Australia - NSW Cancels

Redoing all my older Australian, such as it is, along with the officials and it's turning out to be a fascinating project. Full of watermarks and perf varieties and almost anything else that can keep a philatelist busy.

I have scanned what I have in the states and am going to post what seem to be the clearer postmarks - and there looks to be a delightful array of different markings. I imagine that these are all quite common but I have no listing of post offices or markings. If anyone spots one that bears further examination, please let me know.

I am going to do this one state at a time.

And is there a specific name given to what I will call "starburst" killers, most often with a numeral inside, that seem to be common to all the former states issues?

H M Campbell has a comprehansive book on the subject.

This is a 'ray' type, there are 7 variations in NSW






This is a barred numeral, there are 5 types.

Lovely! Do you happen to have a Title for the book? It sounds like something I may like to have in my library, particularly if it deals with all the States.

Thank you.

The 1896 Broken Hill CDS is wonderfully evocative. At that time, Broken Hill was a fabulously rich silver mining town; it later settled down to be a plain rich silver-lead-zinc mining town. It gave the start to Australia's biggest company, BHP Billiton, and to many other big names in Australian industry. When I worked for the Australian forebear of today's Rio PLC in the 1960s and 1970s, the Broken Hill mines were still a major profit centre, and a major headache. The unions ran Broken Hill: noone worked there without the approval of the local union council, and pay for the miners was generous, to say the least. These days, the mines are mostly closed, but there's always been talk of more mineralisation out there, waiting to be found.

The book is Australian Numeral Cancellations: a Compendium by H.M. Campbell, published Melbourne 1983.

I don't have it so I'm not sure of the content as far as how detailed it is and whether it has extensive information on rarity. There are separate more detailed books covering each State by various authors, but it gets expensive. You can buy the compendium from a couple of online stores in Australia, around $50. Not sure of shipping costs.

I specialise in Victoria, so I look forward to seeing your Vic stamps

Balf

Campbell is very detailed, showing each type of cancellation in each State with lists of the PO allocated the barred numeral in each state. No info on rarity, though.

Thank you for the title - it's sure to be a great help.

It's also amazing how a simple postmark can connect you to a bit of history. That is exactly the kind of tidbit of information that makes a collection interesting and alive.

I have watched non-collectors browse a collection in sort of a half dazed way, not knowing exactly what they are looking at. But, because I intersperse my binders with pages that do exactly that - tell a short non-technical story about a cancel, a cover, an issue .... whatever, those are the spots that they stop and read and ask questions. This forum proves invaluable for picking up that background.