HISTORY TALKING by HELEN Mc ANULTY

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better knowledge,

Sent to where I knew him, on the Lachlan years ago.

He was shearing when I knew him, and I sent the letter to him,

Just on spec, addressed as follows: 'Clancy of the Overflow.'

A. B. (Banjo) Paterson

Clancy didn't get that letter because he was "droving down the Cooper" but at least it reached his shearing mate who was able to write back "with a thumbnail dipped in tar."

These days, in our world of phone and internet, we can be constantly in touch with almost everyone no matter how near or far they may be. In our present Covid isolation it has enabled people to work at home and to keep closely in touch with others who have been social-distancing.

Before the invention of the telephone it was quite a different matter.

Mailmen and their city counterparts, postmen, often went to unbelievable trouble to track down the recipient of the letters they were employed to deliver.

When the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour those on board knew that there was only one way they would be able to make contact with England and this was to send messages by ship. It took many months for a letter to reach its destination and, of course, a reply would take as long. Instructions sent by the British government to Governor Phillip would sometimes arrive a couple of years after the event, which must have been frustrating for all those concerned.

Before 1810 there was no regular postal service in the colony. But on 1st September of that year Governor Macquarie issued an order designating the house of one Isaac Nicholls as the first regular post office.

Sixty four years later the General Post Office was opened in Martin Place and provisions for the regulation of postal services, including the rates for postage, were made. In those far off days the cost of postage was an enviable one penny. The stamp was locally produced and depicted scenes of Sydney Harbour.

Before we could communicate by letter though, we had to learn to write.

In those far-off unenlightened days of our youth, children were all made to write with their right hand, the theory being that life would be easier for them in a predominantly right handed world.

This was obviously no problem for Dick who became ambidextrous.

"We learned to write properly using a slope card which was alright except that I couldn't spell,"

he said.

Writing lessons were very structured with drill in the way to sit and to hold a pen. Most of us learned to write using a pen with a nib dipped in ink.

The ink, by the way, was a great source of pleasure to many children with a mischievous bent. It was contained in a little pot at the top of a shared desk and was handy for those sitting in the desk directly behind the girl with the long plaits. She often found to her distress that the ends of her hair had turned blue.

"The ink could be messy,” said Pat. “But I think the nib made it easier to write properly."

Of course, with all the care and time we were able to spend on our writing, most of us found that by the time we started work or reached tertiary education and were forced to take notes, our writing often became an indecipherable scribble.

If we wanted to send letters it was also necessary to know the correct way to express ourselves.

"Letter writing forced me to learn spelling and grammar, "Leslye told us. And I found out early that if I wanted to get letters I had to write them."

Some of our group had pen pals from all over the world which, in the days before mobile phones, FaceTime, Facebook and texting, enabled some of us to get acquainted with people from other countries and cultures. These friendships were often fostered by papers and magazines.

John, who came to Australia with his family from England in the 1960s, wrote air letters back to his mother for quite a few years, telling her all about the new country.

"I've regretted ever since that I gave my brother permission to throw them out after my mother died, as it was a great source of information of how we felt and what we did at that time."

"My father-law wrote letters and kept a diary while he was on the Western Front in the First World War and it was in the most beautiful copper plate writing," Joan told us.

We all agreed that, without the letters written by our early settlers and our servicemen from the World Wars, history would be the poorer. In fact, we wondered, how much history will be recorded for posterity in emails and texts.

But when it came down to sheer heroism and determination to see that the mail got through, we had to hand it to a recent member of our group.

His wife, told the story:

"We were living on a property in Queensland in a very wet year during which we had ninety inches of rain. I had written all my letters and cards to absent friends just before Christmas and they were ready to be put in the mailbox for collection the next day. That night we had another twelve inches and woke to find we were marooned in an ocean of flood water.

“I was heavily pregnant and became quite hysterical at the thought of my mail not getting through. Desperate to calm me down, my husband who was a strong swimmer, offered to swim out across the water to put them in the box.

We wrapped the letters carefully in plastic and tied the package firmly at the top. He took it in his teeth to keep it from getting wet and plunged into the muddy brown water to swim the three kilometres to the mailbox.

“Because of the very strong current he decided to go from tree to tree but, to his horror found that each one was full snakes seeking shelter, so he was forced to go back to the safety of the house.

“The neighbours came to the rescue with a boat when the water had receded a little the next day. All the letters were delivered but our friends told us later that they wondered why there were distinct toothmarks on the envelopes."

Copyright: Helen McAnulty. June 2020