some were purchased during late-night scrolling on eBay and several cupboards worth came from an elderly pig collector in Perth looking to downsize.
But despite the masses, Mr Burgess is quick to point out his two favourites.
"The one that the daughters gave me that started off the collection," he said.
"Also I got a little one made out of a toilet roll that my granddaughter made years ago, that's pretty special."
A collection of collectors
In 2006, Mr Burgess moved to Boyup Brook in the south west of WA, and brought his entire pig collection with him.
But strangely enough, he was not the only person in the small country town with a slight obsession for collecting.
Despite being home to fewer than 1,000 people, Boyup Brook boasts more than five public collections including dolls and music memorabilia.
A collection of teapots was even purchased and moved from the neighbouring town of Dinninup.
Boyup Brook's first public collection consisted of beetles and butterflies and was donated to the local visitor centre by the late amateur entomologist Keith Carnaby in 1979.
"It's only a part of the collection though. The rest is over at the CSIRO, but it's not for public viewing," said local resident Lyn Willett.
A trail of hidden collections
The collections are well-known throughout the town, but as Mrs Willett found out, they were not the only ones.
"Somebody actually mentioned about Barbara from our local [coffee lounge], that she has a wonderful collection of dolls, but they said nobody ever sees them," she said.
"So that's when we thought, well, let's do something here."
The answer was an annual festival in early October which encouraged hundreds of tourists from across the region to walk a trail of the town's hidden and public collections.
It was a major success this year.
"I can't believe the number of people in the streets, the number of cars in the street," she said.
"We're hoping that this will stimulate people to buy local and come back in fact."
Collections come out of the box
The festival helped some locals rekindle their love for collecting.
Hedley Giles unpacked some of his beloved train set collection and put it on display for the first time in years.
It may not be the biggest collection in the town, but some of his 40-odd locomotives will now become a regular fixture in his home once again.
"I'll be staying with mainly the modules like this that I can pull down and collapse and shift," he said.
The town does not have a clear answer on why so many collectors call Boyup Brook home.
But Mick Burgess is just happy it means there is a steady stream of visitors wanting to admire his work.
"I think it's just part of a community sort of thing," he said.
"We seem to enjoy collecting, and people enjoy coming to look at it."
