In Victoria, there are still quite a few  nineteenth century post boxes around. There’s two common types a cylindrical model with a metal crown on on top and a square design which sometimes has a separate slot for posting newspapers.

There’s one in Port Fairy that is still in use, they’re quite common in older suburbs in Melbourne and we even have a couple of decommissioned ones in Beechworth.

The Port Fairy example is obviously an early model as it is the short door type where the postie had to bend down to get the mail out, while the Beechworth examples are the more common and more ergonomic long door type.

Well, when we were stopping off in Echuca on our mad dash to Lake Tyrell, I spotted another nineteenth century short door type mail box near the Star Hotel on the steamship wharf at Echuca

which was still in use, and has had a bit of titivation with the crown being done in gold paint, but unlike the Port Fairy example, Australia Post haven’t picked out the rim in gold.

As post boxes are heavy lumps of cast iron, I’m going to guess that the box is still in its original location.

This example was made by Dangerfield and Son Ironfounders

who were advertising in the Age in the late 1870s – which is about the right date for post boxes of this design

(Dangerfield and Son advert in the Age 27/07/1878 via Trove)