In quite a few places in Victoria you can come across old colonial post boxes – sometimes even still in use as in the early example I spotted in Port Fairy.

Well, Beechworth we don’t have any old pattern boxes still in use – but we still have two old pattern boxes, one in Mellish St, and another at the end of Malakoff Road.

As in Mellish St, the postie no longer calls but it’s still there as a historic object:

essentially a standard colonial long door format box with the clenched fist boss on the handle for the postie to open the box to get the mail …