Communities have always had a hoarder or two at the infamous level but it seems that we’ve never had so many with their piles of rubbish spilling from sheds and off verandas and spreading like lumpy, angular lava through the yard.

The reason, I believe, are the new sources of junk – weekend markets, garage sales and the kerbside throw-outs that move around many council areas two or three times a year. Until 30 years ago hoarders were scavengers at the dump, a practice councils barred when they realised they could give scavenging a new name, salvaging, and sell the rights.

Now the scavengers are recyclers trying to corner the market. Not all will reached the compulsion level that would qualify them for special guest of honour at the National Hoarding and Squalor Conference in Sydney today. Not yet, anyway. Specialists at the conference are seeking a better understanding of why people hoard, and I’d imagine by hoarding they mean the amassing of stuff to the point of squalor.

Many of us are hoarders to a much lower degree, and I suppose a difference is control. I, for example, have become a hoarder of books, but I am not a collector of books. By that I mean that I don’t especially value the books or set out to get more, I’m not proud or even pleased by the number. It is just that when I see at a secondhand market a book I’d like to read I buy it even though I know I’ll never read it. But for a minute or two I like to think that I might, and this is the thrill I suppose. There is a pleasure in having interesting books to read and a frustration in not reading them.

I can see close similarities to the food hoarding of a woman I know. She buys food greedily and stores it in comically unnecessary quantities.

More common are men who are hoarders of tools and equipment, whose sheds are a rats’ nest of machinery and tools that will never be used because neglect and time’s dispersal of bits have rendered them unusable. In the worst cases the machines could not be extracted from the shed without demolition.

Often the machinery will be in the yard, terminally corroded. These hoarders are out in the open, while another type I’ve come across, much less often, keep their hoarding within the house, a secret. For some reason newspapers seem to be a popular choice for these people.

Can you understand how someone becomes a hoarder? Are you a bargain hunter showing proclivities?