Week ending 22nd June

By now you all will have received your “Dear Valued Customer” letter from the Postal Department. (Strange how it felt like “Dear John” letter.) A week from now our Postal Agency closes and we say ‘good-bye’ to an important aspect of country living. The Post Office was where people met and chatted, passed the time of day with people they hardly saw because of the different work loads and distances travelled. It was a pleasant outing, a way to keep in touch with the rest of the community. We looked forward to the walk with the dogs (and cats) as a great start to the day.
How often did we share a cup of tea and a slice of freshly cooked cake before getting back to the daily grind, or waited for the bus? I remember how impressed I was with the country Post Office atmosphere when I first arrived in Torrens Creek. It was inviting and encouraged tourists to stop for a while, before continuing their journey. Now, at the end of the month, it will be gone.
The closure does not mean the end of an Agency here, but it does mean that there is not enough time to organize a replacement in the short time we were warned of the closure. This is not due to the Postal Department but because they could not notify us until they had the official letter from the present Agent, so the A/Area Operations Manager Retail North QLD informed me.
Do we need a Postal Agency in Torrens Creek? What does it mean to you?
In a time where there is so much centralization of services maybe we do need the personalized service of a local agent. Having had some small contact with the 131318 number provided for contact(?) to all Post Offices, not Agencies, I learned of the pitfalls of doing business with ‘customer service’. The first surprise was that they weren’t allowed to give me the phone number for Charters Towers Post Office. So I had a very confused and difficult three way conversation with CT, the service consultant acting as go-between. It does not make for easy, truthful, reporting but it was a learning experience.
Another interesting lesson carries on from last week’s grizzle about the internet. After waiting for a reply to my phone call regarding the service. I rang and asked for the manager and, when, finally, I spoke to him was told that they were going to try and increase the power for me from Cairns. He also said that it was not necessary to send my modem away to Perth as they would send a tech. from there if it was needed. I haven’t had any trouble with the net since. Pays to go to the top, sometimes.