My post office delivered for 50 years. Now it’s closed and I’ve gone postal

My local post office has been sent packing and I’ve gone postal. After 50 years, the PO is a DA, earmarked for luxury residential apartments. No notice, no ceremony. Dispatched.

Illustration by Matt Golding

Architecturally, it was a 1970s shocker. Brutalist concrete walls and a flat iron roof. Pebblecrete and perspex consigned to history, for a parcel of first-class real estate “in the heart of the shops”.

Australia Post reassures me it is still delivering – with 24/7 lockers and a vending machine to be shipped, somewhere up the road.

Tik-Tok tells me Australia Post’s logo incorporates a post horn, the brass instrument that in the 18th and 19th centuries announced the arrival and departure of the mail. I hereby sound the trumpet.

Thank you to “the post office”, for your memorable, seasonal queues. The reassuring equality of that lovely long line, signalling Christmas was on its way. Standing proud, combatting the tyranny of distance, we consign our boredom to an analogue sanctuary. Our respectful customer etiquette falling somewhere between the library and the bank.

Thank you for your steadfast traditions. Summertime shuffling, sandy and barefoot, on the tacky carpet as mum “does her jobs”. Exciting passport photos, paying down bills. Years later, my own kids watch me ritually fling Tim-Tams and Allen’s lollies to far-flung family by the Irish Sea.

I’ll miss you, pen on a string. And the exotic aroma of adhesives, bound up in a curious $2 display. Dusty greeting cards and commemorative stamps. Cheap wire shelving, enveloping a padded promise.

Architecturally, a 1970s shocker but when it was opened in 1971, Spit Junction Post Office was described as “sensitively designed”.Credit: Fairfax Media

Over the past 40 years, as gradualism has re-directed our “strip”, I’ve seen many sent away. The haberdashery ladies, the understated menswear store, Video Ezy and the ATMs. Our post office stayed the course, achieving its dignified, quiet mission of service.

Australians rank post offices as the third most trusted institution after doctors and police. They have significant importance for older citizens and those of us living with a disability, according to a 2021 Deloitte report. Participants agreed that Australia Post brings resilience to our communities.

Sadly, my own loss is shared. According to Australia Post’s 2024 annual report, there are 73 fewer post offices this year than last. For my suburb at least, it means the urban ideal of walking to a place where we can conduct our postal affairs is over. We’re getting in the car.

As the business continually reimagines itself, can new digital services even remotely approximate the power of organic interactions? When, with ratty children and restless pets in tow, we lug our packets home, a little lighter for bumping into a neighbour or a friend? “Just ducking up to the post office.”

Two more “post shops” are labelled for redevelopment in my part of Sydney. One, a hub for over 100 years. A place where my grandma posted cherished shipments to the lieutenant-colonel she called her husband. Love notes held by his fingers, written in her hand. My own collection of Granny May’s scented envelopes passing through the same sorting trays.

As more passive public space is converted to the private realm, churches transform into child-care centres and high streets morph into polished concrete malls, I fear Postman Pat will become as elusive as a Womble. Red pillar boxes, empty sentinels at their post.

Personal mail may be dead. Miles Franklin, a brilliant correspondent, wrote prodigiously to a multitude of “congenials”. Crafting missives from her heart, to be furnished in the flesh. How would she respond to an email, a text message, a DM, an e-card, FaceTime or a Zoom call? Mindful. Permanent.

Every family has its own intergenerational treasure trove, history stuffed for perpetuity in a shoebox under the bed.

Never once, as a patron of my post office, did I greet the counter staff by name. A nod of recognition and a smile were sufficient. I just hope the human beings who were that post office felt my gratitude; knew that we valued their consistency and reliability as familiar faces in our lives.

Sadly, I didn’t get to say goodbye – to convey in person that I respected their work, noticed their professionalism, appreciated the privilege we could take granted that they always would be there.

Perhaps I will send them a letter.

Annie Flynn is a mother of three, a primary school teacher and a former lawyer.