Julie Perryman and Rob Lee Tet have retired as mail contractors and are delivering regular community events at the Dalton Hall. Photo: Rob Lee Tet.
For more than 14 years, Rob Lee Tet and his wife Julie Perryman travelled on back roads around Dalton delivering mail to farmers before setting off to New Zealand for a well-earned holiday.
On one of the legs of that two-month break they left their camper van and chose another mode of transport.
“Of all things we went on a mail boat run, to see how they do it differently,” Julie said with a chuckle.
Well may the couple smile, they have retired after remaining committed to three deliveries to roadside mailboxes a week. Rob headed to Bevendale and Julie to Biala, north of Dalton on mostly unsealed gravel roads. Their runs covered about 250 km.
Over the length of their tenure the post office business dramatically changed due to technology and COVID-19.
At the same time as their two mail contracts, Rob held the licence for Dalton Post Office, but the lack of foot traffic caused its permanent closure at the end of June this year.
News of their recent retirement from the mail runs unleashed an outpouring of thanks across the district for going beyond the call of duty, leaving them feeling humbled.
“If doing something and going that extra mile to make somebody else feel a little bit special, then that’s what I do, it’s what I have done and will continue to do. It’s part of who I am,” Rob said.
Out of bed at 5 to 6 on Mondays to Fridays, Rob would pick up the mail from Gunning to be sorted for the destinations and private boxes, deliver some on his way back to Dalton and then begin his mail run.
Julie began her run at about 8 am. They stocked the post office with bread, milk, butter, cheese, frozen goods, lollies, sugar, flour, bickies and washing detergent and delivered newspapers and groceries to some of their customers.
Their runs would be completed about lunchtime. After closing the post office at 4:30 pm, Rob would then return to Gunning with mail and parcels to be collected by another driver and delivered to Canberra.
They got to know farmers and their children and grandchildren and many of the farms’ dogs, even though there was little time for stopping.
Mail had priority. Parcels, on the other hand, were handled differently, Rob said.
“If their mailbox wasn’t big enough to hold the parcel, we would take it up to the house (if the house wasn’t five kilometres away from the road). We would take it up, deliver it, and there was an opportunity for a chit-chat, maybe for five or 10 minutes. It was lovely.
“I had a satellite phone because there was virtually no coverage out there and if I was ever to get into any strife I was miles away from anywhere,” Rob said. He used it once when a tree had fallen across the road.
Julie once had a flat tyre. “I just happened to be pulling in to drop off some parcels to the property and didn’t realise I had a flat tyre but the farmer recognised that and changed the tyre for me. So that was awesome, I didn’t have to change it,” she said.
On another run she had to leave the road quickly to make room for a truck.
Rob was lucky for a long while. “I was all the way through except for the last three weeks of my contract and decided to even up the score,” Rob said. “So I hit three kangaroos in three weeks. Luckily all of them were glancing (impact). There was one that knocked the back of the vehicle around and the vehicle was off the road for about a week.”
After the outbreak of COVID, parcel deliveries more than doubled as people shopped online.
As well, people began paying their bills online, instead of coming into a post office to pay them. Consequently the commission Rob received for bill paying services evaporated.
Julie is grateful for her experiences on the road. “The thing I enjoyed the most was getting out in the countryside, meeting a few people on the land, genuine sort of people, seeing a little bit of wildlife – echidnas, wombats, things like that. That used to make my day.”
The couple will continue living in their 103-year-old home at Dalton and maintain their community ties through regular events at the Dalton Hall.
