So it’s come to this.
Australia Post is going out of the postal business.
The postie is now going to deliver mail only every other day.
Express post items will still come daily – why not, they cost more?
Mind you, out here express delivery means it might get here a day faster than a letter.
Might.
Parcels will also remain daily on the delivery schedule – why not, they are what keeps online shopping going so that’s really important, isn’t it?
The old Whacker can remember when the postie came twice a day.
Yep: twice a day.
Once in the morning and again in the afternoon.
And if anything was popped in your letterbox, the good old postie – who was on a pushbike, not in an electric all-weather vehicle – would blow his whistle to let anyone in the house know ‘you’ve got mail’.
Obviously that didn’t happen out here in the heartland, but when Whacker and his siblings started reaching secondary school the old mum decided it was time we moved to town – unless the old man wanted to run the home school.
A house was bought in town the same afternoon.
For us country kids the transition wasn’t exactly seamless.
Lots of things were very different – but some, thank heavens, were oh so familiar.
Such as the milkman in his creaking old cart drawn by a creaking old heavy horse.
So was the baker’s.
Our baker used to pull up in the street, hop off with his cane basket in hand, and his horse would go four or five houses down the street and stop.
He then would sweep through the back door, announcing his arrival with a stentorian “Hey, ho, missus. What’s your fancy today?” as he banged the basket on the table and swept back the red gingham towel covering his wares.
Mum would pick what she wanted and off he would go to the next home.
The milkie didn’t have it quite as good.
He either got a regular order or there was a milk bottle with a note in it.
The order often involved Mum’s billy (with a hygienic tin lid) into which milk would be ladled from a bigger can.
In the summer, in particular, if you were slow off the mark the ants got there first.
Bazillions of the little buggers.
So Mum would haul milk and passengers into the kitchen and pour the milk through the nearest tea towel (often giving it a slightly funky taste) before spilling the hapless insects into the sink, down the plughole and into oblivion.
Which brings me back to the postie: another institution also fast going down the plughole.
Join me in a moment of nostalgia, if you will.
That moment, for example, when you came out for breakfast on your birthday and Mum had arranged four or five (more if you were lucky, from a big family or both) cards in envelopes.
They were all shapes and sizes and invariably contained money – cash from aunts and uncles, always a postal note from the grandmothers.
If you don’t know what a postal note is, Google it.
No email, no tweet, no, not even a text with multiple emojis, is going to conjure that kind of excitement and anticipation.
Let alone the elation.
Now a strategically posted birthday card may actually miss the big day if it’s a non-delivery day.
And do you think, like me, this is just the thin edge of the wedge?
How long before post goes weekly, and then really does go right down the drain?
Things change, always do.
Hell, I don’t even need a bull to produce calves these days, let alone a phone line to make a phone call.
Etc etc.
But of late I confess I am less and less enamoured of change because much of what is happening is being made for the wrong reasons.
Profit ahead of people worries me.
No business, big or small, seems happy to be making a good living – they all want more.
And, so often, more means we get less.
Australia Post wants to make more money and will partly achieve that by offering fewer services.
Less for more.
Now is that really a good deal?
