Wallingford Jan. 15th, 1868 My dear McLean, I have been making some enquiry about theway the mail service is conducted for which we pay Cobb and Co. and find it is most unsatisfactory -- there is a great deal of talk about it and very properly. The fault lies with the Post office not with the Coach. The facts are these. We pay Cobb and Co. to run and carry a mail twice a week to Waipawa and once to Porangahau. The Coach carries 'a mail' made up at the Post Office, and called a mail, once a week, i.e. on Tuesday, and carries it to Waipawa -- The second weekly service to Waipawa no regular mail is carried, a bag for loose letters is taken by the Coach, the reason given is that the Post Office have no instructions from the Post Master Genl. to make up a second bag. That is the Waipawa grievance in a few words -- no mail is carried for which any one is responsible on the second trip of the coach altho the Province pays for it -- Now for the Porangahau service. The mail comes to Waipawa on Tuesday by the coach. On Wednesday the coach runs on to Porangahau. But the Post Office manage so, that the Maori mail bag also leaves Waipawa on Wednesday for Porangahau -- so that the Coach and the mail bag, both paid subsidies to carry the mail -- run on the same day -- The Coach running on Wednesday and returning on Thursday suits the settlers best. The Maori boy so long as he is retained and paid to carry the second weekly mail, she. carry the mail on different days to the Coach -- say he left Waipawa on Monday with the Porangahau mail and returned on Tuesday -- I think I have shewn you that the whole service wants looking after -- we shall hear plenty of it next Council. Yours truly, J.D. Ormond