Mel and Mike’s new hobbies while keeping mail running

History of this pandemic should not forget the local heroes who have kept our services and society running through the toughest of times.

 Spring Hill post office and store is one of those small businesses that is finally looking to our post-COVID future and doing what they do best, providing a small local community with their essential needs.

 Owners Mel Snell and Mike Gee found during the past 18-months reservoirs of strength and stamina that has kept their business afloat.

 “We’re the licencees and also the mail contractors, we’ve been here for six years in June,” Mel said of the post office, local store, and takeaway food outlet which is known as “Bella’s” (after their pet cockatoo).

 “It’s been harder than if we were just the mail service, we’re a mixed business and, when it all went pear-shaped last year, no-one knew what was going on,” Mike added.

 To protect the local community from the possibility of out-of-town infection, they made the painful decision to close their take-away business all-together.

 “We couldn’t have anyone going in the shop as it was so, rather than having people picking-up orders at the door, we closed the take-away as a way of keeping people out of town,” Mike explained.

 “A lot of our customers are out-of-towners from Orange, Bathurst, Blayney, and we couldn’t risk them bringing the infection here.”

 With no home postal service in the tiny village, locals traditionally drop in once or twice a week to pick-up their mail, making the post-office a hot-spot for any possible infections in the community.

 “Our village does have a lot of old people who come here on a regular basis,” Mike added.

 “Locals came-in and got their mail handed to them at the door, they came up to the widow and passed it through,” Mel explained.

 Last year’s near two-month closure had a huge impact on their turnover, they said. “For seven weeks last year from mid-March until May 5, our business decline was huge,” Mike said.

 “We’ve been down 55 per cent this year, so you can imagine what last year was like,” Mel said.

 “This year we have gone down to only three hours a day during the lockdown, and we just totally shut the kitchen,” she added.

 While many people have discerned great insights into human nature from this once-in-a-century social experiment, Mike has made more prosaic observations: “Yeah, the only thing I’ve learnt, is that, as soon as someone panics, people buy toilet paper,” he says only half-jokingly.

 Mel said that the varying levels of compassion in the community was her greatest surprise.

“When we first shut the shop, some people were ringing and saying ‘how are you? Can we help?’ others were just saying ‘how are we going to get our mail now?’. there was a huge range of responses in the village,” Mel said.

 The lockdown though, had provided an opportunity to rediscover aspects of her life that she had lost touch with while doing 50-hour weeks running a small business.

  “It gave me a chance to get back to myself… it was a nice mental break from the kitchen and gave us the chance to catch-up on ‘us’; to touch-base in ways that you can’t do running a post office and shop and all the responsibilities that entails.

 “You’re 24/7 thinking about the shop, and it was a nice release. For me, this meant doing flower arrangements and I’ve now sold about $1000 worth during the last lockdown so that is great,” Mel said.

 Mike’s interests though took a decidedly more high-tech bent. “I thought, I didn’t know how long we’re locking down for, and I was always interested in 3-D (three-dimensional) printing and the unit actually came today,” he said excitedly.

 “I’ve tried it out and printed a little phone amplifier and a whistle, which is really loud,” he added proudly.

 Like most post offices, the stay-home lockdowns matched with online buying trends has seen a steady increase in parcel pickups at the store from locals wary of venturing-out.

 “When COVID first hit, parcels did go up and they’ve stayed pretty steady right through last Christmas to now, it’s stayed pretty constant,” Mike said.

 “I think it’s ‘I don’t want to go into town to shop’, people appear to be scared of going shopping,” he added.

 Asked whether the ups-and-downs of the past two years has uncovered coping skills and strengths he never realised, he answered in the negative. “No, I’m pretty resilient, I always knew that,” he concluded.