Provided It Has Been Clearly Stated Which Jones Is Meant The
Department Will See To The Rest, Although It Is
Wise to add Northern
Territory for the guidance of Post Offices "Down South." "Jones
travelling with cattle for Wave Will,
" Reads the Department; and that
gossiping friendly wire reporting Jones as "just leaving the Powell," the
letter lies in the Fizzer's loose-bag until he runs into Jones's mob; or
a mail coming in for Jones, Victoria River, when this Jones is on the
point of sailing for a trip south, his mail is delivered on shipboard;
and as the Department goes on with its work, letters for east go west,
and for west go south - in mail-bags, loose-bags, travellers' pockets or
per black boy - each one direct to the bush-folk as a migrating bird to
its destination.
But, painstaking as our Department is with our mailmatter, it excels
itself in its handling of telegrams. Southern red tape has decreed - no
doubt wisely as far as it goes - that telegrams shall travel by official
persons only; but out-bush official persons are few, and apt to be on
duty elsewhere when important telegrams arrive; and it is then that our
Department draws largely on that surplus supply of common sense.
Always deferential to the South, it obediently pigeon-holes the telegram,
to await some official person, then, knowing that a delay of weeks will
probably convert it into so much waste paper, it writes a "duplicate,"
and goes outside to send it "bush" by the first traveller it can find.
If no traveller is at hand, the "Line" is "called up" and asked if any
one is going in the desired direction from elsewhere; if so, the
"duplicate" is repeated "down the line," but if not, a traveller is
created in the person of a black boy by means of a bribing stick of
tobacco. No extra charge, of course. Nothing IS an extra in the
Territory. "Nothing to do with the Department," says the chief; "merely
the personal courtesy of our officers." May it be many a long day before
the forgotten shipment of red tape finds its way to the Territory to
strangle the courtesy of our officers!
Nothing finds itself outside this courtesy. The Fizzer brings in great
piles of mail-matter, unweighed and unstamped, with many of the envelopes
bursting or, at times, in place of an envelope, a request for one; and
"our officers," getting to work with their "courtesy," soon put all in
order, not disdaining even the licking of stamps or the patching or
renewing of envelopes. Letters and packets are weighed, stamped, and
repaired - often readdressed where addresses for South are blurred; stamps
are supplied for outgoing mail-matter and telegrams; postage-dues and
duties paid on all incoming letters and parcels - in fact, nothing is left
for us to do but to pay expenses incurred when the account is rendered at
the end of each six months. No doubt our Department would also read and
write our letters for us if we wished it, as it does, at times, for the
untutored.
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