HIS MAJESTY’S MAIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 394, 30 June 1928, Page 24

HIS MAJESTY’S MAIL

New Zealand’s Far-Flung Rural Delivery Services

Written for THE SIX by A. A’. KRE Us

B— > Y car and cycle, by horse and foot, they come A. and go—the young m<». ip! the middle-aged men, |j ■; nearly all merry men, who carry his Majesty's mails. Over the thronged streets of cities, along the highways and byways of the open country, through forest and across mountain and river and lake the far-flung net of the postal service is spread. The average person seems to con sider the collection and distribution of the mails as a prosaic, matter-of-fact. business; but for those who stop to look beneath the surface of things there is pulsing romance and something of mystery. There comes a realisation of the wide-spreading arms of an organisation that has become part of the life-stream of humftnity: there is the marvel of a community-owned utility that pushes its usefulness into the throbbing arteries of populated centres, to isolated inland settlements. and far-away seaboard hamlets. Very few—and very isolated indeed —are those places to which the mails are not delivered.

We are familiar to the point of indifference with the neatly-uniformed men who carry out, in the cities and towns, this work for his Majesty the King: but most of us ara not so familiar with that other class of postman who wears no uniform —unless it be clothes best suited to rough and hard usage—who carries the mails on the rural routes that penetrate every district, and reach to nearly all of the remotest settlements. In the main they are quiet, unassuming men, these, and they do their job honestly and well: often in the worst of weathers, and over the worst of roads —sometimes even at considerable personal danger. They carry, also, a smiling face and

a word of cheer to settlers way 00 - back. ’ in whose lives the daily, 0 r b ; weekly, or perhaps only weekly vu* of ' The Mailman.” is something’to J looked forward to. Perhaps he brin papers and letters from Home- J? sibly only curt reminders o' •'•voS that are difficult to meet Yet comings and his goings heln these far-back settlers with''a big brighter world. a bl SS*r, The rural deliveries are usuallv cured by tender, and operate in £ form of a contract between the a partment and the successful temt„ The man himself decides aßesaltation with the authorities wh* form of conveyance he wi’l ng l , 1 the better-roaded areas rr or' trW port is almost universal, the maiim! often combining a passenger v ith his postal business. This i usually a lucrative undertaking, though often entailing a severe strain on th. car timer. In the Kiwitea count? north of 1 eliding, there is a ItmT Mail car doing a daily run of ov~ 130 miles, over some of the most d. 7 gerous cliff roads in the North Island And one man does all ,he rfririS

The horse-drawn vehicle is not to any great extent, nowadays, hut m the “bush districts” the horse itself is, in many cases, the only possible raeaii of locomotion. In such places, during the winter months, the work is strenuous in the extreme. Not infre. quently it is possible to see the rural mailman ride away from the town post office early in the day, and return lat« in the afternoon, both he and hw horse weary and mud-splashed from the roads they have been forced te battle over. Yet they seldom fail —these resolute rural postmen. His Majesty’s mails must go through, and if it is humanly possible the mailmen see that they da