Before 1901, Australia was composed of the seperate colonies of Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, South Australia, Western Australia, QLD and even New Zealand was considered an early candidate for inclusion in the Australia Federal parliament.
States had strictly defined borders and intense competition between them. Each placed tarriffs on anything moving over state boundaries.
Each state had their own postage service and stamps and relied on the postal service in another state to charge extra for delivery.
The linking of the NSW Victorian railway at Albury has been cited as one cause of unification of the states into the country of Australia. The states were not able to agree on a common railway gauge, but the joining of the tracks at Albury station was a celebrated event. Travelling from NSW to Victoria, you had to stop at the NSW/Vistoria border town of Albury and change from one side of the long platform standard gauge 4ft 8 inch (Stephenson gauge) NSW trains to the other broad gauge Victorian trains of 5 ft 3 inches.
The border town at Albury has one of the longest train platforms in the Southern Hemisphere.
Australia became a Commonwealth by an Enabling Act of the British Parliament in 1901, but the state stamps were still used until 1913. The republican movement argued that the Queen should not be on our stamps, so
the first national Australian stamps released were the Kangaroo series. ( Half penny, one penny and two shillings depicted below ). Two shillings would have been enough to post a large weight. When the more conservative Cook government was elected by 1914, they introduced the King George V series.
The Kangaroo series was in use for 34 years and the King George V series was used for 23 years.
Government departments such as the railways often perforated stamps for Official use with "OS"
Despite the rise of emails used to communicate, traditional hardcopy snail mail as it is now called, is still used for most official correspondence, but it does not appear that Postage services have progressed very well into the digital age. This test below is a W3C validity and accessibility test, to check how well formed the Australia Post site is and how well a blind person with only keyboard access would be able to access the service.
It is mandatory in Australia to comply with the 1992 disability Discrimination Act for online services. The Australia Post site fails to comply.
It does not appear that Australia Post has moved too well into the digital age. Their website has improved over the last year, but it has open ended tags and uses tables to layout the page, not a single heading or paragraph tag is used. Javascript is embedded in the page. A public resource that is inaccessible to many visually impaired Australians.
The British Royal Mail site is no better. Other Australian web reviews, Australian University sites.
Common errors in websites
Why was the journey to Australia by sailing ship called the "tyrrany of distance".
What is the relative total land area of Australia compared to America?
What is the distance between Melbourne and Sydney?
How long did the train trip take with a change over at Albury station?
How long was the platform at Albury station?
Before 1901, Australia was composed of the seperate colonies of Tasmania, Victoria, NSW, South Australia, Western Australia, QLD and even New Zealand was considered an early candidate for inclusion in the Australia Federal parliament.
States had strictly defined borders and intense competition between them. Each placed tarriffs on anything moving over state boundaries.
Each state had their own postage service and stamps and relied on the postal service in another state to charge extra for delivery.
