tps.org.au

What a great collection of photos. Just a minor correction. The building you have shown as the former Parattah Post office is actually the former General Store in Parattah. The Post office was five doors up the street at 661, The current owners of the former General store are great magpies and have collected a number of misleading signs and appended them to their home. Hence the confusion. The original post office was at the Railway Station and that buildings was demolished in the 1960s.

If I could work out how to attach an image I would insert a photo of the actual Post Office building. Perhaps admin can assist?

Dear Local Lass

thanks for your compliment and a correction re location of Parattah PO.

to attach images already on your computer's hard-drive 'click' on the POST REPLY BUTTON

...a text box for your reply will open and just below the bottom frame you will see an 'Attachments'
button. If you 'click' on this you will see an "Add Files" button .... if you 'click' on this you can
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check your posting using the 'Preview' button and then post using the 'Submit' button.

if anything goes awry we can always fix it for you

best regards .... Ross Ewington (Moderator)

Great, I will take the camera for a stroll tomorrow

Ok, this is the former Parattah Post Office and residence. The Post Office was accessed via the glazed area on this side of the building and the actual post office chamber was in the front room (presumably originally the parlour). Steps lead up to the side access and a door gives admittance. Vera Fisher, the last post mistress, inherited the job from her mother who served till 1966. Vera no longer resides here as she is now in the care facility in Oatlands. The yard is carefully maintained by locals to the best of their ability - hence the pieces of board over the two windows that have broken since her departure.

I have been doing a bit more research. Apparently the Parattah post office was originally located at the Railway Station, but following WWI the PMG proposed to close it. Arthur Fox, then proprietor of the General Store, declared that a town the size of Parattah had to have its own post office and if the government would not supply it he would. Hence the purpose built structure in the image above. For three months, following the closure of the office at the Station, the Post office was run by a temporary female clerk from the 'Smoke Room' at the Jubilee Hall (the smoke room being a small annexe provided for gentlemen who wished to smoke their cigars in comfort without disturbing the ladies). The new Post Office was opened in March 1920. Some of this information comes from Trove, the remainder from Vera's personal recollections which are held at the Oatlands History Room.

The dates for the building are fairly precise as a photograph of a snow storm shows the block to be empty. While most copies of this photo indicate a date of 1920, it turns out that there were two blizzards - one in 1919, the other in 1921 which local memory has conflated. The date for the opening of the Post Office is given in a newspaper article from Trove, and three years later there is another article complaining that since the Post Office moved out of the Railway Station it was no longer possible for farmers to check if they could bring stock in for transport as the phone was now at some remove from the Station!! lol

Dear Local Lass

many thanks for your thorough and most interesting research on the Parattah post office

Ross Ewington

from the early 1970s ..... photos of the ZEEHAN and RENISON BELL post offices

This photo of the CATAMARAN post office (with postmistress) can be viewed at the museum at Southport.
Thanks to David Newell who 'snapped' this photo with his smartphone on a recent visit to Southport.

1960s era photographs of the Marrawah and (nearby) Redpa post offices

This photograph was taken by James Dearden Holmes circa 1925/26 while he was on a 3 year world trip. It is an original real photograph of a north east post office while he was travelling to St Helens. He catalogued his photographs but did not identify the office other than "2041" was of "a local post office" and "a heavy mail". It must be somewhere around Derby given that tin mining features in his later photographs. Can anyone help.