Posting the nation: Australia’s apprenticeship in letter writing

Abstract

A national postal service is an essential nation-building institution; it integrates distant regions into a national community and fosters the extension of the public sphere. But in the first decades of colonial Australia, the material conditions of sending letters were precarious and uncertain, the rhythm of exchange was slow and the cost expensive. Australia had to learn how to write letters and how to send them; by the 1890s, it had completed its apprenticeship. Using postmaster-generals’ reports on one hand, and autobiographical sources on the other, I explore the experience and difficulties of epistolary exchanges in the nineteenth century.