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-storey
sandstock 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. tn 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 Grafion. These experience soon led
to the abandonment of firing practices.
