Discovering Australia’s Historical Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes

Sandra Crofts, Robert Crofts

Description

The purpose of this book is to allow interested community members to gain an understanding of the historically important role postal services made to contemporary Australia. Specific attention is given to the appreciation of the beautiful architectural styles of the historically significant postal buildings and red pillar post boxes that are still available to be viewed. In a similar format to our first book ‘Discovering Australia’s historical milemarkers and boundary stones’, this book begins with a brief history of Australia’s postal services dating from the establishment of the first post office in 1809 up to the present day. Information on significant communication strategies such as the Cobb & Co. mail service and the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) are included. Information is provided on the biographies of some important contributors to the Australian postal services. The following chapters, organised state by state from Queensland to the Northern Territory, describe a sample of post offices and red pillar post boxes. Finally, some interesting postal items are described with references providing links for further reading.

Sujets

• Histoire
• New Zealand
• History
• Australia

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 18 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669830771
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 31 Mo

Extrait

DISCOVERING AUSTRALIA’S HISTORICAL POST OFFICES AND RED PILLAR POST BOXES





ROBERT AND SANDRA CROFTS



Copyright © 2023 by Robert and Sandra Crofts. 842017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.


Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: 02 8310 8187 ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.xlibris.com.au


ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-3076-4
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3078-8
EBook
978-1-6698-3077-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912739



Rev. date: 01/16/2023



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the spirit of reconciliation, we would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
We would also like to acknowledge the numerous people and private organisations that gave their permission for images to be used in this publication. Thanks are given to the generosity of the postal managers that allowed us to photograph the post office façades. Thanks, are also given to the organisations who gave permission to photograph the red pillar post boxes that stand in private grounds. We thank these organisations for their continued care for these historically significant monuments to Australia’s postal history.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our ability to continue this project by travelling distances was severely hampered. Thanks are given to our friends and family who gave generously of their time to take photographs for us. Particular thanks are given to Glenys Hatch for her contribution to the photographs taken in Western Australia.



CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 A Brief History of Australian Postal Services
Chapter 2 Important Contributors to Australian Postal Services
Chapter 3 Brisbane Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Box
Chapter 4 Queensland Rural Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 5 Sydney Central Business District Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 6 Sydney Metropolitan Post Offices
Chapter 7 Sydney Metropolitan Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 8 New South Wales Rural Post Offices
Chapter 9 New South Wales Rural Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 10 Melbourne Central Business District Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Box
Chapter 11 Melbourne Metropolitan Post Offices
Chapter 12 Melbourne Metropolitan Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 13 Victorian Rural Post Offices
Chapter 14 Victorian Rural Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 15 Tasmania Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 16 South Australia Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 17 Western Australia Post Offices and Red Pillar Post Boxes
Chapter 18 Northern Territory Post Offices and Post Boxes
Chapter 19 Highest Post Boxes in Australia
Chapter 20 Interesting Postal Items
References



INTRODUCTION
Communication in the form of verbal or written messages has always been a characteristic of human interaction. It is very interesting to note that complex communication to distant locations was only viable when that communication was personally carried by another person travelling away from the village or town where the message originated. Such as the situation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. For thousands of years, message sticks were commonly used as a form of complex communication. Messages to elders were painted and inscribed on a stick, which was then transported by hand. The messenger, who had the responsibility to carry the message stick, was traditionally granted safe and protected travel through another nation’s territory (Message Stick 2020).
The delivery of one famous personal message is embedded within our modern Olympic running race, the marathon. According to legend, in 490 BC, Ph eidippides ran from a battlefield near the town of Marathon to Sparta to announce the defeat of the Persians. The effort exerted in delivering the victory message as quickly as possible resulted in Pheidippides dropping dead as soon as he had delivered the message (The Athens Marathon 2020).
Postal services require human intervention to carry messages, either personally, using single horses, horse-driven coaches, trains, ships or planes. One famous form of personally delivering distant messages was the privately owned American Pony Express, which operated from 1860 to 1861. This form of mail used a relay service of horse-mounted riders that transported newspapers and mail across mainland USA. With the advent of the railways and electromagnetic telegraph lines, the service was bankrupted within eighteen months (Postal Service, United States 2008).
In England, a form of postal service existed during the reign of Edward III (1312–1377), with the first Master of the Posts being appointed around 1512. The concept of a Governmental-supported postal service dates from the reign of the English King Charles I, who opened the English Royal Mails to the public in 1635. This innovation created the possibility of long-distance communication to literate people of even moderate means.
Long Distance Communication without Personal Travel
The earliest known form of long distant communication, without the need for personal travel, was by use of visual smoke signals while the French innovation of using flags and semaphores was the beginning of conveying distant messages over land through relay stations. Interestingly, the first semaphore with flag signals in Australia was used at South Head on 10 February 1790 to announce the arrival of the ship Supply (Woollahra Library Local History Centre 2003). Semaphores were also adopted in Hobart from 1811 from Mt Nelson down to Battery Point to announce vessels entering the Derwent River (Tasman 2018). The first rapid long range communication system in Australia was established by Captain Charles O’Hara Booth, commandant of convicts at the Tasmanian convict site of Port Arthur in 1836. Under his jurisdiction, a network of nineteen semaphore stations covered the Tasman Peninsula, enabling messages to be sent to and from Hobart. Communication was established by running a flag up a tall pole and then adjusting the angle of six arms on the pole. The various positions of each movable arm could be manually manipulated to indicate any number between one and many thousands. Each number corresponded to a letter, word, phrase, or sentence recorded in a code book developed by Captain Booth. On a clear day, when only four intervening stations needed to be used, a message of twenty words could be sent from Port Arthur to Hobart and acknowledged in fifteen minutes. When a convict had escaped, a message could get to the guard post at Eaglehawk Neck within minutes. This form of communication remained in use until 1877 (Tasman 2018).
Morse Code
Morse code is named after Samuel Finley Breese Morse who held a patent for the invention of the single wire electromagnetic telegraph system in 1844 (McLachlan 2009). This method of high-speed international telecommunication used a standardised sequence of on-off tones, lights, or clicks as symbols to rapidly send textural information. Each symbol represented either a text character such as a letter or numeral and was represented by a unique sequence of dots and dashes. The duration of a dash was three times the duration of a dot. Each dot or dash was followed by a short silence, equal to the dot duration. The letters of a word were separated by a space equal to three dots, or one dash and the words were separated by a space equal to seven dots. To increase the speed of the communication, Morse code was designed so that the length of each character varied approximately inversely to its frequency of occurrence in English. Thus, the most common letter in English, the letter E , had the shortest code, which was a single dot. Interestingly, the final stage of this process required the human intervention of the telegraph messenger to personally deliver the message to the recipient’s home.
The Telephone
Although several others had developed methods of transmitting sound over long distances, Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent his electric telephone device and telephone system in 1875. Bell’s telephone involved having two membrane receivers being connected electrically. A sound wave that caused one membrane to vibrate would induce a voltage in the electromagnetic coil that would in turn cause the other membrane to vibrate. The device was tested on 3 June 1875 and despite no intelligible words being transmitted, sounds were heard at the receiving end. The first clear words received over the telephone were in March 1876. Alexander Graham Bell shouted over the telephone to his assistant Thomas Watson in the next room of his Boston laboratory, “Mr Watson come here—I want to see you” (Alfred 2011).
The purpose of this book is to allow interested communit