Dozens upon dozens of demijohns and glass bottles have been collected by the Heywood man since he first spotted a used container as a 10-year-old boy underneath one of the houses his builder father was constructing.

Mr Matthews was one of more than 30 stallholders displaying their favourite things at the annual Collectabool Fair held over the Easter weekend.

He said his interest in soft drink containers was first piqued as a child and more spare time in recent years has allowed him to further develop his collection.

“(Collectabool) is a great opportunity to be able to showcase our displays to a wider audience that may have never considered bottle collecting,” Mr Matthews said.

“You get a fair few people that walk past the display and remember the demijohns or glass bottles from either their childhood or seeing them stored away when they were younger.

“Health regulations in the 1930s meant the demijohns went out of fashion and were replaced by glass bottles so any one that you find is an interesting piece of south-west history.”

Fellow bottle collector David Wallace sourced all of his antiquities from the south-west and said his collection covered a number of now-defunct soft drink manufacturers.

He said glass bottles from the pre-1930 period were generally handcrafted and therefore more sought after.

“If you look closely at bottles made in the 1920s or prior, you can see the detail and hand blown work that was put into crafting every bottle,” Mr Wallace said.

“Once bottles became mass produced, they lost that distinctive character but you do find people you collect bottles from more recent times.”

Funds raised from the Collectabool Fair will be directed to the Western Region Alcohol and Drug (WRAD) centre.

Event organiser Rick Bayne said the fair had attracted a record crowd with many interstate tourists flocking to the Warrnambool Showgrounds to check out collections ranging from Beatles memorabilia to classic movie posters.

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