Postcrossing Blog

Since Postman Pieter’s post last month was so popular, we’ve decided to officially open the blog to more postal workers. We want to know about the trustworthy men and women who sort and deliver your mail! What is it like for them, to work for the post office? How different is the job these days? And do they enjoy postcards as much as we do?

Deb (aka iphoto) from Australia asked all of these questions to her postwoman — who is also called Deb! :)

Postwoman Deb has worked for Australia Post for 32 years. She has been sorting the mail at the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre for the past 4 and before that Deb was a “postie” (delivering mail on a push-bike and walking with a backpack), a night sorter, a retail shop counter officer and a delivery centre admin. She and our Deb (iphoto) share many morning smiles while going over the quips and quotes on the many treasured postcards that go “down under”!

How has your job changed since you first started? Did it get easier, or just different, and in what ways?

When I first started with Australia Post all mail procedures were a lot more manual, there were very few female posties and many more people were still sending letters and postcards. Things are more automated now with most people emailing each other instead.

What do you think about all the postcards the Deb (iphoto) receives?

When I first noticed that Deb (iphoto) was receiving frequent amounts of postcards I actually confirmed with her that it was ok for me to read them… they often bring a smile to my day and I find them interesting and insightful!

Do you ever receive snail mail/ postcards yourself?

When Deb (iphoto) and her treasure Wayne travel they send me a postcard for my office wall. Occasionally when friends travel overseas, I find a joyful account of their travels in my letterbox at home when I get home from work — always a pleasant surprise!

Do you enjoy looking at the postcards that you sort each day?

YES! Postcards have always provided an insight into other countries with their scenic snapshots & candid descriptions from travelers. Postcrossing postcards are a little different in that the sender actually lives in the country of origin, so they give a first-hand report of life in their country.

What are some of the funnier things people complain to you about problems with the mail service?

Over the three decades I’ve worked for Australia Post I’ve heard all manner of complaints and compliments…

As a postie, the most common catch cry from customers was “ I don’t want it if it’s got a window” (here in Australia, envelopes with “windows” are probably bills) usually followed by a chuckle!

And when I worked in administration at a delivery centre we often received phone calls from customers complaining that their postie was riding across their lawn (on the council nature strip) and they’d like them to get off their motorbikes and walk to the letter boxes. Most posties were delivering to over 1,000 letterboxes, on their designated runs, so getting on and off their motorbikes was an unreasonable and impractical request!

However I would like you to know the majority are grateful for the service and as a postie in particular I would return from my daily delivery rounds at Christmas with gifts of gratitude which included chocolates, wine and many home made delights :D

That you Deb & Deb, that was really nice!

Do you know a postal worked who deserves to be featured on the blog? Send us a message and we’ll send you a list of questions for you to use! :)

I discovered these postcards on a random blog some months ago and their simple and sweet illustrations drew me in instantly. They’re made by Tasmanian designer Holly Webber. Holly spends her days doing freelance graphic design, and running the market, a popular seasonal market which gives local artists and designers the opportunity to showcase their wares.

Below are her answers to our interview about her lovely stationery line.

How did you get started doing stationery design?

For as long as I can remember (right from when I was a crafty kid!) I have always created my own cards. I officially started producing them in my second year of University when I began selling my photographic artworks in a local art gallery. As a graphic designer I spend a lot of time on the computer, constantly communicating via email. Email communication seems to have become the norm, but this always feels very impersonal when it’s with friends and loved ones. It’s very quick to send an email, but it’s just as easily gone, and yet it takes literally a few minutes to write a postcard, bring a smile to someone’s face and they can keep as a little piece of art on the fridge or wall. So early this year I started creating my range of illustrated postcards titled Letterbox Love – an easy way to say hello, without the formality of regular greeting card.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Baking! I love to bake and often deliver my baked goods in friend’s letterboxes which we refer to as 'letterbox love’. Cupcakes don’t tend to travel so well in the post, so I thought a whimsical illustration of one would be a good substitute. The heart balloon came about after I decided to actually call the collection letterbox love – I love the idea of post being delivered by a hot air balloon – how fun would that be to have a flying pig dropping a note into your letterbox! …Oh, and that’s my cat Coco peeping out from the basket of one of the balloons. As far as my design aesthetic goes – I love Scandinavian design for it’s clean lines and a good use of white space.

If you could define your style in 3 words, what would they be?

clean / whimsical / fun

Are you a postcard or letter writer yourself?

I had pen pals as a kid and do still write letters to some friends now, and I’ll always send postcards when I’m on holiday.

Can you show us a picture of your studio or workspace?

I thought I’d include a typical view from my desk…my cat Coco draped around my laptop – apparently iphones make good pillows, ha!

You can find Holly’s postcards at hollywebber.bigcartel.com.

Another exciting report from our dear little mail carriers! Australia is so big that they’ve decided to stay a little longer there, and visit another friendly postcrosser, Smileyfflagge! Meanwhile, they’ve been on newspapers headlines and gave radio interviews… seems like everybody wants to meet them! :) Read their story below:

We left Mundoo in South Australia on Thursday 23 June 2011 and arrived in Coffs Harbour NSW on Monday 27 June 2011. Smileyfflagge got a big surprise when he opened his mailbox this morning!

Smiley lives at Upper Orara, which is about 25kms west of Coffs Harbour. There is no town of Upper Orara; it is a “locality”, a name given to a district for land record purposes, and so people have an address. There are about 800 residents in the area, and they have fat cattle farms or dairy farms. Upper Orara is very pretty and is situated in the Orara Valley.

Smileyfflagge’s little house is situated right in the middle of a huge dairy farm and sometimes the dairy cows come right up to the boundary fence to see what is going on.

Australians love BIG THINGS and the very first Big Thing built in Australia was the “Big Banana” which is in Coffs Harbour, so we went to see how big it really is.

There is a café near the Big Banana, so we looked at all the postcards they had for sale before we had our afternoon tea.

Smiley took us out into a banana plantation so we could climb a banana tree. The blue plastic bag protects the bananas.

Another day we went to look at the view over Coffs Harbour from Sealy Lookout but it was closed for refurbishment. We found a little clearing in the trees so we could take a photo of the view looking north and while we were there we met Claude and Barbara, who were visiting Coffs Harbour from Western Australia, so we had our photo taken with them. We are hoping that they will join Postcrossing after meeting us!

On Wednesday 13 July we went to the Coffs Harbour Jetty for a newspaper interview. We were met there by Gemima Harvey, a journalist with the “The Coffs Coast Advocate”, and her photographer Bruce Thomas. We had a very nice interview and Bruce took our photograph with glenasena and Smileyfflagge. The newspaper printed our story on the front page! And it was on the front page of 9 other newspapers right up the coast from Coffs Harbour to Gladstone in Queensland! And in the papers in the inland cities of Ipswich and Toowoomba in Queensland. We sent Gemima and Bruce a postcard to say “Thank You”!

On Friday 15 July we went to present our credentials to the Mayor of Coffs Harbour, Councillor Keith Rhoades. Cr Rhoades signed our travel documents for us. The Mayor is a very busy man and we are grateful that he was able to take the time to meet with us. We sent him a postcard to say “Thank You” too!

The following Friday (22 July) we went to the “ABC Radio Coffs Harbour” studio for an interview. We went on air and tried to chat with Katya Quigley from “ABC Radio Port Macquarie” on her morning program. She couldn’t hear us, even though we were talking as loud as we could, so Smileyfflagge had to do the interview on our behalf. This next photo shows us in Liz Keen’s studio in Coffs Harbour.

On Monday 25 July Smiley drove us all the way up to Ipswich in Queensland, so we could visit our dear friend crizle who has been very ill in hospital. She was very happy to see us and is now home and very much better.

The next photograph shows us at the beginning of the boardwalk at Urunga, which is about 25kms south of Coffs Harbour. The boardwalk now goes right out to the end of the training wall, and the second picture shows us waving to all our postcrossing friends in New Zealand, which is out that way somewhere.

Smiley took us to the Post Office in Urunga to meet the Postmistress, Christine. She stamped our travel documents for us.

Here we are looking out over Park Beach on a cloudy day. In the summer months Park Beach is full of people enjoying the sunshine and the surf.

Our very last photograph shows us looking out over the marina at Coffs Harbour, with Muttonbird Island in full view. Just to the left centre of the photograph you can see the Coffs Harbour Jetty, where we had our interview for the newspaper.

Now we are getting ready to leave Australia for…

Exciting news, everyone! We just got a big letter from the little mail carriers travel diary… they’ve been to Australia where they were hosted by Mundoo! Here’s their latest report from the road:

G’day Mates!

Here we are in Australia or 'down under’ as many of the Northern Hemisphere mates refer to Oz . We are visiting Mundoo or Vicki as she is also known. Vicki lives on Hindmarsh Island, which is in the estuary of the Murray River (the longest river in Australia) where it exits to the Southern Ocean. She lives in the state of South Australia .

We got our first look at an Australian Post Box and offered to deliver some mail. They have a bright red post box here.

This is where Mundoo posts her Postcrossing postcards at the Goolwa post office.

We don’t know what it is about Hindmarsh Island but the sunrises and sunsets are just spectacular. Vicki’s house in on Mundoo Channel (that’s where she got her membername from) which is part of the Coorong National Park.

Hindmarsh Island used to be accessed from the mainland by a ferry but about 10 years ago there was a bridge constructed joining Hindmarsh Island and the mainland at the inland Riverport of Goolwa.

You all know about the Sydney Harbor bridge, well Hindmarsh Island has the Hindmarsh Island bridge. We sat at the Goolwa wharf with a paddle steam boat, the OscarW tied up there and with the Murray River flowing past under the bridge. There is a strong paddle-boating history at Goolwa from the early days of Australian history before the railroads were built. Paddle-boats were the only way that cargo could be transported down the Murray River and they landed at Goolwa for loading onto ships.

We visited some Australian animals. We get our first look at a kangaroo. Vicki said this wasn’t a big kangaroo, it sure looked big enough to us!

Then we got up real close to a koala. Gee he has big claws but then we suppose he needs them for climbing gum trees all the time looking for food. Did you know that koala's only eat eucalypt leaves?

A kangaroo came over and gave Little Ana a big kiss as a welcome to Australia. Little Paulo was very happy it wasn’t him being smooched.

We saw a Joey in it’s mother’s pouch. He looks too big to fit in there we thought but he looked quite happy even with a leg sticking out. We didn’t get too close because we didn’t want to be adopted by the mother kangaroo.

We went for a trip with Vicki to the next state, which is called Victoria. The border between the two states is 300 km / 187 miles away from where Vicki lives. It only took us 4 hours driving. We were amazed at how large Australia is. All of Europe would fit into Australia. All of USA minus Alaska would fit as well. Australia is the biggest island in the world and has a population of 22 million.

Our destination was a town in Victoria called Moyston. It is the birthplace of Australian football or Aussie Rules as the locals call it.

There is a wonderful plaque at Moyston telling the history of Aussie Rules and Tom Wills who was the founder. Aussie Rules is nothing like any other football played in the world.

Moyston is at the base of the Grampians and we stayed at Jennifer’s house, who is Vicki’s sister. Jennifer wasn’t there because she was in Perth 3250km / 2020 miles away competing in the Judo games. Up the road from Jennifer’s house was the spot where gold was first found in the area. This sparked a huge gold rush in 1854

Back home again to Hindmarsh Island and the ocean in that area is of historical importance because it is a place where two scientific explorer Captains met in 1802 offshore while travelling in opposite directions mapping Australia for the first time. The encounter is significant because the encounter between Captain Matthew Flinders (English) and Captain Nicholas Baudin (French) was peaceful, even though their countries were at war at the time, But the two Captains put that aside and met in friendship and exploration and called the bay they met in Encounter Bay.

We met up with Apty (also known as Graeme) at Encounter Bay and had a good chat with him. Do you know he is really a kiwi?

We tried some Aussie food. We had a Lamington. Most accounts of the creation of the lamington agree it was named after Lord Lamington, who served as Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901. One of the claims of how the Lamington came into creation was that the Lamingtons’ chef at Queensland’s Government House, Armand Gallad, was called upon at short notice to provide something to feed unexpected guests during the busy period leading up to Federation in 1900. According to the Melbourne Age newspaper, Gallad cut up some left over French vanilla sponge cake baked the day before, dipped the slices in chocolate and set them in coconut.

Lamington Recipe & Another Lamington Recipe

Well we have had a great time with Vicki, thank you for having us visit and showing us some of Australia.

Now we have packed our bags and are heading off on our next adventure.

We wonder where we are going?

Vicki (aka Mundoo), a very valued member of the Postcrossing team, has been involved in Postcrossing for over four and half years. She is a self-professed computer geek and enjoys Geocaching and Pathtags.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I saw Paulo promote it on bookcrossing.com and wondered what it was about. I was the third Australian to join and loved the international aspect of it. I got hooked when I received my first postcard. It was such a good thing to find in my letterbox instead of a bill. So bright and colourful, so full of good wishes and friendship.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I am a computer geek. Before Internet, (yes there was a time before Internet) I used to operate a BBS (Bulletin Board Service) from my kitchen. In 1988 I was the second female in Australia to be a sysop of a BBS. It was called Computer Connection.

I enjoy geocaching from geocaching.com as it challenges me to find hidden treasure in my surroundings with my GPS and takes me to places of interest and out of my computer chair. I have a collection of pathtags that I collect via pathtags.com, they appeal to me because they are similar to postcards in that they tell a story with just a picture.

I love to do cross-stitch and since getting a digital camera also take heaps of photos of the everyday world around me. I take a lot of sunrise photos which show where I live which is about 20 feet from the water’s edge in the estuary of the longest river in Australia – the Murray River. My house is surrounded by a national park – Coorong National Park – which is a RAMSAR world environment site and I am very interested in the environment and my surroundings. I am an active board member of a govt. environment group and a member of my local Hindmarsh Island Landcare group. I like planting trees. I am also the Postcrossing Forum Administrator and part of the Postcrossing Team.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

Hindmarsh Island has no mail delivery so I rent a post office box in the nearest town of Goolwa (15km away). The Goolwa post office was the longest active post office in Australia still in its original premises since 1857 but has recently moved to new premises. My PO box is very nondescript and surrounded by equally nondescript boxes.

The new premises are in the local shopping mall.

There is a small staff who are always cheerful and used to me always buying postcards and international stamps. The lone male postie was camera shy but the ladies insisted and as you can see he ducked behind them at the last second.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

So hard to choose my favourite. I actually have 2 that I always smile about a bit more often.

Beautiful handmade postcard that I have framed and put on my bedside table. I love waking up in the morning and seeing the friendship in this postcard sent by flyers.

The other is a delightful postcard. It comprised of the shaggy dog who was holding the tiny envelope in its mouth. The envelope contained the little card.

As you can see I appreciate the work that goes into handmade postcards.