The River Postman.
Numbers of letters have to be delivered to the various vessels anchored within the port of London, and the postman is seen here on one of his rounds.
The great colonies of Australia and New Zealand have services largely modelled on that of Great Britain. They too have sometimes improved upon the methods of the mother country. Old age pensions were the rule in New Zealand several years before we paid them, and the business is done through the Post Office. New Zealand adopted in 1909 the home savings bank safes, which two years later Great Britain began to experiment with for the benefit of her savings bank depositors. The zeal of our colonies for statistics and official reports is astonishing. Canada is especially rich in such efforts, and New Zealand runs her very close. The New Zealand Year Book is a most exhaustive publication; it gives you statistics of everything connected with the country. You can tell at a glance how many letters, newspapers, parcels, and postcards are delivered to the individual New Zealander. New Zealand appears even to take a census of its pigs.
Australia, with its scattered population and long distances to be travelled, finds a difficulty in working the Post Office as a paying concern, but she is not behind other colonies in the conveniences she offers. Englishmen arrive there, and expect, as they always do in countries other than their own, to find a lower civilisation. The Australians delight in “pulling the legs” of these gentlemen. A Sydney coach-driver, backed up by his passengers, induced a young man newly arrived from England to believe that kangaroos were now used in that district as letter carriers. “They meet the coach,” he said, “and I give them their master's letters, which they put in their pouches and carry home.” The freshman was incredulous, but just then a great kangaroo hopped on to the roadway right in front of them, and stood for a moment looking at the advancing coach. “Nothing for you to-day,” shouted the driver, and the animal, turning, disappeared in the shrub from which it had come.
The young Englishman was struck with wonder at the strides made in so young a nation as Australia.
There are mountainous districts in New South Wales where the journey of a letter carrier has to be performed at nearly 5000 feet above the level of the sea, and this necessitates the use of ski or snow shoes. In the Australian bush they have a quaint and picturesque custom which is for the convenience of the squatters and miners. A wooden box is set up by the side of one of the chief trails or pathways. Ranchers come there from a great distance and drop in their letters. The boxes are cleared once a week, and the postman who does this work also brings the letters for the ranchers, and puts them in a compartment of the box set apart for them.
In 1899 a pigeon post was established in New Zealand between Auckland and Great Barrier Island, which contained about one hundred inhabitants. The island is sixty miles from Auckland; there was no cable communication, and a steamer only once a week. At the outset each bird carried one message only, at the cost of two shillings, but subsequent experiments proved the birds could carry four sheets of tissue paper of quarto size, and the rate was reduced to sixpence per message of one sheet. Wireless telegraphy is, however, displacing the pigeon as a messenger everywhere; even the British Admiralty has discontinued its pigeon service, which had attained a high standard of efficiency.
I have stated in a previous chapter that the whole tendency of postal administrations all over the world is towards uniformity of method, and this applies especially to the post offices of the Empire. The emigrant, perhaps, feels more at home in a colonial post office than in any other place in his new country. And this feeling is only in part due to the fact that the post office links him up with Great Britain. It seems to him really a bit of the old home.