My local post office has been sent packing and I’ve gone postal. After 50 years, the PO is a DA, earmarked for luxury residential apartments. No notice, no ceremony.
Dispatched. Illustration by Matt Golding Architecturally, it was a 1970s shocker. Brutalist concrete walls and a flat iron roof.
Pebblecrete and perspex consigned to history, for a parcel of first-class real estate “in the heart of the shops”. Australia Post reassures me it is still delivering – with 24/7 lockers and a vending machine to be shipped, somewhere up the road. Tik-Tok tells me Australia Post’s logo incorporates a post horn, the brass instrument that in the 18th and 19th centuries announced the arrival and departure of the mail.
I hereby sound the trumpet. Thank you to “the post office”, for your memorable, seasonal queues. The reassuring equality of that lovely long line, signalling Christmas was on its way.
Standing proud, combatting the tyranny of distance, we consign our boredom to an analogue sanctuary. Our respectful customer etiquette falling somewhere between the library and the bank. Thank you for your steadfast traditions.
Summertime shuffling, sandy and barefoot, on the tacky carpet as mum “does her jobs”. Exciting passport photos, paying down bills. Years later, my own kids watch me ritually fling Tim-Tams and Allen’s lollies to far-flung family by the Irish Sea.
I’ll miss you, pen on a string. And the exotic aroma of adhesives, bound up in a curious $2 display. Dusty .