A lot has changed since the year 2000.
After the Sydney Olympics, Australia has not hosted the Games again.
Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are no longer the Hollywood power couple of the millennium.
And instead of playing Snake on a Nokia 3310, we now have access to over 1.8 million apps at our fingertips.
Yet underground, time remained still and undisturbed — until last week.
On Thursday, February 27, the masses gathered at Victoria Park Lake in Shepparton to unearth two 25-year-old time capsules organised by the Rotary Club of Shepparton.
The hype was considerable, as local families and businesses racked their brains on what they had contributed among the more than 300 articles — letters, photographs, memorabilia?
Fortunately, they did not have to wait long.
A bobcat, several Greater Shepparton City Council workers and a few pulls on the chains later, the time capsules were brought to light.
For some, it was their first time seeing the original 1973 spaceship-shaped capsule and the other made from black PVC in 2000.
However, Rodney Brown was not one of them.
On the day the capsules were buried, Mr Brown and his family were there, leaving handprints and footprints in the concrete slab covering the cavity.
Mr Brown, aged five, stood on the original 1973 capsule and flexed his muscles for the camera.
Twenty-five years later, he did the same thing.
“My grandfather (Maurie Lovell) was involved in the organising committee for this, and he was heavily involved with the Rotary Club of Shepparton,” he said.
“My grandparents have passed since, but they did submit letters and memorabilia for me today.”
Following the retrieval and a flurry of photos, the capsules were carefully transported to Neatline Homes on the Goulburn Valley Hwy in Kialla for degassing and sorting the contents.
That afternoon, community members were invited to collect their envelopes and resurrect their memories.
Heather Radevski’s time capsule parcel focused on preserving family treasures, with one item, in particular, being the handprints of her two children, who were then four months and four years nine months old.
“I’ve also put in a letter ‘To my darling husband’ — luckily we’re still together,” she said with a chuckle.
For Vicki de Quilettes, retrieving her family’s envelope was a mixed bag of items and emotions.
In 2000, Vicki and Dave de Quilettes’s daughter, Juliana, was five years old.
Knowing that it would be unearthed before her 30th birthday in March, Mr de Quilettes placed a variety of items inside, including a letter to his daughter, a cassette tape of his original songs titled Look At Us and family photographs.
Sadly, he passed away one year after the time capsule was buried.
“When they pulled that time capsule up today, it was almost like bringing Dave up again,” Mrs de Quilettes said.
“It was emotional, but it was exciting as well; I was kind of swinging from one to the other.”
Rotary Club of Shepparton member Geoff Long observed that while some memories were bittersweet, everyone who came to collect their items was eager to discover what lay beneath the envelope’s seal.
“We’ve brought up 369 articles, and you can hear the conversation all around us that people are really excited about what they’ve found,” he said.
“Today has gone really well, and we’re looking forward to people buying envelopes for the next one.”
Plans for the re-burial of the current capsules are set for late May, with the promise of another unearthing on January 26, 2050.
In the lead-up to the event, envelopes for new contributions went on sale at several local businesses, including Everyday Supplies, Traffik Boutique and Lovell’s Newsagency.
They are priced at $10, $25, $50 and $100, with proceeds benefiting local charities.
Those who were unable to collect their items from Neatline Homes last week should contact Rotarian Angie Talarico at 0408 312 559 to arrange pickups.