Coogee Media

Post Offices used to be located on sites Australia Post owned, but about a decade ago, many of the sites were sold to private investors and then leased back to Australia Post, in management speak "to free up lazy capital". This happened at Coogee and so with the prospect of redevelopment of the Brook Street site, Australia Post fitted out new premises at Shops 4 & 5 near the corner of Coogee Bay Road and Vicar Street.

Old Coogee Post Office in Brook Street, 2017

Brutalist Architecture
I don't know when the building at 120 Brook Street was constructed - its architectural style could be described as being squared, red-brick brutalist! It was not the prettiest building in Coogee, but it was one every local would know of and visited from time to time. I worked in this Post Office in 1969 and it had been on the site for some time before that, so construction was probably completed in the early 1960s.

First Brook Street Building
According to Australian National Archives documents, the land in Brook Street was acquired by the federal government in 1923, and Sand's Sydney Directory shows Coogee Post Office being on the site in 1933 with a Mr. Stokes being the Postmaster. In September 1935, burglers broke into the building and attemped to blow the strongroom with explosives. In the days when cash was king, and postage stamps were often treated as legal tender, post offices needed fairly roomy and robust strongrooms, and the one at Coogee seemed to be no exception. All the explosions managed to do was to buckle the safe door, and robbers escaped empty handed.

A Community Centre
I was working there in July 1969 when Armstrong walked on the Moon and I remember it as being a particularly quite working day because people seemed to have stayed on home to watch the "walk" on TV. Someone had bought in a TV and the staff sat around watching grainy black and white figures bounce around on the lunar surface. Eventually we hauled the huge cathode-ray monster into the public area to share the experience with the few customers who were about that day.

Up until about 1970, the local post office was more like a community centre than a business. If you wanted to communicate with the outside world, you had to visit it. No mobile phones, many people did not have a landline to their homes, no call centres, and it was the only practical place to send letters or parcels. Independent parcel couriers were rare. The post office was the first contact point for most goverment business. Customers tended hang around a bit and exchange news and gossip.

Coogee Post Office, Brook Street, 1981. It still has the old
ERII insigna above the front door indicating Royal Mail
The red metal partition along the front of the building housed a long row of public telephones

PMG Bureaucracy & Telecommunications
Post Office's back then were part of a huge bureaucracy called the Postmaster General's Department, PMG for short, a dedicated Government department answerable to a Minister of the Crown. The Department handled all communications including telephone, telegraph and postal services. If you wanted to install a telephone, you made an application at your local post office, paid your bill, and eventually a PMG technician would visit to install the wonderful piece of 20th century technology which we now call a "landline". You could also "book" a "long-distance" or "trunk" telephone call in advance at Post Offices. In the late 1960s, STD (that is Subscriber Telephone Dialling not Sexually Transmitted Disease) was becoming more common so that gradually booking a trunk call service was phased out - ending forever a general understanding of appalling puns about elephants and telephones.

So chic! Telegram Boys wore dark grey uniforms
with patches saying "PMG" sewn over each breast pocket

Telegrams
When you visited the post office, you could always hear the clack-clack of teleprinters in the back room churning out telegrams which would be delivered by a small squadron of "telegram boys" to you home on bicycle - pity their young legs on Coogee's steep hills. Telegrams were supposed to be delivered within a hour of acceptance (or within half an hour if you paid double-rates for an Urgent telegram). With Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, there were times when a telegram ominously announced death or injury of a serviceman. There was no such thing as a singing telegram, but a big part of the telegram business was the wedding telegram. Saturday was a big day for delivery of wedding telegrams which traditionally were congratulatory messages read by the best man at the wedding reception. The "congratulatory" messages were often double entendre with smutty meanings: Don't buy you bedroom furniture from Macy's, they stand behind everything sell, or Take it from one who knows, tie your nighty to your toes! There were many others.

The cost of telegrams was relatively expensive. 36 cents for the first twelve words (including the address) and 6 cents each additional word - so you had to be economical with your text. A "word" was 12 characters, so a commonly used telegram word like "congratulations" counted as two words. You could pay 12 cents for it or abbreviate it to "congrats". The full stop, period sign "." was counted as a character in the word it was used, in the teleprinter age. Before, when Morse code was used (the last public Morse code telegram in Australia was in 1964), it was impractical to use the period sign "." because it represented the letter "e", which is the reason why people used the word "STOP", for example CONGRATS ON YOUR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY STOP HAVE POSTED SPECIAL GIFT STOP. You always received a telegram in upper case text.

The last real teleprinter transmitted telegram was sent in 1987. After that, Australia Post used various hacks and mash-ups utilising fax machines and email systems to deliver simulations they marketed as "TELEGRAMS" and later as "LETTERGRAMS" until 2011, but the era of telegraphy being the mainstay of fast communications that started in 1854 had long since being overtaken by technological innovations.

Coogee Post Office was located in Coogee Bay Road in the late 19th century - then called Belmore Road

Old Coogee Post Office in Brook Street, 1949

Weather Stations
Remarkably, some post offices had a small weather station in the back yard. People could insure an event, such as a wedding, for fine weather. An insurance company might ring the post office on a day of an event to check on rainfall, wind speed, humidity and cloud type. One got the barest amount of training in meteorology, so I always wondered how accurate the readings would be! Saturday afternoons (we worked 6 days a week) was a big time for weddings, and I remember on a couple occasions having to confirm nothing more than that, the sun was shining.

Australia Post Established
In 1975, the Whitlam Government separated the telecommunications and postal functions and established two new corporatised bodies called Australia Post and Telecom Australia. The newly coporatised entities were no longer run by a Minister but by appointed managers. Each organisation had their own distinct new logos - Australia Post's reversed face red 'P' has survived as has its government ownership to this time, but Telecom Australia became Telstra and eventually privatised and one of a number of competing telecommunications companies. Many would say that Australia Post has done the best out of the separation showing that there is nothing wrong with a well-managed government enterprise.

1975 Se-tenant pair of stamps issued to commemorate the establishment of Australia Post & Telecom Australia as separate corporatised entities.

Radio & Television Licences
The other thing the Whitlam Government did that affected the Post Office was the abolishment of radio and television licences. Remarkably, until 1974 if you wanted watch or listen to television or radio, you had to buy a licence to do it, or else be heavily fined in court. You had to line up at the Post office counter, make an application, and pay $26.50 - a considerable sum in those days. To police the licencing system, PMG Inspectors armed with list of addresses not holding a licence, would visit homes and make their best endeavour to enter homes and see if a radio or television was installed. The Post Office also had Radio and Television Detection Vans which drove around the suburbs trying to detect any stray signals emitted by a device inside the home. Some believed the vans were more bluff than effective because when the British purchased green Morris vans roamed around Coogee, their sighting would raise enough fear for there to be a flurry of people purchasing new licences.

The PMG Department also employed actor Frank Thring to feature in a television ad where Thring peered out from the television screen saying in a, fruity, campish manner (as only Frank Thring could do) : "You do have a licence, don't you?". Some people described it as being "creepy" - and maybe that was the point.

The federal Fraser Government tried to re-introduce TV licence fees in 1975, recommending fees of $70.00 for a colour TV set and $50.00 for a black-and-white set, but this suggestion was dropped after huge public opposition.

Postmen
Coogee Post Office back then, like most suburban post offices, also had a complement of "Postmen" to sort and deliver on foot twice a day letters and packages. From memory, Coogee had 12 postmen then stationed in a large wooden hut directly behind the Brook Street building. Each postman was assigned a particular "beat" on a permanent basis. Some postmen looked after the same beat for decades and knew their beat intimately. Very handy when mail was not correctly addresses, and sometimes for police enquiries.

Job titles tended to be male-gendered because the Post Office was a predominantly a male preserve, especially areas which required any skills or training. Telegraphists, for instance, who needed to be able to type very quickly to operate teleprinters, were all male. During the Second World War, manpower shortages allowed many women to work in postal occupations normally reserved for men. Over the next two decades, these women were gradually eased out of their jobs, however by 1969, a few stubborn women had hung on to their jobs in this male world, despite all entreaties for them to resign. By then, the 1960s social revolution saw the arrival a new wave of women - a few at first, but gradually helped to build one of the country's most diverse corporate workforces.

Postal & Revenue Products Only
You could only buy postal stamps and postal supplies at the post office and that was about it - none of the range of fancy stationary and accessories that now fill the post office's public area. The Post Office was also the revenue collection arm of the federal government and so you could pay income tax by purchasing "tax stamps", and pay State government stamp duty by purchasing "duty stamps". Money Order sales were a large part of the activity of the office in those days before payment by electronic funds transfers became common. The office opened from 9am to 5pm, but you could only transact strictly non-postal business from 10am to 3pm - banking hours. An overseas customer once remarked to me "What a country, nothing works after 3pm!".

Aliens
Talking about strange institutions, non-British subjects/foreign nationals living in Australia from 1939 to 1972, had to complete an Alien Registration Form obtainable from the Post Office. There were regular publicity campaigns for Alien Registration, and most non-aliens (!) thought nothing of it. I never questioned the idea either until I had to provide Post Office customers with requested Alien Registration Forms. People who you saw everyday on the street going about their business suddenly had to announce themselves as aliens. It seemed demeaning.

Stamp Collectors
Stamp collecting, or philately, was a major hobby during the 20th century. When a new stamp was issued, collectors lined up at the doors at opening time to purchase the new issues for their collections. Not just single example of a stamp, but all the many of combinations of stamps. A common request was for a corner block of four stamps with the selvedge attached. Some felt that their collection was not complete unless they held a full sheet of stamps - usually 100. Collectors were also keen to acquire copies of stamps with attached selvedge that may have carried any additional printing such as sheet numbers or printers guides. They got excited about what they called "variations" - mistakes in the printing process, or even errors in the number of perforations between stamps. Variations were highly desirable and could earn a major premium if onsold to other collectors.

Other collectors acquired "first day covers", which are envelopes having a postage stame attached and postmarked with the date of issue. Some created their own "covers", others wanted the specially printed provided by the Post Office at a premium.

Philately was good business for the Post Office, they effectively sold bits of paper that cost a fraction of a cent to produce yet never had to provide the delivery service that was paid for. Some staff enjoyed this part of the job, and many became keen collectors themselves. Other staff, with a public service mentality, hated the whole business - they saw it as an imposition that took them away from the Post Office's core business. Collectors could be given short shrift, and they were always on the lookout for any staff who shared their interest.

Anyway! - That is all different now, and under the stewardship of Ahmed Faour, Australia Post took over Startrack Express and became a delivery power house in the digital economy and a dividend gold mine for the federal government. There are no telegram boys, or postmen, at the new Coogee Post Office, which now resembles a mini office supplies supermarket rather than a crusty old government bureau.

New Coogee Post Office in Vicar Street

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