Tag: Australia stamp

This stamp seems badly put together. It combines women filling in for men in a factory while showing British made Spitfire fighters in British RAF markings. No wonder the Queen looks so confused in the corner. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Australia along with New Zealand again sent out a large contingent of forces in World War II. This spirit and service is worth remembering and I strongly recommend viewing the ANZAC memorial in Sydney that remembers Australia’s overseas deployments from World War I till the present day. There are often veterans on hand that add much color and poignance to what you are viewing.

Todays stamp is issue A417 a 41 cent stamp issued by Australia on April 12th, 1990. It was a five stamp issue that tries to show how the ANZAC spirit carried on into World War II. One of the stamps does even worse that this one by showing a not time appropriate helicopter. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.

World War II started in Europe two years before Japan’s aggressive moves in the Pacific Islands. As such many Australians volunteered for service in Europe. Among them were air force personnel that manned three squadrons of Spitfire fighter planes in Britain starting in mid 1941, after the Battle of Britain. When The Japanese began their attacks, Australia was almost completely devoid of fighter planes and pilots. By January 1942, Japanese bombers began bombing the northern Australian city of Darwin. Australia made an urgent demand that their pilots be returned to Australia. After some equivocation, Churchill agreed and also sent Spitfire fighters  with them to join the fight and show Britain was with them.

The Spitfire was slow to arrive in Australia. It had to be shipped by sea in an unassembled state and then repainted to local appropriate camouflage. The pilots returning had remember been late for the Battle of Britain and did not have much experience in combat. They did get to Darwin in early 1943 and did their best. America had responded much more quickly and the vast bulk of the Royal Australian Air Force RAAF fighter force were American made P40s.

The Spitfire did not prove as useful in the Pacific War as it had over Europe. The plane had a short range which was a big hamper in the island hopping campaigns. The supercharged Merlin engines seemed to have a lot more trouble related to the hot moist climate. It took a long time to get enough airplanes to form a proper Spitfire training unit. The plane was also ill adept at dropping bombs which became ever more important as the war went along with fewer Japanese in the air to fight. The Australian armed forces were also not being assigned to many of the later retakings of islands such as the invasion of The Philippines in 1944.

In all Britain shipped 258 British made Spitfires to Australia. In October 1945, one month after the end of the war, all RAAF Spitfire flight operations ended. The plane must have made some impression in Australia. In the 2000s, an Australian kit plane maker fashioning itself as Supermarine, the company that designed the real Spitfire, built 100 flying kits the resembled Spitfires on a 75% scale.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour perhaps several more to toast the ANZAC spirit. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

Nineteenth century Australia is perhaps not where you would look for the next great Prima Dona. Even back then though there was a conservatory in Melbourne with top flight instructors and well off father’s indulging daughters who display talent. Too bad then to reach her potential, Nelly Melba had to leave behind her country, and her husband and even her young son. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp celebrated the birth century of Melba by displaying her bust. I just got you to look at the stamp again, ha ha. A bust is perhaps a little too serious for a performer so it was good that they included an autograph of her stage name to remind that there was a real person behind the marble and the façade.

Todays stamp is issue A124, a five penny stamp issued by Australia on September 20th, 1961. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents.

Nellie Melba’s real name was Helen Mitchell. She was the daughter of a Scottish born builder that operated out of Melbourne. She was a star student  at the Melbourne Conservatory where she received training as an opera singer. Her father was happy to fund her instruction but was opposed to her becoming a professional singer. When his wife died, Melba’s father moved the family to Mackay, Queensland where he was constructing a sugar refinery. Here Melba married and quickly had a son. Melba was not satisfied with how her life was turning out. Alleging abuse by her husband, she abandoned the marriage and her young son and struck out to London where she hoped to become a Prima Dona with the new name of Nellie Melba.  London proved less than receptive so it was on to Paris where she was able to arrange further instruction from Mathilde Marchesi. Melba got a 1000 Franc a year 10 year contract to be the Prima Dona she dreamed of and began a notorious affair with Prince Philippe, Duke of Orleans and that Royal House’s pretender to the French throne. Melba’s still husband back in Mackay threatened to sue for divorce  in Mackay naming Philippe as correspondent. Philippe did not want that and agreed to end it by going on a two year African Safari without her.

Melba was also not happy with her Paris singing contract as she had been offered one at three times the salary in Brussels. Her boss refused to release her but then her luck changed and he died. She tried it again in London to very mixed reviews. She developed an enthusiastic fan base  that saw her repeatedly invited back but the official review said Madam Melba was a fluid vocalist and quite representative of light soprano parts, but lacks the personal charm necessary to be a great figure on the lyric stage. You can’t please everyone, but Melba played around the world even in the USA and a few times back in Australia. She died back in Melbourne after an infection from a botched face lift. By then her husband and son had moved to Texas and quietly divorced her there.

Melba reviews were not all bad and the British named her a Dame in 1919. Australia renamed her old Conservatory for her and even put her on their $100 bill. Assuming it hasn’t been removed lately by only BLM, Covent Gardens Opera House has her statue, one of a very few. One of her biggest fans was French chef Auguste Escoffier, who named Peach Melba and melba toast after her.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to commiserate with the worries of fathers who have been overly indulgent with their daughters. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

With William Dampier we have the real life counterpart to  Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. He gets a stamp for charting the east coast of Australia when it was still New Holland. He should be remembered by children in the sense of what a wide word of possibilities are open to them in life. Instead his type are taught in the sense of bad people spreading evil wherever they go. An arguement for another day, anyway whats the deal with Tex Mex? Read on… So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp visually is let down a little by it’s nature of being a small stamp meant for bulk postage. We do get a portrait of him and his then ship HMS Roebuck. Dampier at his most boring. A serving Royal Navy Captain whose mission it was to draw maps. This man was a pirate. This man taught his fellow Britons how to make guacamole. Perhaps thus stamp is most let down by being Australian as Australia’s only brush with Dampier is what is shown on this stamp. Dampier calls out for a new set of big colourfull stamps from his native UK showing his many inspiring sides. And one of Dampier at his end, convicted and penniless, to teach the kiddies and kiddies at heart that crime doesn’t pay.

Todays stamp is issue A145, a 50 cent stamp issued by Australia starting in 1968. It was part of a 26 stamp issue released for bulk postage after the decimalization and Americanization of the Australian currency. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. As a high denomination bulk stamp, if my copy were mint, the value would skyrocket to $15.

William Dampier was born in 1651 in England. Two merchant shipping expeditions one to Java and another to Newfoundland inspired him to join the Royal Navy. Soon however a sickness ended his service. He tried his hand at plantation management in Jamaica and logging on the mosquito coast but soon he was back to sea as a sometime pirate and sometime privateer. Unusually for a pirate, back in England after his adventures his good memory ample notes allowed him to write books about his exploits that contained both daring do and thorough academic level cataloging of what he had seen as the only man on earth to have circumnavigated the planet three times. Among what he brought back to England were guacamole, avocadoes, mango chutney and the cooking technique of barbeque.

Dampier also brought back with him a slave boy from what is now the Philippines named Joly. Joly had become despondent over the death of his mother and Dampier was chronically broke so even though they had been close, Joly was auctioned off. He was acquired by an inn that put Joly on display as captured Prince Giola of Mindanao. Joly soon died of small pox.

The Admiralty had seen Dampier’s books and commissioned him as a ship Captain of HMS Roebuck and told to sail to Australia, then still New Holland, and make charts of and an exploration of the east coast. This did not go well. Dampier discovered a species of giant clams near New Guinea and anchored the ship to do a thorough investigation of them and how best to eat them. At anchor in rough seas, HMS Roebuck’s condition deteriorated. Dampier decided to abandon the job at hand and try to make it back to England. He got as far as Accession Island but the the amount of water the ship was taking on  was too much and Dampier was shipwrecked there until him and the crew were able to catch a ride on a merchant ship in the India trade.

Back in England Dampier was arrested. Not for losing his ship, not for cruelty to indigenous people he had come across, not for all the stomach issues his new spicy foods had caused at home. He was convicted of cruelty. Early in the journey he had a conflict with a young but connected and of a higher class Lieutenant. He solved his problem by dropping him off in Brazil where the young officer was arrested. He still beat Dampier back to England and filed charges against Dampier.

Dampier was back to being a pirate when he attempted a fourth circumnavigation of the Earth. By this time he was old with failing health and the mission was abandoned. He died deeply in debt back in England.

Well my drink is empty. This stamp opened up a story more complex than I could have imagined. What a stamp is for! Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

One thing I like to point out when stamp collecting is when a new style of recognition in stamps emerges. As a traditionalist, sorry, I also like to point out when a style fades, perhaps a little wistfully. So with this in mind, we will tell the story of oil and gas exploration in Australia. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

1970 was late enough that the people putting together stamp issues were getting a little squeamish when told to cover the indeed growing energy industry. Here designer Brian Sadgrove puts a purple tint partially blocking the sun over the offshore oil rig and natural gas pipeline. No such tint shows up on more politically correct hydroelectric power or aluminum window frames that were other parts of this economic development issue. Lucky Mr. Sadgrove wasn’t asked to do a coal mine. I suspect the tint, or is it taint, would resemble the fires of hell.

Todays stamp is issue A194, a 10 cent stamp issued by Australia on August 31st, 1970. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations closely modeled on a new train line stamp done earlier in 1970 also by Brian Sadgrove. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

Surveying for potential oil and gas reserves started early in the 20th century but got a lot more serious after World War II. The Australian Motorist Petrol Company, a chain of gas stations, set up an exploration operation in 1946, petitioning the government for surveying rights and subsidies to bring into production oil fields. To assist with this, a partnership was struck with Standard Oil of California. The first oil well started producing at Rough Range in 1953. More extensive oil reserves were found on then unoccupied Barrow Island the next year.

In 1966, the joint venture, now boringly acronymed WAPET found commercial quantities of liquidified natural gas at Dongara, and got a pipeline going to Perth for export by 1971.

Oil production peaked in 2000 and is not so important any more. Natural gas is much more promising with proven reserves stretching out 100 years. The fact that it was all for export has become problematic. It is thought that using dirty coal for electricity makes no sense with relatively clean burning natural gas being available locally. It was decided by the government that in future, natural gas developed must have at least 15 percent set aside for local use.

Being in on the ground flour of big subsidized economic development must have seen great wealth accrue to the Australian Motorist Petrol Company. Production now totals 16.7 billion dollars a year. However, as so often happens there have been a series of mergers that saw AMPOL being a minor subsidiary of American Texaco. Yes oil history nerds, the old Standard Oil of Texas, Rockefeller wherever you look, even down under. Texaco then in 2015 sold the subsidiary generously allowing them the use of their Caltex name. Five years later, Texaco wanted back into Australia, and as a first step took the Caltex name back. The old subsidiary, noticing they still owned the AMPOL name, is now rebranding again to the long ago name. While exhausting, imagine the efficiency wrought by all these machinations. No, I can’t either.

Well my drink is empty and I am left wondering where all the wealth created by the economic development went. Yes, many people are employed, but where has the money gone. Even the Rockefellers don’t seem to have it. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

It was said by Albert Speer that moving the capital of a country out of the big city is a mistake. He understood that it reduced congestion, but felt that politicians and bureaucrats were just boring people and not being around the artists and achievers  of the big city will leave the area a  wasteland. He was talking in relation to Bonn in Germany but then pointed to Washington, Ottawa, and the subject of todays stamp Canberra, in Australia. Was he right? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Speers argument makes some sense when looking at this stamp. There is a home on the range aspect that is pretty strange on a picture of a then new Parliament Building. The building is done in the stripped neoclassic style that was common in the 1920s. Especially when the architect was American and had come from the Frank Lloyd Wright school of design. The stripping off of ornamentation and the strong sense of the spread out horizontal is right there to see. What is surprising is that in use the building proved quite cramped.

Todays stamp is issue A5, a 1 and a half penny stamp issued by the Commonwealth of Australia on May 9th, 1927. It was a single stamp issue that celebrated the completion of what is now the old Parliament building of Australia. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.10 used. An imperforate between them pair of this stamp is worth $11,000.

After Australia came together in 1901, there was a debate about what should be the capital. Provisionally it was Melbourne but others favored the larger Sydney. Eventually it was agreed to develop a new capital a hundred miles from Sydney, on an area of land ceded from New South Wales. This may sound familiar to the story of the American capital. Indeed the project was lead by Interior Secretary King O’Malley, who was an American expatriate who claimed Canadian birth to ease his entry into Australian politics.  The design he picked to build was from  another American Walter Burley Griffon. In another American frontier touch, he declared the capital area a dry, (no liquor) region. That sends shivers though this philatelist.

The city plan was not followed through on quickly due to the wars and lack of funds. In the 1950s they tried to redouble the efforts but by then Griffin had moved on to later work in India and the city resembled a strung out series of suburbs. Eventually a national Library, a University, and a few museums were strung together. A man made lake and a redwood forest that were part of the original plan are in place. The city has about 400,000 residents.

In 1988, a new Parliament house opened to coincide with further self rule. The House on the stamp still stands though over the years it was haphazardly added on to, losing the gardens. It currently houses the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Well my drink is empty and I am glad I am not stuck in a dry county. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.