CAN anyone remember when trains had a travelling post office van known as a TPO with mail workers sorting letters along the way?
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You could mail a letter to Sydney at Orange railway station up to midnight and it would be delivered next morning, an overnight service.
Sorted mail was also dropped off at stations where the train stopped.
Australia Post, as the PMG’s Department had become by then, scrapped the TPOs in 1984 and bought its own fleet of road trucks because of so many damaging railway strikes in the early 1980s.
It was a sad end to what had been a close and successful relationship between post and rail for more than 100 years.
But turn the clock forward to today and what have we got? A dollar to post a letter and up to seven days for it to be delivered.
And if you want a letter to arrive in three or four days, it costs $1.50.
Bulk mail discount rates have gone and in some cases you have to lick and stick stamps on letters yourself.
Some examples this week of snail mail include a letter posted at Wentworth Falls on January 28 arrived in Orange on February 3, six days later, a letter posted at Wellington on February 2 arrived in Orange on February 5 while one posted at Wagga on February 3 arrived here on February 8.
Letters posted in Orange for Orange addresses on February 4 took four days to deliver. One stamped February 3 didn’t arrive until February 8.
It’s strange that at the simple stroke of a pen a service that wasn’t too bad can become a shocker because there’s been no news of mail sorters or posties being sacked.
So is Australia Post hiding the letters under the counter for a few days or what?
Workers didn’t have a prayer
IF the present row over workers’ Sunday penalty rates had been 50 or so years ago the Orange Ministers’ Fraternal would have been right in the thick of things.
And if they had their way, nobody would even work on Sundays.
Opposing car racing on the old Gnoo Blas track the Reverend H K Watson from Orange Baptist Church said the fraternal “stood adamant against the commercialisation and extending desecration of Sundays that was not in accord with its nature of a holy day. It would also be in breach of statute laws governing the observance of Sunday ...”
The fraternal’s move was prompted by Bathurst MP and chief secretary Gus Kelly who used the age-old Sunday observance act as part of his boots-and-all efforts to ensure Gnoo Blas did not become a threat to Mt Panorama.
However, the NSW Law Reform Commission in 1967 repealed the old British acts still in force and replaced them with the Sunday entertainment act to allow cinemas to open and sporting fixtures to be held on Sundays.
The first modern Sunday observance legislation enacted in Britain in 1627 was called “an Act for the further reformation of sondry abuses committed on the Lord’s day” and was aimed at “carriers, waggoners, carters, waynemen, butchers and drovers of cattle”, who were all forbidden to travel or carry out their trades on a Sunday.
In 1677 it was extended to prohibit every “tradesman, artificer, workman, labourer, or other person whatsoever” from doing any “worldly labour, business or work upon the Lord’s day”.
So things have well and truly changed. Maybe they weren’t paid penalty rates back then.
Nickname of note
THERE'S a campaign up and running to have eye surgeon Fred Hollows put on our $5 note to replace the two parliament houses.
Years ago there was a campaign “give Fred a fiver” so he could do the wonderful work here and overseas and now instead of give Fred a fiver his supporters are saying “put Fred on the fiver”.
They’re hoping if that happens the $5 note will be known as a Fred.
So here’s the go. We’ve had our Banjo Paterson on a $10 note for years and people don’t call it a Banjo.
In fact if there’s any nicknames for the $10 note, and they’re not commonly used, they’re blue swimmer, blue heeler from the cattle dog, and tenner.
So why don’t we get a campaign up and running to convince people to call the $10 note a Banjo?
It’s particularly pertinent because Orange will hold the Banjo festival next week and people spending lots of Banjos could be the best promotion yet of our favourite poet.
Tanks for nothing
PETROL prices have plummeted in Sydney to as low as 96.7 cents a litre for unleaded but a check in Orange shows prices here are still as high as 121.9 cents a litre, a whopping 25.2 cents dearer or about $11.34 more to fill the tank.
That’s a fair sort of a slug that we don’t really want.
The oil companies have been ripping off Orange drivers for years with ridiculously high prices permanently rusted on to bowsers so it would be good to get some relief now that oil prices are their lowest for years.
The cheapest unleaded in Orange is 115.9c at the unbranded petrol station on Bathurst Road., formerly Naughtons, and 119.7 cents a litre at United in Woodward Street while Coles Shell is 121.9c.
United’s E10 is 119.7c, BP 119.9c and Coles’ 120.4c.
The unbranded station’s premium 98 is also the cheapest at 133.9c with Shell 138.9c and BP 95 132.9c.
The cheapest unleaded in Sydney is 96.7c at Strathfield and Lethbridge Park.
The national average price this week is 112 cents a litre.