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Timeline Links
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The old Grafton Post Office in Prince Street about 1861 ... Loewenthal’s Store adjacent.
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From CRHS Newsletter #28 - 24th November, 1995.
THE GRAFTON POST OFFICE
– by courtesy of Australia Post.
The Grafton Post Office was first established on the bank of the Clarence River on the 1st October 1840. It was known as the Clarence River Post Office. The first Postmaster, Arthur Price kept a store on the right bank of the river. The postmaster was not paid a salary, instead he received a 20% commission on the amount of postage collected. Postage stamps had not been introduced and postage was paid in cash either on delivery or when letters were posted. Price’s remuneration for the last three months in 1840 was £1.7.9½.
A telegraph station was opened at Grafton in approximately 1862.
The existing two-story sand stock building was constructed in 1874 and forms one of a group of civic buildings designed by the colonial architect, James Barnett who held office from 1865 to 1890.
From CRHS Newsletter #18 - 22nd March, 1994.
THE OLD GRAFTON POST OFFICE
– Clarence & Richmond Examiner, 10.1.1905.
The building that at one time did duty as post and telegraph office in Grafton, in the central section of Prince St., was this week demolished to make room for a pretentious structure. For a number of years business was conducted in these buildings, which would be considered very insignificant nowadays for post and telegraph offices. Still farther back the Grafton post office was a small compartment of the fate Mr. T. Fisher’s Ferry Stores at the foot of Villiers Street. When the post office business was conducted in Prince Street, one of the duties of an official was to fire a cannon at 1 pm daily. The discharge of the unmistakable gun enabled parties to regulate their time keepers but the report was somewhat of an annoyance to certain residents near the post office.
Afier vainly requesting that the alleged nuisance be abated, summary redress was resorted to, and one night the obnoxious gun mysteriously disappeared. So secret was its final resting place, though several must have necessarily been implicated in its removal that to this day it has never been divulged, nor has any trace of the missing gun ever been found. In our earlier days, cannon was fired to herald the ocean steamers arrival at Grafton, and on holiday excursions a loud report was the welcome at each place of call down the river. At a regatta at Ulmarra two persons were killed by a wad from a cannon fired from the s.s.”Grafton”, and on another occasion an officer of the steamer had a narrow escape from serious injury through the gun bursting to fragments while firing on arrival at Grafton. These experiences soon led to the abandonment of firing practices.
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