A postcard from the 1940s depicting the old Wagga Post Office on top of the hill in Fitzmaurice St. Photo: Wagga Wagga and District Historical Society.
If you are not a follower of Wagga’s fabulous social media history pages you are missing out on an amazing flow of images and recollections from back in the day.
Peg Westcott is a frequent contributor to Lost Wagga Wagga on Facebook and has recently uploaded a string of comparison images of Wagga’s streets and buildings from ‘then and now’ that are great fun to see.
Ms Westcott’s side-by-side images of the old Wagga Wagga Post Office today and in the 1950s and her comment that she has “always liked this building” reminded me of the fact that this 136-year-old building was not always viewed so favourably.
Peg Westcott’s “Now and then” comparison of the old Wagga Post Office today and in the 1950s. Photos: Views of Wagga and Wagga Library Archives.
Wagga’s first post office was established on 1 January 1849, with Frederick Thompson appointed as postmaster.
Irishman Thomas William Hamilton Dee took up the role as postmaster in 1884 and two years later land was allocated and plans were laid for a new, modern post office.
The new building was constructed on top of the hill in Fitzmaurice Street alongside the Wesleyan Methodist Church that once stood on the corner of Johnston Street.
Following its opening on 6 August 1888, the editor of the Wagga Wagga Advertiser delivered a scathing review.
Under the headline, “A Government Job”, he began by declaring that the important provincial town of Wagga Wagga had been “shamefully neglected” in the “distribution of government expenditure”.
After a tour of the new facility, he bemoaned the “the cheap and nasty character of this building” when viewed from the outside and extended that criticism to the interior.
“The general arrangements for the officials and the public are most unsatisfactory, and, as a whole, the structure is in no sense worthy of a town of the size and importance of Wagga,” the editor complained.
He was unhappy with the size of various rooms, the lack of an external delivery window, the positioning of the counter and a general “absence of taste and good judgment”.
“From whatever point of view regarded the new post office appears to be a government ‘job’ of a very decided, not to say characteristic, sort.
“It would really seem that the town of Wagga is unfortunate enough to continually miss the favor of that court interest – otherwise political influence – which has done so much for other towns without greater, and in some instances with far less, claims to consideration.”
The building, so hated by the Advertiser editor, remained in use as the city’s primary post office for more than a century before being relocated to Best Place on the corner of Baylis and Morrow streets in 1993 and then on to its current location in Wagga Wagga Marketplace in 1996.
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