2.0 HISTORY the 168-Year History of Town Acre 237 and the Adelaide
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2.0 HISTORY The 168-year history of Town Acre 237 and the Adelaide GPO has been well documented in previous publications and reports. The following information is taken largely from the Adelaide GPO Conservation Management Plan by Bruce Harry and Associates, written in 2007.3 It has been edited as part of this report to focus on the subject site, being the remaining Commonwealth-owned portion of the site. 2.1 Historical Analysis 2.1.1 Historical Context The postal service had its origins in the dispatch riders and state couriers of ancient Persia and Rome, and made its first significant advancements in France under Louis XI (1423-83), later remodeled on modem lines by Napoleon, early in the 19th Century. In England, private posts existed from the time of Edward III (1312-77) and the first ‘Master of the Posts’ was appointed around 1512. A General Post Office (GPO) for Britain and the British territories abroad was first set up in London in 1710, under the control of a ‘Postmaster-General’. A mail coach dispatch system was begun in England in 1784 but died out entirely in the 1830s with the advent of railways. The penny postage and adhesive postage stamp was developed in England in 1840, before which there were no stamps, postage being paid in money at either the point of issue or receipt, the rate varying with distance and weight. This was the history and system of postal services imported into the new Colony of South Australia in the late 1830s - early 1840s, where the first Post Office Act was passed in 1838 and postal services were run out of other buildings for many years thereafter. It was not until 1872 that the first stand alone central GPO was completed in Adelaide, and by that time, new and different means of communication had already emerged in England and America, and begun to arrive in Australia, which would initially compete with, and eventually supersede, many of the functions of the Colonial postal service (e.g. the telegraph line, telephone, radio communication and, more recently, the internet). These technological innovations would eventually have a profound impact on the post office as a symbol of communication and community gathering place, and this is evident today in the reduced number of post offices in the metropolitan areas of most cities, and the progressive decline and decommissioning of capital city GPOs, such as has happened in Sydney and Melbourne. After nearly 120 years as the centre for and controller of local, national and worldwide communications, and a visual icon of town centre activity, the post office has now lost its traditional role and place in the community, who look increasingly to modem electronic, instantaneous means of communication. The local and overseas telegraph service, which evolved within the Adelaide GPO between 1855 and 1931, was superseded by radio (wireless) communication and lost to the post office as a commercial technology and service. The telephone service, which also evolved within the Adelaide GPO between 1880 and 1906 and rapidly outgrew the postal service, had by 1975 been removed from post office control and established as a separate communications entity in its own right. Today, Australia's post offices are once again focused principally on the letter as a means of communication, reclaiming their original historical purpose. In this long cycle of growth in our systems of communication, the Adelaide GPO reached its zenith as a civic symbol and social centre in the period between 1901-1920, which coincided with the Federation of the colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia, the transfer of postal, telegraph and telephone LOVELL CHEN 7 ADELAIDE GENERAL POST OFFICE services to the control of the Commonwealth, and the retirement of Sir Charles Todd, SA Postmaster- General after thirty six years of entrepreneurial development of South Australia's communication services, and civic achievement. These coincidental events underscored rather than established this period as the GPO's highest and best development as a colonial civic service. Interestingly, Todd's retirement came at the same moment the rapidly evolving telephone service was signaling its emergence as a new and powerful entity within the postal service (shortly to be established as a separate Branch, and to move into its own premises, detached from the GPO Building) and not long before the beginning of a long period of stagnation in postal services under Commonwealth control, attributable to the onset of economic depression and World War 2. Between 1872-1907, all of the functions and alternative means of communication were contained within the Adelaide GPO building. In 1907, the telephone service moved for the first time into its own, detached building west of the GPO building in Franklin Street, designed and detailed using a different architectural style from the GPO to visually distinguish its role and function. Planned and designed by the South Australian Government Architect before Todd's retirement, this clearly was a deliberate decision, no doubt influenced also by the two decades of constrained economic conditions in South Australia, which preceded it. Thereafter, the alterations and substantial further additions to the Adelaide GPO, undertaken by the Commonwealth in the 1920s, were carried out in unrelated, often unsympathetic architectural style(s), further dissipating the architectural unity of its 19th Century composition and integrity. 2.1.2 Early Postal Services Following the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 there was no proper established service for delivery of mail in the new colony of New South Wales until 1803 when the boatmen plying between Sydney and Parramatta were permitted to charge for carrying mail. In 1809 the Sydney Gazette reported fraudulent activity in collection of mail from ships. The Lieutenant Governor established an office for deposit and dispatch of mail and the charges he could make at the home of Mr Isaac Nichols at George Street (near Circular Quay), effectively the first post office. Governor Macquarie appointed John Beaumont as first postmaster in Hobart in 1812. It was not until 1825 that the first NSW Postage Act was passed, and further post offices were established in Sydney and other areas. In the Port Phillip District John Batman looked after the mails of Melbourne until the first official postmaster E J Foster, was appointed in 1837. Overland mails between Sydney and Melbourne were carried by coach and pack horses from 1838. Adelaide's first post office was established in the general storekeeper's temporary hut on the bank of the River Torrens in April 1837, four months after the establishment of the colony (Figure 5). Governor Hindmarsh appointed Mr Thomas Gilbert as Postmaster. The mails were received at his residence from where they were sorted and delivered. In July 1838 the post office was transferred briefly to Gillies Arcade in Currie Street, before moving again in December 1838 to the residence of Lt. Henry Watts (Figure 6), the newly appointed Postmaster General, in the south-east corner of King William Street and North Terrace on Town Acre 17 (Figure 7). Watts employed a clerk, who also acted as messenger. Watts' brother, Captain John Watts, was appointed Postmaster General in 1841 and the post office moved to the opposite corner of King William Street in July 1848 in the Gresham Hotel (Figure 8). 8 LOVELL CHEN HISTORY Figure 5 Drawing of the first Post Office, T S Gill c. 1850 Source: National Library of Australia Figure 6 Captain John Watts, 1861. Postmaster General from 1841 to 1861 Source: State Library of South Australia LOVELL CHEN 9 ADELAIDE GENERAL POST OFFICE Figure 7 View of North Terrace – Henry Watts’ residence on corner, location of second Post Office, c.1866 Source: State Library of South Australia Figure 8 Gresham Hotel, site of third Post Office, 1867 Source: State Library of South Australia 10 LOVELL CHEN HISTORY The first South Australian Post Office Act was passed in 1839, fixing the rates for postage, and the first ‘letter carrier’ was appointed the same year. The earliest mail deliveries to country places were carried by the Police to Willunga and Encounter Bay. Mail between the colonies was carried first by pack horse, but later the great gold discoveries brought the era of the Cobb and Co. coaching services, who became the official carriers of the mails. A delivery was established to Mount Gambier in 1846 so a fortnightly overland mail service to Melbourne and Sydney was in place. As the railway systems were established they were used for mail transport as well. Another Post Office Act was passed in 1841, with new rates for inland letters established according to the distance rather than weight, and postage on newspapers was abolished. A uniform Australia-wide postage rate was agreed upon by all the colonies in 1849. J W Lewis, who had been Deputy Postmaster since 1857, was appointed Postmaster General in 1861, a position he held until 1869 (Figure 9). He was replaced by Charles Todd in 1870, who had been brought out from England in 1855 to establish a telegraph service in South Australia, as well as fulfilling the post of Government Astronomer until he retired in 1906. It was during Todd's time as Postmaster General that some of the great developments in postal, telegraph and telephone services took place. Letter-pillars (street post boxes) were first introduced in Adelaide in 1861, six being erected in the city and four in North Adelaide. 2.1.3 Overseas Postal Services From the outset, written communication with the United Kingdom was of supreme importance to the Colonial governments as well as the early settlers. A regular monthly steamship service with England was established by 1852 with the first steamer, the Australian arriving in August, but the contract was terminated soon after the company failed.