Post

No, not the blog post type of "post"...I'm talking about the good old fashion send a letter in the mail type of post. In Australia, if you mail something to someone, you are "posting" a letter rather than mailing a letter. The equivalent of the United States Postal Service here is called Australia Post. My first encounter with the system of mailing things in Australia was quite amusing to the locals.

When we first moved into our house in Australia there were a few items I needed to post for various reasons. Like we do in America, I placed stamps on the letters and put them in the mailbox for collection. The next day, I noticed that the items were still there, however, we had not received any mail either. I assumed that our "postie" (short for postman, of course) might have had a day off and he would pick the letters up the next day. This went on for several days, except that eventually we were getting mail and my letters were still not getting picked up. I asked Erik if maybe I hadn't placed the proper amount of postage on the letters, but he assured me that they were okay.

Mail was sitting here for days not getting picked up.

Finally, after a week of the mail not getting picked up, I mentioned the "issue" to one of my colleagues at work. She stared at me with a very confused look and kindly explained (after a bit of a laugh) that posties do not pick UP mail, they only drop it off! Who knew how lucky we have it in America to simply walk to our mailbox and put up the little red flag to make it known that we have mail to send out? Instead, here in Oz, we must find the closest Post box and mail our letters that way. Obviously this is not a difficult task once you realize how the system works. I can only imagine what our postie was thinking when he kept seeing my outgoing mail in the box day after day?!

The big red box, where you must take your mail to get collected!

In fairness, our posties travel on motorbikes and therefore do not have as much room as a USPS worker to carry mail.

 VS

There is no mail delivery on Saturday here, something that I think the States is leaning towards and I think it is probably a good idea to save money. We certainly do not miss our Saturday mail delivery.

My only real complaint about the system here is that our "mailboxes" (at least the ones in our neighborhood) are not completely enclosed and therefore when it rains, the mail gets wet. When mail is placed in the box, the lid does not close completely (as seen in picture above). Mail can also be placed in the front slot (see below), but then part of the mail sticks out resulting in mail still getting wet.

At least only part of this letter was wet. We have had mail completely soaked on a bad day!

All in all, the post situation is a very minor inconvenience, but perhaps something that Americans take for granted when they only have to walk down the driveway to have their outgoing mail collected. Could posties on motorbikes be a thing of the future for Americans in order to save the USPS?