Post Office, 228 Lonsdale Street, Dandenong, 1967.

"The Post Office can be seen on the left of the Town Hall. In this 1967 photo the Post Office is shown from the front. Notice too the water fountain that was donated by the Ladies Temperance Society's."

Victoria’s first official postal service involved two people associated with the Greater Dandenong area. This was in 1837 when the New South Wales government gave Joseph Hawdon the Melbourne to Yass overland mail contract,which began on 1 January 1838. The actual ‘postman’ who carried that first official mail delivery, with many adventures, was John Conway Bourke. He was an employee of Joseph Hawdon’s and worked in the Dandenong area for some years. The carrying of messages and parcels was often a personal and individual operation in those days
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Hotels or stores were the first collecting and delivery points for mail. Dunbar’s Hotel in Dandenong was an early postal base. In 1856, the post office in the hotel was ‘the last one this side of the Melbourne PO’. A mail contractor, Patrick Mulcare, carried mail between Melbourne and Dandenong, as a weekly service in 1855. In 1862 the stage coach had the contract. Dandenong was the postal centre for a large district for many years and had the designation ‘Post Town’ in the Victorian Municipal Directory for 1875.

A post office building opened in Lonsdale Street, Dandenong, in 1880, following the construction of the railway. The building has since given way to a modern two-storey structure in Lonsdale Street, now
mainly rented out to other tenants, with only a small Post Office remaining.

Photo and fountain info supplied by: Patricia Joan Alsop

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