Category: Australia

Australian Stamps

  • January 4, 2021

It’s time for another selection of stamps from the order I made a couple of months back. This time, let’s look through a pack of 200 Australian Stamps.

That’s all of them, with the exception of a tiny amount of repeats. They span about 60 years from 1949 to about 2008. Here’s the oldest one, which was also the only pre-decimal stamp in the pack:

You can see in the first pic that Australia has a standard stamp size (that continues today) in which the vast majority of stamps are printed. The second photo shows the smaller size, with some smaller (older) stamps at the bottom. Australia does of course print stamps in other shapes and sizes than these, but they are usually higher denomination or for specific commemorative purposes.

Looking at this specific selection it’s clear there are a few recurring themes. One is sports, and the above photo shows many of those in the pack. I was surprised by the absence of cricket stamps, but a quick glance online shows they have existed and were simply not in my selection. There were several Olympic themed stamps in my pack as well.

Vehicles were another theme, and I recall collecting some of the plane ones in my youth. The car series is quite handsome!

There were several train stamps as well, from at least four different series over a couple of decades. Obviously a popular topic of Australia Post.

Christmas stamps were extremely common, and this picture isn’t even all of them. Over 10% of the 200 were Christmas stamps, and they’re such a tradition in Australia that they even print Christmas stamp stamps, like this one:

There were actually two different stamps commemorating Christmas stamps!

This got me thinking “How did this company get these Australian stamps?” I bought the packs from a stamp dealer in Canada and I assume his various country selections originated from the countries themselves? Are there companies in Australia that collect used stamps (from envelopes possibly?) to sell to dealers overseas? If so, this could explain the frequency of Christmas stamps since I would expect most Australians are likely to send Christmas cards than use the postage in the rest of the year?

The most common topic – and this has always seemed to be the case – is of course Australian wildlife. Check your postcards I’ve sent you from Oz over the years and you’ll likely see animal stamps on them, including perhaps some of those shown above!

A few other stamps caught my eye, such as these two from series about children’s novels:

Or this example of a stamp about stamps (sort of):

There were many other interesting ones but this post is already too long. As with the previous packs I had a lot of fun sorting these and looking up details on many of them.

I still have more packs to go through as well. What will the next one be? Check back in a month or so and find out 🙂

  • Posted in Australia
  • Robert

Paper Boys

  • May 17, 2020

In 1985 or 1986, Bernard and I got our first jobs. My memories are somewhat vague regarding certain details, but I seem to think it was Dads idea and he was instrumental in getting us a weekly paper run.

Every Wednesday we delivered a free newspaper called The Newcastle Star to a few hundred houses in a suburb called Redhead. Dad picked us up after school, we’d drive to a house in Gateshead to collect the papers, then drive to Redhead to deliver them. The three of us worked together and it usually took us several hours. I recall it was hard work, and not something any of us much enjoyed.

Redhead is an old sun-dried suburb known for its beach and looks very similar today to what I recall from then. We’d park our car with a bootfull of papers and each of us would pick a few blocks and walk around by ourselves delivering the papers.

The newspapers were big – both physically and by page count – and filling a shoulder bag with dozens of them made for quite a burden. They often came with a variety of additional advertising materials we had to combine with the papers ourselves, which increased the work time accordingly.

I believe we each settled on our parts of the suburb that we did every week, rather than switch it up. I myself walked the southeastern blocks closest to the beach, and my route included many of the lanes that run behind the houses. It was routine work: walk from house to house stuffing a rolled up paper into a mailbox or between fence slats or – if there was nowhere else to put it – putting a elastic band around it and tossing it into a yard.

I believe we ignored the – rare in those days – signs that said ‘no advertising materials’. Maybe due to some mechanism in place to verify the papers were actually delivered? At any rate the paper seemed quite popular in those days and even though I didn’t like delivering it I looked forward to reading it 🙂

It was tough work in summer, sweaty and tiring and I’m sure sunburn was common! But the truly wretched times were when it rained. We experimented with ponchos and other means to stay dry but nothing worked well and mostly we just got very wet while doing our best to keep the papers dry. Heavy rain often delayed our ability to deliver, but there was a deadline so sometimes we had to do it regardless.

Some other memories:
– There were several houses with evil, ravenous dogs! I hated these, and even sometimes ran past them in fear of my life 🙂
– We used to leave the car unlocked and the boot wide open so we could restock as necessary. In those days I suppose we didn’t consider thieves being a problem.
– I witnessed a dramatic car collision once at an intersection (near the church in the photo below) and was momentarily confounded as to what to do. But when the drivers got out and both seemed ok I walked on.
– A few times we were given actual product samples to deliver with the paper. These included washing machine detergent and some type of powdered drink. I think we just kept them ourselves – boxes of them! – rather than deal with the nightmare of carrying them 🙂
– One time the paper included a game piece for a McDonalds game that awarded actual prizes. Naturally we kept most of these ourselves and I recall eating free fries and hamburgers for some time…

If we didn’t enjoy it and it was difficult, physical work then why did we do it? The pay was good! Although dad drove us and did at least a third of the work he let Bernard and I split all the pay, and we got $30 or more each every week, which is close to $100 today. For a 13 or 14 year old this was amazing money in 1985 and I still remember using my first paycheque to buy two records (amongst other things) which were the first I ever bought ‘with my own money’.

My pay funded my video game, gamebook and music purchases for several years. It enabled weekly trips into Newcastle for movies/arcades/shopping and bought me more lollies and McDonald’s than I ever thought possible! I still own some of the things I bought with those wages to this day 🙂

In 1987 Bernard entered year 11 and chose to end the run. Dad and I continued alone for a while, but soon the Australian government started giving money to school kids (Austudy) and there was simply no need for us to work any more. I’m sure I sighed with relief after that final paper was delivered!

I would receive Austudy until just before leaving Australia and never worked again until I moved here. My first and last Australian career then: a paperboy. Hell in it’s day, but somewhat fondly remembered now.

Next time I visit I’ll go to Redhead and walk my route again for old times sake. I hope it triggers memories I haven’t even been able to remember for this post…

In The Coins

  • February 1, 2020

I brought back quite a few Australian coins with me this trip. I’d been doing this every year and it was time to sort them!

Australia has minted many variant designs for most of its coins, especially in the years since I left. Whenever I find something new in my change I hang on to it and over the years I’ve accumulated many different coins.

These are the 20 cent coins, with the normal version in top left. Some of the these commemorate such things as the United Nations, volunteers and even the taxation office! One stands out in particular, mostly since it’s a bit hideous:

The world went crazy for that wedding didn’t they?

I’ve got seven unique 20 cent coins but there have been nineteen in total! I’ll have to keep looking in future trips.

There’s a lot of 50 cent coins in my collection! This is unsurprising since the earliest commemorative coins were 50s and some of the above date to my youth and came to America with me back in 1993! Including this one:

That’s from 1970 and was the first ever Australian commemorative coin. Others in the above picture were minted for various Commonwealth Games, in memory of wars, to commemorate federation or social events.

Then there’s this interesting example:

The normal 50c is at left, and a 2016 variant is shown at right. I only learned of this preparing this post but in 2016 to celebrate 50 years of decimal currency Australia minted coins of every denomination with variant ‘heads’! I only have the 50c, but am very interested in the others since they include the only commemorative 10 and 5 cent coins!

There’s the dollars, with the normal version in top left. There’s lots of different types, commemorating things like women’s suffrage, ‘the international year of older persons’ and scouting. My favourite is this one:

That’s actually to commemorate the first fleet, despite being an aboriginal design. It’s another coin I brought with me when I came here.,

The current gems of my $1 collection are these:

‘The Great Aussie Coin Hunt’ was a series of 26 $1 coins minted last October and exclusively available in change from post offices in Oz. I knew about them and wanted them and mum said she’d try and get some. Cagily she had told me she only found a few but on Christmas Day my gift from her was the full set! She’d collected them all in secret 🙂

They’re all whimsical, and the best is probably this one:

My $2 coins are a weird bunch:

First of all yes, many are colourized! Secondly, most of these aren’t actually listed in the list of commemoratives I’ve been referring to (and I don’t actually have many on that list). A quick search online revealed that most of these (including Possum Magic and – an Xmas gift from AW – Mr Squiggle) were exclusively distributed at one Australian grocery store during very limited periods!

I reckon it’s mostly luck I have so many of these given how limited they were, but now I want the actual commemoratives I don’t own!

In addition to these I have some ‘retired’ coins:

A set of uncirculated coins:

And a selection of special coins purchased directly at the store at the Canberra mint:

But I’m most a fan of the actual coins that are circulated; the ones I’ve collected myself during my visits. Making this post has educated me on how many more there are, so you can bet I’ll be keeping a close eye on my change for many future trips to come.

Now where is that merino ram 50 cent coin I was sure I owned….?