By Derek Schlennstedt
For 20 years he’s served the community, delivering the paper and sorting through mail, now, at the age of 70 Stanley Schmar is hanging up the mail bag and looking forward to a sleep-in.
“I get up around quarter past three.”
“It’s great in the summer, but a mongrel in the winter when the frost comes on, but, you get used to it,” he said.
Stanley moved to Healesville in the 1990s and was in-between jobs when a friend noted there was a position as delivery driver at the Healesville Post Office.
“My mate told me that there was a job going at the post office.
“I thought, yeah I’ll have a go at that.”
“I came in and they said you can start tomorrow, the rest as they say is history,” he said.
A regular day for Stanley involves waking up at 3am, feeding his cats and then driving to the post office where he takes delivery of the newspapers.
He then wraps the papers and drops them off to the houses before coming back to the office at 8am and sorting through the day’s mail.
Of the 1400 mail boxes, each box has a number that corresponds to a name on the envelope.
Stanley knows each individual box and doesn’t miss a beat, easily rattling off which letter matches which post box with pinpoint accuracy.
“91 Mt Riddell – yep that would be number 995,” said Stanley
“You got to know the whole lot off by heart.”
“It’s a real art, and you got to have an analytical mind to sort mail – there’s nothing we don’t miss,” he said.
Each morning Stanley drops newspapers off around the Healesville area, and while he’s met plenty of people through the job he also knows all the resident dogs.
“They wait for me patiently, they’re good fun – you give them a paper and off they go, tail wagging up the driveway.”
“I think I’ve known 40-50 really good lovely dogs, I don’t even know their owners half the time just their dogs,” he said.
Stanley will finish up 20 years of working at the post office on Wednesday 24 April, and although he’s looking forward to retiring said he would miss the small community which he considered his second family.
“You come to enjoy it because you’re out there with the early risers, the baker or the bloke that comes and brings the paper, – it’s just a little community at that time in the morning and you get used to being part of it very quickly.
“I know I’m going to miss that part of the community.”
“The best part of this job is definitely the people.”
