on the job

TIM JACKSON IS A POSTMAN IN A COUNTRY TOWN.

I was working in Melbourne doing pool and spa leak detection – plumbing kind of stuff – but had a kid and decided it was time to move back to my hometown in the country. The town is pretty small, and I couldn’t transfer what I was doing into the country lifestyle very easily. But my parents used to own the post office, so being a postman was something I could do full-time.

Typically, I start around 7am, sorting the mail and parcels and that sort of stuff. On a Monday, it’s a lot busier, because you get two to three days’ worth of mail in one hit. (And even more when there’s a public holiday.) Once it’s all sorted – hopefully by about 10am – delivery starts. Depending on the day and how much mail there is, I’m done any time between 1pm and 4pm. Three days a week, I deliver mail to all the farms and stations on the outskirts of town, using a ute because it’s 160 kilometres away. It can be a little bit lonely sitting in the car on my own for three hours, but podcasts and music are handy – it’s my time to switch off.

It’s great having very flexible hours – as long as the mail is delivered by 5pm every day, it doesn’t really matter what time I do it. Having a family, that really appeals to me. I get to come home for lunch every now and then, and spend time with my kid before I go back to work. I’m the only postie in town, so if I have a day off or something, my dad will get on the bike and do it instead.

To become a postman, you need a police check and a motorbike and driver’s licence. Driving around is pretty much 80 per cent of the job. Apart from that, you need to work out if you’re cut out for it or not. It’s pretty repetitive, and that can make it mentally draining at times – there’s not a lot of problem-solving or critical thinking involved. The weather can be a bit of a challenge, too. If you get a bit of rain it’s slippery on the bikes, and temperatures can drop below zero here. I’ve got a good jacket that keeps me fairly warm, but your hands get pretty cold.

After a few months in this job, I pretty much knew everyone

I was delivering mail to. I’m not sure if that would happen so much in the city. I’ve had a few people complain, saying, “Can you not drive on my lawn?”, but their mailbox is in the middle of the lawn, so what do they want me to do? If I got off and walked every time, nothing would ever get delivered. Generally, people are quite friendly, though. Living in such a small town, there’s a lot of old people – they get lots of mail because they aren’t up-to-date with technology. The mail has definitely been scaled back because of email, but with online shopping on the rise, parcels are the new thing.

The whole idea of ‘going postal’ is a misconception, I think, but you do get animosity from dogs. Mostly it’s little dogs yapping at you, but I’ve been nipped at by a big mastiff, and actually got bitten once. I was delivering a parcel and the dog flipped out and bit me. Luckily, I was wearing reasonably protective gear – the motorbike is pretty fast, too, so you can usually get away.

People are a little surprised when I tell them what I do. It would be nice to see a few more young posties around. The best thing is when you’re delivering a parcel for a little kid or something like that. They get excited when they open the door, it’s a lot of fun.