It's Wednesday so that means it is Mailboat day!

 

It's the season for wishing friends and family health and happiness, especially for the upcoming year. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the first Christmas card was sent  in Great Britain by Henry Cole in 1843. It took several decades for this to become an annual, commercial activity in Great Britain and the USA, where "the holidays" now include not just Christmas. In Picton (New Zealand) the first post office was built in 1861 and to quote The Prow, by 1888 there was still no regular mail service to Endeavour Inlet. After protesting from locals, by 1892 there was finally a weekly service. These days there are two deliveries a week - on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.

Mail delivery within countries and across the world has been impacted by COVID-19 and logistical challenges. We are grateful that our twice-a-week mailboat service has continued uninterrupted. There isn't always much in the mailbag when it comes, but it is a treat and a simple pleasure to see the mailboat come to our jetty on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The tourists on board seem to enjoy the trip and engaging with the locals (that's us!) and we know our neighbour’s dogs is pleased with the biscuit (cookie) treat that the boat skipper always brings.

We have two cloth mail bags. (They remind me of sacks we used for sack races as a child.) One goes into town on Wednesday and comes back to us on Saturday. The other bag does the opposite. So, that means we swap an empty bag for a maybe-full one each time the mailboat comes. The bag we give to the mailboat goes to the post-office in town. The bag we give is sometimes empty, but if we have a letter to post, it goes in the bag with stamps on. That bag comes back to us a few days later, sometimes with mail for us in it, and is swapped for the other bag. And so it goes on. The mailboat also brings our groceries in boxes (A large grocery shop is a physical workout to get up the QC Track and the steps to The Bluewater Lodge!).

 

"Sounds mail" is slower than "snail mail" or "email", but is certainly very memorable! I don't have any stamps this week, and won't get any until we are in town again which will probably be next year, but if you receive paper mail from us at any point know that a lot has gone into sending it from here!

Meanwhile, we send Season's Greetings to everyone!

Feel free to add comments below.

~Debbie