Grand presence awaits decision
GEELONG’S grand old post office on the corner of Ryrie and Gheringhap streets has been in the news lately with City Hall continuing to delay a decision on whether to sell the building.
Discussion on the subject was deferred at the previous council meeting and was to have been held at last week’s meeting but the motion was not included on the agenda.
The old post office has sat vacant since last year, but those behind a petition hoping to retain the property in public hands see a number of possible uses for the building.
The current post office building, which was opened in 1891, is the second post office on the same site.
A contract for a singlestorey building on the site was awarded in 1855, with the building opening in 1857.
Postal services in Geelong had relatively humble beginnings compared with the grand building.
The town’s first post office was simply a small area of a store in Barwon Tce, with the shopkeeper acting as postmaster.
Several other shopkeepers filled the role until August 1842, when the Geelong Advertiser office, then in Yarra St overlooking the bay, became the post office and the founding editor, James Harrison, the postmaster.
William Thacker became the postmaster in 1848, and with a letter carrier on his staff, the first postal deliveries were made. The first stone building on the corner of Gheringhap and Ryrie soon followed in 1857, and the current building was opened in 1891. But the post office was to be without a clock for 20 years.
Provision had been made for the four clock faces, but the four clock oriels were simply boarded up. This eyesore remained for 20 years, until the Geelong Advertiser took up the question of a suitable memorial to King Edward VII, who had died in 1910.
Another movement had called for the establishment of a sailors’ rest as a memorial to the late monarch. As it turned out Geelong got both, with the clock along with bells installed in 1911 and the sailors’ rest opened the following year. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com