Australia Post – Did you know……..?

In Australia there are 7,950 postal routes serviced by 10,000 “posties”. Motorcycles are used for delivery for around 6,600 routes, bicycles for 350 routes and walking for 1,000 routes. Cars are only used for the very longest routes.

Until the 1960s the longest, and the world’s longest, overland mail route was Meekatharra to Marble Bar. As there were few roads a round trip took seven days. The current longest overland route is Norseman in Western Australia to Border Village in South Australia: 1,460 km (907 mi). The longest air service delivers to remote communities in the outback covering 1,790 km (1,112 mi) over two days.

The most isolated postbox is located on a dive platform on the Great Barrier Reef.

The most isolated Post Office is located 217 km (135 mi) from Onslow in Western Australia, 32 km (20 mi) from the nearest customer.

From the 2005-06 Annual Report Australia Post:

Handled 5.42 billion mail items.
Revenue of $4.53 billion.
Profit (before tax) of $515.6 million.
Delivered 94.9% of letters on time or early.
Just over half of Australia Post’s revenue comes from delivering letters, the rest comes from other activities.
Processed 194 million agency-based bill payment transactions, 30 million banking transactions and over 1 million passport applications.
Australia Post has over 4,462 outlets.
Australia Post has over 15,436 street posting boxes
Australia Post has over 34,800 employees.
Australia Post owns 50% of Australian air Express and Star Track Express with the remainder of both companies held by Qantas.
All undelivered items go to the mail redistribution centres, which attempts to return the items to their sender.

This might go someway to explain the time it takes to get mail from one side of Australia to the other. The distances involved and the logistics it takes to get to some of the outback locations.

‘Don’t forget on your next travels, Pass the Post offers great mail forwarding services using post or scan mail, so chat to us about what we can do for you!’.