Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the E-Post logo to introduce an Australia Post news release about the introduction of a state-of-the-art postal service that used computers to speed up the delivery of messages. The new service is explained using footage that includes electronic hardware, an express courier, a suburban map and a postal worker putting a letter into a mailbox. A voice-over continues throughout, describing and explaining the processes and formats of the new service.

Educational value points

• This news release promotes the new E-Post service that was launched in 1985. It captures a moment in telecommunications history, as prior to the introduction of the E-Post service only businesses had ready access to email and fax, while the general public relied on hand-delivered letters and telegrams. Although the voice-over of the release emphasises the speed and convenience of E-Post, further expansion of the service, which connected all post offices and agencies to the Internet, took place as recently as 1995-96.

• As the clip shows, individual customers could take a handwritten message to selected post offices and have it prepared for electronic transmission by a postal worker. The message was typed up, sent electronically to the nearest delivery centre, where it would be printed out and hand-delivered to the recipient or delivered by an express courier. These messages could also be organised through a telephone call to an Australia Post electronic mail centre and this system included a variety of delivery methods. The E-Post service claimed to offer the general public a faster communications service that was more accessible and economical for a fee starting at $4.

• Within a few years of this news release being aired the state-of-the-art technology shown in this clip would be superseded. Even though the idea that mail had to be physically delivered began to change in the 1980s, in 2005–06 Australia Post handled more than 5,418 million mail articles. Meanwhile, by 2005 the number of Internet subscribers in Australia had grown to around 6 million, with almost a third of all homes connected to broadband services, mainly in urban areas. However, many rural people do not have access to the more advanced electronic services such as broadband.

• The E-Post service shown in the clip represents a key development in Australia’s telecommunications history. In 1854 Australia’s first telegraph lines were opened, quickly increasing their reach and commencing telegraphic communication with Europe in 1872. In the 1980s telecommunications switched from analogue to digital transmission. In the 1990s national optical fibre connections facilitated even faster electronic delivery of messages.

• While post office employees would once have handled all mail and managed a paper-based administration, technological developments have created a rapidly changing workplace. Computer literacy, keyboard entry skills, and the ability to maintain electronic hardware and operate a variety of computer-based machines became essential requirements from the 1980s onwards.

• Australia Post was one of Australia’s largest organisations throughout the 20th century. From the first tiny, one-person post office in Sydney in 1809, the organisation continued to grow and adapt to changes in communications technology until in 2000 it achieved profits of $402 million before tax. By the 1980s, Australia Post had become a government business enterprise keen to raise its profile in the marketplace.