THE OLD POST OFFICE AND EARLY POSTAL SERVICES

On 25th March 2008, an enthusiastic group of members was escorted through the UWA campus by Development Manager, Randall Jasper; then members of the Spectrum Theatre gave us a lively description of their activities in the bond store section which they occupy. This was an opportunity for members to learn about the building’s history.

The official postal service began in Albany on 14th October, 1834 when Mrs. Sarah Lyttelton, wife of the assistant surgeon, was appointed honorary postmistress. In 1835 Edward Spencer became the paid incumbent at 10 pounds ($20) a year plus 5 pounds ($10) expenses. In 1852 Albany was declared the mail port for Western Australia, the first contract mail deliveries being made by the Australian Company’s Australian and P&O’s Chusan and Formosa. To deal with the vast increase in the number of letters Stephen Knight became postmaster as well as holding several other positions. Much later, in 1867, after prolonged negotiations with the administration in Perth, the Government Resident, Sir Alexander Cockburn-Campbell, succeeded in his requests for a Government Office building, to include a post office, court house, municipal and road board meeting rooms and a customs house. Plans had been drawn up some time before by the Clerk of Works, James Manning; the eastern part of the building, facing Spencer Street, was erected by George Adams and James Mattison at a cost of £4,184/18/9 ($9,369.88) commencing in April, 1868 and being completed in December, 1869.

Construction required the excavation of 7,000 cubic yards of sand and soft stone which was done by convicts and Crown Prisoners, followed by the erection of massive granite retaining wall with buttresses five feet thick. The retaining wall and the main north wall of the building were separated by an access passage so that problems of drainage of spring water from the hillside could be monitored. Local building materials were used for the building: bricks from the kilns at the top of York Street, lime from Limeburner Creek, south of the harbour, granite from Mount Clarence and timber and she oak for shingles from the King and Kalgan River areas.

In 1895 the massive extension on the western side of the Post Office was added by Tighe Bros., supervised by Francis Bird, with George Temple-Poole the architect, the cost being approximately £4,500 ($9000). Again, local bricks, granite and she oak were used; freestone, bluestone and cedar were imported from New South Wales. The spiral staircase in the clock tower is a style known as flying, originally devised by the sixteenth century Italian architect, Palladio; each step is a single stone embedded in the outer wall so as to carry the weight of the stone above, thereby obviating the necessity for internal support. The balusters are of cast iron.

When the clock tower was completed it was realised that the drop was insufficient for the weights, which operated the clock. In 1901 W. Harrison was awarded the contract to raise the tower 20 feet (6.1 metres) for 376 pounds ($752). The tower’s extended height is 84 feet (25.6 metres); the weight-driven clock is 4 feet (1.219 metres) in diameter.

In 1901, following Fremantle’s assumption of the role of mail port, the post office building was transferred from the Crown to the ownership of the Postmaster General’s and Trades and Customs Departments. Internal walls were erected to accommodate the uses of the time and in 1915 a new main entrance, leading to Stirling Terrace, was built. In 1949 the shingle roof was replaced with terracotta Marseilles tiles; shingles were retained on the clock tower and one turret.

The original three-level building was planned with the bond stores on the lowest, south-facing level so that easy connection with the jetty could be made for transporting goods. The Customs House and Post Office facilities were on the centre level and the Court House on the highest level was entered directly from Stirling Terrace. From 1867 to 1889 mail from the Post Office to Perth was despatched by coach, travelling in 1867 being three and a half days.

From June 1889, a mail van incorporating sorting facilities was attached to Great Southern Railway trains reducing the time to eighteen hours. On June 22nd 1884, mail deliveries commenced within the town of Albany. On December 26th 1871, the Post Office also became a telegraph office with the opening of a telegraph line from Perth to Albany.  The first telegraph pole for the overseas telegraph line was placed outside the Post Office on 1st January 1975, by Governor Weld and it remains there today; the worldwide service began in 1877.  A telephone exchange with 112 subscribers and two telephonists, who were paid thirty-five pounds ($70) per annum each, was opened in 1895.

From the beginning the Post Office building housed local and state government offices and was used as a public hall. In 1898 the Court House, also designed by George Temple-Poole, was completed and judicial administration moved to the new location. In the twentieth century the old building has accommodated various government departments including Departments of the Navy, Taxation and Labour & National Service. The Post Office moved to a new building in York Street in 1964 and the Albany Town (now City) Council took over the old building.

The Customs Office re-located in 1966 and by 1967 all Commonwealth departments had vacated the post office building. The Albany Town Council came to an agreement with the Department of the Interior to buy the building for $15,000 on five-year loan terms. To finance the purchase the Council budgeted on $3,000 a year from rents including a ground-floor restaurant.  Lessees between 1964 and 1999 included the Fellowship of Australian Writers, Missions to Seamen, Girl Guide Rangers, Albany Pigeon Club and the Telecommunications Museum.  Much of the space was taken up by the Penny Post Restaurant, which occupied the Stirling Street level and used one of the bond stores as a wine cellar. In 2000 the current lessees were in rent arrears with the council and Snowball auctions were engaged to sell the entire fittings and contents of the restaurant, gift shop and cellar, including some original post office fittings, notably the wooden post office counter.

The Old Post Office had been classified by the National Trust in 1977 and had undergone some preservation work at that time. Subsequently, in 1992-1993 it was entered in the Register of Heritage Places in Australia. When the building became vacant in 2000 there was much speculation as to its future. Negotiations between the City of Albany and the UWA eventually resulted in the expanded UWA Centre becoming the building’s new lessee. The Spectrum Theatre retained one of the bond stores and the telecommunications museum artefacts were placed into storage.

To prepare the Old Post Office building for a new era extensive renovation and some alterations were necessary. The UWA obtained approximately one million dollars in state and federal funds to carry out this task. Planning was supervised by architect David Heaver and Albany Company, Urban Building, employing local contractors, carried out the work. Necessary alterations were the removal of various partitions which had been placed in the building over the years, the opening up of some spaces for seminar and conference rooms and the building of an additional staircase to allow access from study areas on upper floors to the student common room on the lowest level.

Considerable care was taken to preserve the authenticity of the building such as ascertaining the original colours of paint and reproducing them. The remodelled interior of the building created a large reception room on the top floor, study laboratory and student workroom on the middle floor, with a tutorial room on the east side of this floor in what had been the telegraph room. On the bottom, Proudlove Parade level the western bond store is now the student common room. The bond store on the eastern side is leased to the Spectrum Theatre which was formed in 1979 at the Vancouver Arts Centre and moved to its present location in 1980, using considerable ingenuity to adapt storage space for bonded goods to its own needs. One of the Heritage requirements of the building is that its views be unobstructed by any construction between the site and the harbour with the result that the magnificent views from the balconies will be preserved forever.

The official opening of the new UWA took place on 23rd February 2002, beginning with an impressive academic procession from the old centre, the Headmaster’s House, in York Street to the area outside the lower level of the building in Lower Stirling Street, where the ceremony took place. Speakers, who were introduced by the Director of the UWA Albany Centre, Barbara Black, included: the Minister for Education, the Hon. Alan Carpenter, MLA, UWA Chancellor, Dr. Ken Michael AM, UWA Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Schreuder, Her Worship the Mayor of Albany, Alison Goode and Alex. Campbell, incoming chairman of the Albany Foundation.

Part of the restoration of the Old Post Office as UWA’s Albany Centre has been a co-operative project with the City of Albany’s Public Library, which resulted in the redevelopment of the Library to cater for university students as well as the general public. This associated development opened on 24th January, 2003.

Sources -
Garden, D.S.  Albany: A Panorama of the Sound.     Nelson, 1977
Oldham, Ray & John George Temple-Poole: Architect of the golden years 1885-1897.  UWA, 1980
Albany; the First Hundred Years.  AHS, 1988
Albany’s Nineteenth Century Buildings.  AHS, 2000
The Illustrated Register of the National Estate.  Macmillan, 1981
Van Den Berg, Nick The Old Post Office, Albany
(unpublished paper in AHC, 2000)
Information leaflets printed by UWA and Spectrum Theatre

Judith Swain

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