... the regular mail runs

The trip out to meet the mailman on his regular run was one of the great civilising factors of life on a remote outback property. Along with letters came the backlog of the latest news via the magazines and newspapers you may have subscribed too.

Delivering this service was one of the earliest pivotal roles of government and the need to create a mail hub in south west Queensland was fundamental to the creation of Cunnamulla as a town in 1867.

This was hard country to run a mail route through however. Even as late as 1949 in an article in Walkabout on Australia's outback mail services they described about the country around Cunnamulla and Tharmogindah as having:

Some of the most difficult mail routes in Queensland. Some of them include sandhill country and flooded creeks disorganise the services for intervals during the wet season of two to three months each year.

This photo from the 1920s shows the mail being ferried across the flooded Paroo River at Eulo.

While floods and gluepot roads continued to pose a challenge for the mail service throughout the 20th century, these risks were nothing like those faced by the first operators on the Cunnamulla mail runs. In 1868 the mail into town came up from Bourke and as one newspaper report described it:

There are sixty miles without water with the waterless, deserted Belalie situated exactly midway in this arid stretch. The Queensland and NSW mailmen meet there, sort the road mail and exchange bags. They then hurry back, each thirty miles, to reach water for the night's camp.

Similar problems were experienced on the Cunnamulla - St George run after this road was built in 1872. The only water on a 90 mile stretch of road was two small pea soup sized waterholes.

As the Brisbane Courier reported in March 1874:

“The contract for the mail service between Cunnamulla and St George has not been carried out, probably owing to the absence of water in the early part of the year.”

... hitching a ride

As the era of Cobb and Co coach services came to an end in the 1920s and motor vehicles took over the carriage of the mail, travellers were left with a major problem when it came to getting around the outback. In this space was left to the mail van to step up and fill this void as best it could. The photo below shows Cunnaumlla to Tharmogindah mail truck loaded to the rooftop with passengers, luggage and mail in the 1920s.