Communications is as important to business and commerce today as it was in Portarlington’s heyday – and a historic link to the past recently came onto the market. John Van Klaveren peered back into the town’s postal past.
It was the heart of communications with the wide world as the fledgling Portarlington township grew into a bustling Bellarine Peninsula commercial centre.
The building of the Portarlington Post Office in Harding St became a lynchpin for the development of the town, along with the newly extended jetty, welcoming steamers from Geelong and Melbourne.
People and goods streamed in and out of the town via the bay, with businessmen as well as residents keeping postmistress Emma Dean busy bustling from the front counter to the mail room.
The opening of the post office was reported as a “grand occasion”, linking Portarlington to the wider world by post and telegraph, and was later the site of the town’s first telephone exchange.
One of the few elaborate architectural works constructed on the Bellarine Peninsula in the 19th century, it is matched for significance only by the famed Portarlington Mill.
Built in 1888, it is a fine example of Queen Anne architecture with triple brick construction and many original features.
The polychrome brown and cream bricks feature contrasting courses, decorative iron grilles, a tiled gable roof, and an elaborate balustrade-and-pediment parapet.
A corner of Portarlington’s Market Reserve was allocated in 1887 as the site for the new brick post office. Portarlington had enjoyed a postal service since the 1860s but public agitation for a more centrally located facility had increased.
A telegraph service began in 1882 and a bank branch was also operating in the town by then, servicing a variety of stores and traders.
There was a daily coach service to Geelong along with a rail service from Drysdale. But the main method of trade was by water, with Portarlington quickly becoming an important port of call for the network of steamers plying the bay.
For more on the historic Portarlington post office building, pick up the October edition of Geelong Coast Magazine.
