1901—Federation of the six Australian colonies led to the amalgamation of the six colonial postal administrations to become the Postmaster-General’s Department to administer postal matters, telegraphs and telephones in a single national system.
1913—The first Australian stamps for nationwide use were issued in early 1913 featuring a kangaroo in a map of Australia, bringing an end to the use of separate stamps for each state.
1914—Australia’s first domestic airmail was carried between Melbourne and Sydney by French aviator, Maurice Guillaux, in the first aircraft to fly between the two cities. The Post Office agreed to co-operate with Guillaux on the understanding “that it shared no responsibility for the safe arrival of the mail.”
1919—The first overseas airmail to reach Australia was carried by Ross and Keith Smith flying a Vickers Vimy bomber from London to Darwin and winning the England—Australia air race.
1921—The first regular airmail service in Australia was operated by West Australian Airlines along the north-west coastline of Western Australia. The following year, Qantas commenced its regular airmail service across inland Queensland. Mail that had previously taken weeks to travel by surface transport could now be delivered in days.
1924—The Cobb & Co coach carrying mail between Yuleba and Surat, Queensland, had its final run after an era lasting 70 years.
1930—Mechanical mail handling was introduced at Sydney Mail Exchange, the first of its kind in the world.
1931—Three experimental airmail flights between Australia and England were staged with famed aviator Charles Kingsford Smith flying some of the journey’s legs. In December 1934, a regular airmail service commenced with Qantas flying the mail to Singapore for onward air carriage by Imperial Airways (later British Airways) to London.
1938—Coin-operated stamp vending machines were installed outside major Post Offices for after hours use by the public.
1939—1945 — World War II resulted in the first large scale intake of female posties and employees; exchange of prisoner-of-war mail through neutral countries and the introduction of light-weight aerogrammes to conserve scarce cargo space on aircraft.
1945 — A total of 1.15 billion postal articles were handled.
1954 — The telex was introduced, a form of telegraphy with printed messages sent and received by telex machine.
1955 — The first mechanised plant for handling parcels was established at the Melbourne Mail Exchange using machinery developed within the Post Office.
1956 — The Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games involved a network of temporary post offices being operated at competition venues and the Olympic Villages in Melbourne and Ballarat. Also, Australia’s first multicolour stamps were issued for the Olympic Games.
1957 — Christmas stamps were issued for the first time in Australia, which were the first Christmas stamps in the world to be issued regularly each year.
1962 — The first automatic postal station was installed in Melbourne. Traditional navy-blue Post Office uniforms were replaced by a new uniform made from a smooth finished, grey worsted manufactured to specifications prepared by the Australian Wool Testing Authority.
1966 — Decimal currency introduced involving the replacement of pounds, shillings and pence currency by dollars and cents. All aspects of business activity were changed by the overnight changeover on 14 February.
1967 — Postcodes were introduced, with four-digit numbers allocated to every mail delivery area across Australia. A giant new $6 million mail exchange building at Redfern in Sydney. The new electronic equipment and technology attracted worldwide interest.
1968 — Within a year, 75 per cent of mail was being posted using postcodes in the addresses. Post Office Preferred sized envelopes were introduced for more efficient mail handling.
1970 — Priority Paid mail service was introduced.
1971 — Surface Air Lifted (SAL) service was introduced, providing an intermediate service between airmail and sea mail.
1972 — Melbourne Mail Exchange operated the first electronic letter preparation line machines, capable of processing up to 25,000 letters per hour.
1973 — Metric weights and measures were introduced at post offices to replace Imperial units.
1975 — The Postmaster-General’s Department was split into two government trading commissions — Australia Post and Telecom Australia (now Telstra). Freepost was introduced for business customers, allowing people to reply post-free to advertisements with postage paid by the business/addressee on delivery. The largest single mailing in Australia’s history was completed when 9.8 million individually-addressed cards concerning Medibank were despatched. Concessional postage for Christmas greeting cards was introduced.
1976 — Australia Post Courier was launched nationally, with a fleet of about 100 small, radio-controlled vans.
1983 — The new Canberra GPO was opened, the first since 1905 to be built without a clock tower. Passport applications began to be accepted at post offices on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
1989 — Legislation was passed establishing Australia Post as a Government Business Enterprise — a corporation with a board of directors operating as a commercial business enterprise.
1990 — Australian self-adhesive stamps were issued for the first time as an experimental product for small businesses, but quickly gained wide acceptance and took over from gummed stamps as the public’s preferred choice.
1991 — Express Post was introduced, offering guaranteed next-business-day delivery within the Express Post network.
1995 — Australia Post launched giroPost (now Bank@Post) to deliver banking services at participating Post Offices, including deposits, withdrawals, account balance enquiries, acceptance of new account applications and payment of credit card bills.
1996 — Australia Post launched its official website.
1997 — The second largest mailout in Australian history occurred with more than 12 million voting packages were despatched for the Constitutional Convention. Sir Donald Bradman became the first living Australian to be honoured on stamps in the inaugural Living Legends Award.
1999 — Barcoded mail was introduced. The world’s first personalised stamps were launched at World Stamp Expo in Melbourne, allowing the public to have their photographs digitally printed on a tab attached to the stamp. Australia’s largest mailout at the time involved 12.5 million pamphlets explaining the Republic referendum.
