Australian Colonies - Royal Mail Archives

Hi folks,

In my search for the 1845 Post Office Report for New South Wales, I have found this resource that may be of benefit to collectors and postal historians of the Australian Colonies.

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1127127590/findingaid

Happy hunting!

Marvellous Bobby,
Saved. Thankyou.
Shall take a while to get used to navigation through the papers.

Agreed Rod, the navigation is far from straightforward.

It's almost like they want to make it a quest!

Indeed, Bobby.
I was hoping for a Google type digitisation, as in *.pdf form.
But, there's no denying the fabulous information.

You can download the files as PDFs Rod, but it is fiddly.

Let me know if I can help.

Whoa! surprise surprise,
I'll have another look, and if fail, shall contact you.
Ta!

I can see this being a great resource.

However, the only PDF download option I saw was one frame/page at a time, each with it's own "copyright" statement. IF there is another, please share your experience.

The USA National Archives also has many older digitized (Post Office) microfilms that are presented only in this format. When I really wanted to have my own copies, I would go into "repetitive" mode and would first download all the page images, then convert them into a single PDF. Talk about boring, but it was only once.

The cynic in me can't decide if this is an intentional ploy they employ to get the user to purchase the images at their price, or simply laziness on their part to not want to spend extra effort to be able to provide the product in a more usable format convenient to the user.

I've done repetitive mode to create a PDF before. Tedious, but once it's done it's done.

To avoid this, the following guide will help.

Using "New South Wales, 1842-1845" as the example, click on the grey box.



Then, click on the grey box as shown.



A new tab/window will open. Then click "Up a level".



Scroll down and click on "DOWNLOAD".



Then click the box as shown, and then on "Start download".

Sometimes I just shake my head, when members figure out stuff like that.
I guess I give up to easily.
Sweet, Bobby.
Have Western Australia

That's good stuff.

Now, will I remember this?

That's the easy bit !

Just install MSWorks (1980) (Microsoft works) (It has a limit of 32,000 records)
Select database

This will take about 6 seconds, depends on how fast you type

Load the link, give it a text string (under cynosure) that will prompt you

That's how I find an AUSTRALIAN postmark from 19,000 in 2 seconds
(even if you only have 3 letters)

My 40th year of MSWorks
use it for my shopping list
birthdays
whatever

I won't show you my other 3000 odd links



-----------------------------
Open MSWorks
select database
click "add" "add"

There a database is ready 6 seconds

(just remaining naming the database and fields)

Searched every postmark in Australia (19,200) for "oggy" part text of a postmark

2 seconds flat

Bobby:

That's a super explanation. I would probably never figured it out.
Mike