John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I want speak about a matter of great importance to my own local community of Glebe in Sydney—the closure of the Glebe Post Office. Local residents were aghast when they heard the news very late last year that their post office would be closing on Friday, 4 February 2011.

There was no community consultation before this announcement, no period of grace for the community to look for other options and no discussion of or calls for tender to transition to a licensed post office. There was just two months notice over the Christmas period and then the doors were shut. The residents of Glebe were told to go to the nearest post office in the Broadway Shopping Centre on Parramatta Road. Let me say, this is disgraceful practice and utterly unacceptable corporate behaviour from Australia Post.

Mr President, I will tell you some history. In 1852, John Clissold was appointed Glebe’s first postmaster when a postal suboffice was opened in Glebe. Early records have been lost and little is known about the first Glebe post office, but it is believed to have been located on ‘the Glebe Road’, now Glebe Point Road.

On 1 November 1857 a letter carrier was appointed to Glebe along with other inner suburban Sydney post offices of Newtown, Camperdown, Redfern and Paddington. Prior to then letters would simply remain at the district post office for collection.

In the 1860s the post office at Glebe moved to a different part of the village and, although we do not know precisely where, the evidence suggests the new location was along Glebe Road. In 1868, when money orders began being issued at post offices, the then Glebe postmaster, John Tucker, who had been postmaster for three years, resigned in high dudgeon, claiming that the new duties would be too great a burden. But, again, it was time for the post office to move. Two proprietors bid for the tender—one, situated on the corner of the then Glebe Road and Harden Street, now Glebe Point Road and St John’s Road; the other, on the corner of Parramatta Road and Glebe Road.

It is a horrible irony that these two locations from the 19th century correspond, firstly, to the modern-day Broadway Shopping Centre, now the site of the nearest post office for Glebe; and, secondly, to the actual street intersection, although not on the same corner, of the site of the post office building for over a century. Needless to say, the location on Glebe Point and St John’s Road won out. It was then and has been for 143 years the most suitable location for postal services for the communities of Glebe and Forest Lodge.

When Mr John Warden was Glebe postmaster in the 1870s the community began to agitate for a telegram service. The Parramatta Street telegraph station, near the Glebe Road junction—again, no doubt, almost the same location as the present day Broadway Shopping Centre—was then and still is today just too far away from the heart of Glebe. Petitions were presented in 1877 for a telegram service at John Warden’s post office in the heart of Glebe.

The colonial authorities offered the Glebe telegraphic service for tender. A location, at 1 Hope Terrace, Glebe Point Road—a stone house, with a slate roof, a 20-foot frontage, a hall and seven rooms—at a cost of £75 rent per annum, was accepted. Although Hope Terrace does not exist today, it was described as being 50 yards from the Harden Street intersection.

A female telegraph operator Miss Minnie Knott was in charge of tapping out the telegraphs. Due to the policy of amalgamation of postal and telegraphic services Miss Knott also became the postmistress. In 1878 there was still much talk about relocating up to Parramatta Road. The University Hotel on Parramatta Road was offered, but the decision-making authorities of the 19th century were much more sensible than the 21st century decision makers. It was considered ‘inconvenient for postal purposes’. That position is still inconvenient for postal services.

In 1882 tenders were called for a new post office on a new site. The post office site at St John’s and Glebe Point Road was selected. By 1883 two sets of plans were under consideration: a building with a tower, costing £4,300, or one without a tower, costing £3,730. Both these options were considered too extravagant and requests for a more modest building were then tendered. Finally, a £2,139 plan was accepted and the building was completed on Christmas Eve, 1885, ready to be officially opened and occupied on 5 January 1886.

Miss Knott, the trusted telegrapher-cum-postmistress opened the doors on 8 January 1886. Business boomed at the new location. Annual revenue increased 517 per cent, from £290 in 1879, to £1,500 in 1890. A departmental report was issued to assess whether Miss Knott needed more assistance at the post office, and it found:

One of the assistants was engaged on duty from 8.30 am till 3 pm; and one from 3 pm till 8.15 pm, and that they were kept busy constantly at the telegraph instruments sending and receiving. Miss Knott was occupied in the booking and disposal of telegrams and attending to the counter most of her time … postal work was often left to the messengers, and thus unavoidably neglected.

Some things do not change in 120 years, because Miss Knott’s story is similar to the tale told by the 3½ full-time equivalent Australia Post employees who were run off their feet tending the needs of the Glebe community until just last week. I have been in that post office on hundreds of occasions and, on nearly every occasion, I have had to queue in a queue, five or six people deep.

Needless to say, the decision makers in the 1800s showed far more foresight than the decision makers of today. The authorities, in 1890, granted Miss Knott additional staff. The authorities, in 2010, closed down the post office. Tonight I will leave the Glebe Post Office in 1890—a busy, vibrant and essential part of the life of the community of Glebe. But in tomorrow’s adjournment debate I will follow this story into the 21st century. Unfortunately, it will not be a story with a happy ending.