Tag: Australia stamp

Australia has maintained a vibrant children’s book industry. How it came about, and how it is maintained is an interesting story. 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 issue features books that have won the Australian Children’s Book of the year award. This stamp features Who Sunk the Boat, a 1983 winner that was written and illustrated by New Zealander Pamela Allen. It tells a story designed for adults to read to small children in a sing songy way of 4 animals debating who ruined their day sailing by sinking the boat. I won’t spoil the ending.

Todays stamp is issue A514, a 45 cent stamp issued by Australia on July 4th, 1996. It was a four stamp issue all in the same denomination. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1 USA used.

In 1945 two American ladies stationed in Australia with the USA Information Library suggested a children books week in Australia modeled on what was happening in the USA. It was to be a partnership of teachers, librarians, booksellers and publishers. Once the organization got going it decided to give out a children’s book of the year award though in the first years it was only awarded intermittently. In 1966, Australian government grants replaced the foreign aid and the organization grew exponentially. Perhaps too much as in 1988 the government pulled funding. For 5 years after the Myers Department Store chain paid the bill but afterwards funding as come via a non profit foundation.

Pamela Allen was born in New Zealand in 1934 was college educated and served as a teacher. In 1977 Allen and her sculptor husband moved to Sydney and the first of her 30 children’s books came out in 1980. Eight of them were pieced together into a play that was performed in 2004 at the Sydney Opera House. In 2008 Allen semi retired back to New Zealand. In Australia, Penguin Books commissioned Allen’s Melbourne based glass sculptor daughter Ruth to produce a piece of art to celebrate 5 million copies of her mother’s books. Back in New Zealand, she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Allen is still with us.

In case you are wondering about the 2020 award, the winner was I Need a Parrot written and illustrated by Chris McKimmie.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

Queensland had the the largest proportion of the Aboriginal of the Australian British Colonies. So some methods were used that are being re-evaluated in the period since this stamp. 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.

The stamp issue decided to show the Parliament House in Brisbane along with the delightful second color of the flowers. The communicates two things. The proposition that it was the settlers that brought civilization and in a Parliament House it was showing that despite the Queensland name, this was a group that was going to govern themselves. Not modern by any stretch but I find it a convincing argument from such a small piece of gummed paper.

Todays stamp is issue A116, a four penny stamp issued by Australia on June 5th, 1959. It was a single stamp remembering when the Queensland territory was broken off from the New South Wales Colony. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. I think the top edge of my copy comes from being at the top row of the stamp sheet.

The first British permanent settlement was yes a penal colony set up in 1823 in what is now the business district of Brisbane. The first ship full of immigrants arrived in 1848. Before the Europeans about 40% of the aboriginal residents of Australia were in Queensland. Soon the widely spead out European outposts, many of the “British” were actually Irish, were getting attacked. A female lead station was attacked and massacred in 1857. The horror was addressed by petitioning to Queen Victoria that Queensland be governed more directly.

Queen Victoria granted the request and George Bowen was named first Governor. He was Irish and also had colonial stints also in New Zealand, Victoria, Mauritius, and Hong Kong. He recruited a mounted, British lead, but Aboriginal staffed police force. Where Aboriginals massed for a raid on an outpost the horse mounted force would hopefully arrive to disperse them.

In the modern telling of this, the force would randomly start killing aboriginals. The numbers cited are always rising and at last imagined count, are up to 40,000 killed. This is course to dwarf and marginalize the deaths of the 1500 British in these, remember, Aboriginal started raids.

The most interesting aspect of all this is to blame the alleged indiscriminate killing  on the remember Aboriginal staffed police force. That way you can blame the Europeans for poor management that people may believe while having the actual barbarism  not committed by great, great Grandpa, something that people won’t yet believe. All to make the Aboriginal wonder why it was not them who brought civilization. I know, they were more at one with Mother Earth.

To put meat of the bone of these stories you need a villain. The moderns have found one in Irish officer with the nefarious name John O Connell Bligh. There was an enquiry in period as to why no prisoners were ever taken by Bligh’s unit. He said they were shot trying to escape. After he was cleared, the town of Maryborough awarded him a ceremonial sword to thank him for his help. What a perfect story to say Europeans bad.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

I love when a country does a stamp about the old explorers, because there are always stories of danger and adventure involved in the discoveries. For Edward John Eyre danger came during his land expedition to Albany in Western Australia. For George Vancouver, trouble came for him on the streets of London, in retirement, from members of his old ships crew. 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 is a very well done stamp. However the stamp issue might have benefited from being a two stamp issue. The stamp was printed connected to a souvenir sheet that may included more about Eyre and Vancouver. but this stamp entered my collection without that.

Todays stamp is issue A434, a $1.05 stamp issued by Australia on September 26th, 1991. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.25 used. Still attached to the souvenir sheet, the value goes to $2.25. Overprinted for a Tokyo stamp show, you are up to $7.50.

George Vancouver entered the Royal Navy of Britain at age 13 as a “young gentleman”. He served as a young midshipman on several of the voyages of Captain Cook. In 1791 comanding two ships HMS Chatham and a new HMS Discovery. He sailed around Cape Town to Australia, where he landed near Albany at a place called Possession Point where he formally claimed Western Australia for Great Britain. He went on to New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii and on to his more famous work to North Americans mapping the northwest coast, often on a small boat with ours. He liberally named places he found after Naval associates but that did not make him popular with all his crew.

After the several year expedition, Vancouver retired to London. He then began to be constantly harassed by people that served with him. Naturalist and connected rich guy Archibald Menzies could not get over that his man servant had been pressed into ship service during a shipboard emergency. The ships Astronomer Joseph Whitbey did not think he had fully paid for his service and that Vancouver did not work hard enough to get his money for him. You would have though naming Whitbey Island for him would have been enough. The worst trouble came from Thomas Pitt, the 2nd Baron Camelford. Pitt had received several punishments for infractions at sea and was eventually sent home in disgrace. In Vancouver’s retirement, he was jumped on the street near his house and caned by Pitt. Vancouver was in and out of court about the incident for the rest of his life.

Edward John Eyre made a fortune driving 1000 sheep and 600 head of cattle from Monaro to Adelaide. With his fortune he began self funding overland expeditions. His third expedition was with John Baxter and 3 Aborigine guides to be the first to reach Albany by land. He woke up one day to find Baxter murdered and 2 of the Aborigine gone with all the supplies. One guide named Wylie stayed and they continued. They would not have survived if they had not been spotted by a French Wailing ship with a British Captain who replenished their supplies. In proper explorer style, The ship’s Captain got Rossiter Bay named for him. This was Eyre’s last expedition but he enjoyed a comfortable retirement having sold a lucrative memoir.

Well my drink is empty and stuck at home I may have another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The Dominions are so far from the UK. So honouring people locally makes some sense, especially as part of a strategy of gradually breaking away. 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 shows the badge worn by Queen Elizabeth when she hands out the Order of Australia. So much for the award being a part of the breaking away. However this stamp was issued as a the traditional Queen’s birthday stamp in a year with a lefty government so there probably a subtle message there.

Todays stamp is issue A353, a 33 cent stamp issued by Australia on April 22nd, 1985. It was a single stamp issue. The same stamp was re-issued in 2013 with a new date but the same now low denomination, I suspect backdoor sneering by a new lefty government. Mine is the original. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.

In the early 1970s, Australia had a new left Labour government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. He had won office by trying to expand Labour’s constituency from its traditional support among the trade union movement to the more centrist suburban voter. He won a slight majority but it left Whitlam with opposition on the left as well as the right. One of his tasks was the establishment of the Order Of Australia. He modeled it on the Order of Canada, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/04/01/canada-creates-an-order-of-canada-to-further-seperate-from-the-british-queen-but-has-her-hand-it-out/   . As with that, the Queen quickly acquiesced to the new award but then made sure the annual Honours list passed through her Governor General and so was handed out under her auspices. The Governor General at the time John Kerr soon proved controversial.

John Kerr, appointed at the advise of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, had a similar background. He was a young Labour activist who worked in a shipyard before going to law School and becoming a QC, a senior barrister. As he aged he too saw Labour needed to expand and his politics gradually moved right. The opposition had enough power in the Senate to block spending bills and began doing so in 1975. They hoped to force an early election while the Whitlam’s government was beset by scandals. Instead Whitlam proposed to dismiss a few Senators and have new elections only in those constituencies. To do this he had to propose this ceremonially to John Kerr, as the Queen’s representative in Australia. This was thought to be a rubber stamp but Kerr thought this wrong. After consulting the Chief Justice to confirm he had the power, Kerr dissolved Whitlam’s Labour government and appointed the Liberal party leader as a caretaker Prime Minister until there could be full elections. The Liberal Party then won in a landslide.

Labour activists saw this as a coup and hounded John Kerr relentlessly. He resigned early as Governor General and moved to London. There he spent most days at Gentlemen’s clubs looking ever the worse for wear. He died in 1981 of a brain tumor but his death wasn’t announced until after he was buried to allow for an undisturbed funeral.

Later left wing governments have tried to make the award more Australian. For example they have discontinued naming people Knight or Dame. They also have expanded the criteria to include not just those who served Australia but mankind generally.  It is a staple of Australian comedy to mock counterjumper’s efforts to receive the Order of Australia. That in itself though sounds quite British.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the Queen on her many birthdays. She is now quite old and her official birthday and actual birthday are separate, so she gets two a year. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting

Australia is kind of off to itself. So many of it’s artists are homebound. Sometimes a truth is so universal that it transcends. Who after all can not comprehend the tragedy of a pub with no beer. So slip on your cowboy hat, fill your pipe, take your first sip of beer and gather around the campfire. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

I am a not so sure about the use of a black and white portrait of Slim Dusty. It was probably how people remembered him  and was used for all of this long series of stamps of Australian legends. In 2001, Slim Dusty was still with us and so colour might have emphasized that. Oh well, Australia got to see him the year before in colour performing “Waltzing Matilda” at the closing ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics.

Todays stamp is issue A522, a 45 cents stamp issued by Australia on January 25th, 2001. Slim Dusty’s issue of the Australian legends series comprised two stamps. According to the 2020 edition of the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1 used. The 2017 edition of the catalog had the same value. Late USA President Ford would have been happy to know that inflation is so thoroughly whipped. Stamp collectors can be excused for hoping for higher prices.

Slim Dusty was born as David Kilpatrick in Nulla Nulla Creek in New South Wales in 1927. He wrote his first song at age 10 and took the stage name Slim Dusty at 11. His songs built on the tradition of Australian Bush poet and in them you can hear echoes of wild dingoes and ex convict swagmen of an earlier time.

In 1957 he had his biggest hit with “A Pub with no Beer”. You can watch him perform it in more modern times here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb1Pzo4ZMPk   . It was the first Australian Gold Record. It was also heard in the USA and the UK. Belgian artist Bobbejaan Schoepen did versions in Flemish and German that saw the song become a big hit in central Europe. See here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDGFxdwdvoM.

The move toward pop and rock in the 1960s meant Slim Dusty got ever less play on the radio. Slim and his manager wife started an annual 10 month circle tour of Australia that was still quite successful. In the 70s his newer music took in the trucker scene in fashion then that Slim must have felt a kinship with all the traveling. In 2003 Slim Dusty died and was awarded a state funeral. The Anglican head clergy of Australia lead the mourners including several Prime Ministers in a rendition of “A Pub with no Beer”.

Well my drink is empty and beer is not usually my favorite, but just this once, I will have another. Come Again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

A rare animal story, so me making fun of Australian politicians circa 1974 or eyeing impressed Australian technical advancements will have to wait for another stamp. Today we take on the story of the Australian wombat. 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.

In June I was lucky enough to go on a short trip to Sydney, Australia. I took a day trip to the Blue Mountains and the tour stopped at a nature park named Featherdale where they had the many of the unique animals of Australia. I was expecting kangaroos and koalas, which they had, though the koalas were kept well back. While there a very friendly wombat came up to me and it turned into a trip highlight making friends with him. Once home seeing I own an Australian stamp featuring a wombat, it turned into just the excuse I needed to learn more about them. I also was quite moved by the ANZAC memorial in Sydney, so if I find a stamp of that, I will shortly after be bringing my readers that story. I have already covered the New Zealand ANZAC memorial here, https://the-philatelist.com/2018/02/16/new-zealand-expands-a-war-memorial/  . The Australian one is better.

Todays stamp is issue A224, a 20 cent stamp issued by Australia in 1974. The wombat got only the single issue that year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Wombats are one meter long marsupials native only to Australia that weigh about 40 pounds. They live in boroughs they dig and tend to live in more arid regions. Their chief predators are dingoes and Tasmanian devils. They are thought to be unlucky animals. Aborigine legend is that wombats descend from a man named Warren who had his head bashed in, his tail cut off and banished for being selfish. This would explain their fat torso and boroughing ways. British settlers to Australia were not themselves glad to see the wombat. In 1905 the government declared them varmints to be killed. Their boroughs were not welcome on farm or grazing land.

This has slowly changed as numbers of wombats decreased. There is a Wombat National Forest near Melbourne that no longer contains any wombats. By 1970, Australia declared the wombat protected and all of the regions except Victoria followed suit.

The 2000 Sydney Olympics became part of the wombats comeback. In the runup to the games, an ad agency had designed three animals to be the official mascots of the game. A kookaburra named Syd (for Sydney) a platypus named Olly(for Olympics), and an anteater named Millie (for the Millennium). Some felt these were too contrived, politically correct, and commercial. A radio DJ then designed an alternate unofficial mascot.”Fatso, the Fat Arsed Wombat”. Two statues of him were created and Fatso proved more popular. One of the statues of Fatso was auctioned off for charity and the other was mounted in the Olympic Village in honor of the workers that built it. This statue was stolen in 2011 but the rich guy who won the auction still has his. Such is the world today.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to throw it on the fool who stole Fatso. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Post Independence, using the cold war rivalry to extract aid was big business in Asia. 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.

The stamp today is from Australia. Australia was a founding, donor country to the aid program. Celebrating the anniversary of an aid program is a delicate thing to do on a stamp of a donor country. There is a natural tendency to help those in need at home first. In addition an anniversary naturally brings questions of what there is to show for the money spent. A difficult question to answer for the skeptical. The stamp designers get around it with a generic emblem and not telling you what the “Colombo Plan” is. Also notice that the denomination is too high for a regular letter, meaning fewer stamps in circulation. Figure it out for yourself stamp user. Or better yet read on.

The stamp today is issue A123, a one schilling stamp issued on June 30th, 1961. It was a single stamp issue celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Colombo Plan of economic development aid in Asia. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used.

In 1949, the Indian ambassador to China, K. M. Panikkar, went to his British and Australian counterparts and suggested an aid program. It was to be used to fight communism in the newly independent nations of Asia. Remember that India was newly independent and the Communists had just taken over mainland China. The main thrust was to be economic development and educational opportunities. In proposing the USA pay for the bulk of it, Amb. Panikkar was able to successfully make his case. The USA paid the lion’s share of the cost and the program began based in Colombo, Ceylon, (now Sri lanka), in 1951.

The most obvious benefit of the aid program were the educational opportunities afforded. Among those that benefited are national leaders of Singapore and Nepal, and several prominent Indian scientists. In Ceylon itself the main beneficiary seems to have been the multi-language Ceylon radio service that did much in the 50s and 60s to bring an Asian perspective to the region.

With the end of the cold war, Britain and Canada dropped out of the program but the USA stayed on. The program was reorganized to take on environmental and gender issues in addition to continuing the educational opportunities. It is interesting to contemplate that gender and environmental issues are energized mostly on the left end of the political spectrum. Yet the program was specifically designed to be anti communist. Another case where the people that populate the program decide what it actually does. The vast bulk of people that get into this line or work will be left of center. The Colombo Plan is still around today.

Well my drink is empty so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.