It is reproduced here with the consent of Mrs Miller.

As early as 1883, Rocklands Station was a Country Receiving Office (licensed to sell stamps) and the mail from Normanton was delivered to Rocklands Station every month.

The first post office was opened on 26 April, 1885, at Camooweal with M Grogan as Postmaster on an annual salary of £12.

The Post and residence were built in 1891 for £1,391 and stood on the corner of Nowranie and Barkly Streets.

Staff at the time consisted of C Chudleigh linesman and Henry Burr as a casual messenger at 1/- per day during the absence of the linesman.

The first telegraph line erected between Cloncurry and Camooweal, a distance of 197 miles, was completed in April, 1890.

A telegraph office was opened on 7 May, 1890 with D Morrison, as officer-in-charge.

In fact the telegraph office was considered so important, it took over the postal facilities and service was provided as a Post and Telegraph Office.

The office became a Meteorological station in February 1893 and weather reports were sent via the telegraph lines to the capital.

In 1899, the Phonopore Telephone instrument utilizing existing telegraph lines was the only method of telecommunication between Lake Nash and Camooweal.

At first the only telephone was in the post office.

The telephone was extended to Avon Downs, Northern Territory, in 1912 and the Americans built the line to tenant Creek in 1942 whipping through the streets with posthole diggers we had never seen before.

At the time of Federation (the amalgamation of the Australian States into a Commonwealth), the Camooweal Post Office sold money orders, postal notes, stamps and other postal stationery.

It handled mail through Urandangie including parcels.

In 1925, a Radio Outpost was established at Camooweal, with the Postmaster as the ‘Radio Postmaster’, Roy Dennett, 1932/33.

Actually the Radio Postmaster was a forerunner of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and several of these Radio Outposts in Western Queensland provided a ‘mantle of safety’ in times of disaster and emergency.

It is interesting to note that in 1929, the Superintendent of Telephones wrote this memo:

“Until recently telegrams handled by Mount Isa on the Cloncurry-Camooweal line by means of a condenser telephone owing to increased volume of business found essential to use freak addition circuit.

“Example:  A Morse circuit from Cloncurry to Camooweal existed with a leg of single line eleven miles in length branching of to Mount Isa.

“By instructing Camooweal to open the circuit and advising Mount Isa (by phone) to earth the leg, it is possible to work Morse from Cloncurry to Mount Isa.

“This system is unreliable in wet weather – advisable to make leg into loop.

“Some days one hundred telegrams are handled at Mount Isa.”

On 2 September, 1929 approval for loop was given.

If you wanted your mail on the Barkly Tableland before 1883, you rode to Burketown to pick it up.

Burketown had a service as early as 1868 and in the Postmaster General, Thomas Murray-Prior’s fifth report on Queensland postal services he boasted of his Burke to Burketown Mail Route.

The Carringtons who had a surplus of horses from their carrying activities took over from the Hookers and Len Carrington was the last contractor to use packhorses between the two centres.

Jack Dawson, from 1926/28, ran the first motor car services followed by Charles Lambert (1931-33), W Miller (1936), and G N Huddy, J Airs, J McMullen, Ron Joyner, Arthur Yamaguchi and Alfred Kum Sing continued on, until today there is no direct link between Burketown and Camooweal as the service from Camooweal travels to the Riversleigh letter box and the Burketown post office services to Lawn Hill area.

In 1897 the Camooweal to Cloncurry route was Camooweal via the Telegraph Line/ Yelvertoft Telegraph Station/Flora Downs/ West Leichhardt Telegraph Station/ Glenroy/ Doughboy Diggings/ Quamby to Cloncurry.

There were regular mail changes all along the routes.

At each mail change, which was usually a paddock, somebody’s job was caring for the horses and seeing that fresh ones were ready when the mail contractor arrived as well as helping to unharness and yoke up the fresh horses.

At Split Rock Mail Change, Greg Hooker always kept four beautiful chestnut horses for his last stage into Camooweal which he did in grand style.

In 1921, this Camooweal to Cloncurry service was operated by Percy Glendenning who later ran the first Duchess to Camooweal service by truck.

The overloaded vehicles with big solid wheels bogged down in the heavy Leichhardt sand and while her parents dug the truck out, Vera played hopscotch in the sandy creek bed.

In 1926, George Skein followed and operated the Duchess to Camooweal service.

Later still Jack walker’s route was by Duchess, spring Creek Well, Carlton Hills, Gundaria and Yelvertoft Station for £624 a year.

Arthur Hollins was the Camooweal- Mount Isa mailman from late 1920s followed by W. Ramsay and then Joe Freckleton who ran the service from 937 to 1949.

He drove a Diamond T vehicle for a while, but also for a period a German Buessing Nag which was diesel fuelled and noisy so we called it Buzzing Nag. 

You knew to put the kettle on when you heard it coming from miles away.

The route Mount Isa – Camooweal pre-bitumen took eleven hours and on one occasion during a heavy wet season, Joe Freckleton and his eleven passengers were three weeks on the road inching their way across the black soil plains.

There was in those days that old adage ‘The Mail must go through’ and ‘Go It Did’

Researched by Kim-Maree Burton.  

www.kimmareeburton.com  

First published in The Border and Beyond – Camooweal 1984-1994.

Photographs courtesy of Mrs Ada Miller.