Abstract Education: Sunday Stamps

The theme this week for Sunday Stamps is abstract designs. I love this set of Education themed stamps, and have been waiting for just such an excuse to share them.

This set comes from my Grandma Nellie. The packaging above is complete from when they were issued in 1974, in a bright sealed yellow envelope. But my Grandma being a hoarder kept one mint set unopened and also another opened set - so I have the information from inside as well, on this lovely card:

The four stamps only celebrate four aspects of the broad spectrum of the Australian education scene (as the explanatory card says), namely: Pre-School education (5c), Correspondence School (11c), Science Education (15c); and Advanced Education (60c). I am pretty much going to let the stamps speak for themselves this week, so here they are:

They are very bright and colourful, and very abstract representations of the education sector, so I thought they were pretty perfect for this week's Sunday Stamps. To check out other patterned and abstract designed stamps, click on the Sunday Stamps button below and enjoy. Happy Sunday, folks.

Street Art and Stamps

Check it out: Stamp street-art! How wonderful. I spotted this at the Laneway Music Festival in Footscray (Melbourne) on the weekend. The festival was great fun - Bat for Lashes headlined, but Alt-J ( ∆ ) were possibly the highlight for me... they sounded amazing and were great fun to dance to.

Anyhow it is not all that regularly that the worlds of rock'n'roll and stamp nerds collide, so I was pretty thrilled to see these paste-up images of an early and iconic Australian Stamp at a music festival.

I do actually have this stamp in my collection, courtesy of Grandma Nellie. Although the stamp I have is not in great condition.

The stamp was part of the George VI series of definitives released in 1950-51. The thing that makes me uneasy about the image is that it was released in that time well before the 1967 referendum which recognised  indigenous people as citizens. So this image smacks of paternalism to me - while it is depicting, and in a way celebrating, the nameless Aborigine on the stamp, the image seems to be loaded with the racist ethnocentric assumptions of the day.

It is an enduring image, even if it is a racist one. And in 2009 another version of the stamp was celebrated as one of "Australia's favourite stamps." I think the image reads slightly differently in the 2009 version than it did in the 1950/51 version. It is a bit more like, "Look! We love Aborigines! We always have: check out this old stamp!" And of course that is blatantly untrue.  But I see an attempt at reconciliation in the 2009 stamp, a more genuine respect that doesn't have the same patronising tone of the 1951 release.

And what of the 2013 paste-up on a brick wall in Footscray of the same image?  I love it.

Postcards from the Past: Archaeology and Family

In my last blog post on Sunday I mentioned that I had a massive week last week. As it turns out the above postcard represents a synergy of all that massive week contained! Let me explain...

My working week was massive, because I was taking part in another fieldwork session out past Ballarat on an old gold-rush era site (I blogged about it back in July here). It was our very last week of fieldwork last week, and we all felt like we were the stars of 'Time Team', with Tony Robinson in voice over saying something  along the lines of

"with only five days before this site is bull-dozed to make way for a new freeway, the archaeologists are working against the clock to find out what they can of this fascinating microcosm of life on the road to the goldfields in the 1860s..." 

There is a little bit of dramatic-license in there, but you get the drift. We were on a schedule. A road is being built. We worked like maniacs. Tony Robinson may or may not have been there. Here are some happy snaps:

It was a very fun week, and the archaeology was pretty interesting. Will found a coin from 1835, a pocket knife and a jet earring. Rach found an ink well. Ben found a bottle of some magical ointment that was a cure-all for gout, rheumatism and sore breasts! And I found some broken ceramics. Oh, and a sewing pin, when it pricked me in the finger. Dang! But what a fun week we had. Massively exhausting, but great fun.

Then, on Saturday, I turned around and drove back from whence I came, to Ballarat, in order to trawl through my Grandparents possessions, as they have just sold the family home. That was a massive day for all sorts of reasons. It is so sad to see the house go, as it has been in the family for generations. I loved spending all my school holidays there as a kid, playing in the garden with my cousins and sisters. My sister Emily got married in that garden a couple of years ago, and so the house holds all sorts of special memories. Here are some happy snaps of the house and garden "Glenholme":

My Grandma gave me her stamp collection, but I also took another special item of 'post' from the house... Great-Great-Great Aunty Mabel's postcard collection. There will be many more blog posts about Mabel's postcards, because they are so wonderful. She collected her postcards are from such exotic places as Ceylon, Zimbabwe, Norway and Hong Kong. The lady knew how to travel.

But as I was reading through them last night, I was super delighted to find the postcard from much closer to home, which I began this blog post with. This is a postcard Mabel received in 1905 from a party taking a picnic in an old 'Cobb and Co' coach right near the archaeological site I had spent my week digging up. So past and present, archaeology and memory, work and family life all meld together in the image on the front of the postcard, and the message scrawled to Mrs Cuthbert of Glenholme on the back. How absolutely lovely, and how absolutely thrilled I am.

Shipwrecks: Sunday Stamps

It may be a little morbid, but when I read that the theme this week for Sunday Stamps was "ships" I immediately thought of this beautiful presentation pack of stamps I have featuring shipwrecks.

I don't generally buy presentation packs, I find them cumbersome, so that is where I generally draw the line when it comes to stamp paraphernalia (gutterstrips: tick; FDCs: tick; presentation packs: buh-bow) but as with all lines in the sand that I draw for myself, I do shift the boundaries from time to time. (For instance, this time last year FDCs were in the "buh-bow" no-deal column, or on the wrong side of the line in the sand. Said line has since been adjusted). Anyhow, objections to presentation packs aside, I couldn't resist this particular presentation pack due to the rather lovely 1878 map that adorns the inside.

The stamps themselves are quite beautiful, I think. I like the muted colours, and that the images evoke the era by using contemporary engravings of the disasters. I have been to the cemetery that is the eternal resting place for many of the Loch Ard victims and it is quite a haunting place, situated on a very stunning, but treacherous and rugged coastline.

The Dunbar sank near the entrance to Port Jackson, on the 20 August 1857, as the stamp says. The stamp also indicates that 120 lives were lost. What it doesn't say is that there were only 121 people on board. Only one crewman survived the wreckage, because he was tossed by waves onto a rock ledge.

To counter the rather bleak topic of shipwrecks, I thought I would also share with you a 2004 issue of stamps that is bright and happy and reflects the romantic side of shipping.

I really like these steamer stamps, with their nod to art-deco styling and the bright colours of the travel posters. They make me want to voyage around the world at a leisurely pace while sipping cocktails on the deck.

In what was a massive end to a massive week, I acquired these stamps yesterday, whilst trawling through 100 years of family history stored in my Grandparents' house which was recently sold. Grandma Nellie collected the annual stamp books put out by Australia Post, and so this more recent part of her collection just made its way to me on the weekend. The books are pretty cool and have lots of detail about all the stamps issued in that year, as well as the actual mint stamps.

There will be more tales from my massive week and massive weekend soon on this blog... but for now, it is good night and good luck, fellow stampers and fellow bloggers.

Geek is Chic: Sunday Stamps

Once again, when turning to a favourite set of stamps, I find myself drawn to an issue from the '70s. I know that words like "vintage" and "retro" are catch-cries of the hipster-generation, and as such are a little over-used at the moment. And lets face it, I mock hipsters, but I myself have, shall we say, "hipster tendencies," (if a pair of ray-bans count as a tendency). Anyhow, I digress. What I am trying to say is that I am more than happy to go with the retro-loving crowd on this one: 1970s design is wicked.

New word for the week: SPECTROPHOTOMETRY!

So. This classic set of stamps was released in May 1975 and celebrates Australian achievements in science. I don't know if science has ever looked so funky. 

This one makes me think of  the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"

Grandma Nellie kept the original packaging (thanks Grandma!), so I have the designer's notes for the release. The notes read:

The challenge was to convey the significant contributions made by Australia in certain scientific fields. faced with such unfamiliar subject matter, the limited language of graphic design proved inadequate, and it was necessary to resort to written explanations which then became major design elements.

These presented their own peculiar problems, since the words had to satisfy the scientists participating in the chosen fields, and at the same time satisfy the rigorous formal demands of space within each design.

 Well, I think it is safe to say that the designers nailed it. These stamps are brilliant. And I think all the hipsters would agree: Geek is Chic. Hooray for science nerds!

Postcards from Egypt on ANZAC day

I have mentioned Grandma Nellie on this blog quite a lot, because she recently gave me her stamp collection. However, she gave me another gift several years ago, before I travelled to Egypt, which I treasure perhaps even more than the stamps. She gave me two souvenir postcard books her father sent back to his sister from Egypt during World War I, while he was serving in the Australian Light Horse Brigade.

As today is ANZAC day, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to showcase these beautiful postcard books. These postcards have been passed down to me because 98 years ago, a young man from rural Victoria went all the way across the world to spend four years of his life apart from his family and friends and the security of his home to fight a distant war.

Grandma Nellie speaks often and warmly of her kind father, 'Pa-sie' (as in Pa, but with an affectionate flourish of an added "sie/sey": I have no idea how to spell that) and so I cherish these little tokens I have from him.

I love that the Port Said book has a thumbnail image and a place to record to whom you sent the corresponding card!

I find the postcard books absolutely the most stunning items of ephemera, and I love the exotic images within the covers, and the texture of the pages, and the fact that there are sheets of fine tissue paper between each card.

These postcards conjure for me a romanticised past: I can't help it, but I see them and imagine men with bushy moustaches in nice white linen suits (and oh golly - I bet one or two wore a pith helmet and a safari suit!) exploring amazing places on the edges of the 'civilised world' -or beyond the British Empire. I love the fictional world I see in these postcard images, and wish that I could travel there.

The stark reality is, of course, that these postcards have come to me after being sent home from a war, and there is nothing romantic, exotic or beautiful about that. But I still love these postcard books, and have had them tucked away for several years, so it is really nice to get them out and truly appreciate them today. Thank you Pasie.

Lest we forget. 

I heart Australian Antarctic Territory stamps

Within my stamp collection my stamps from the Australian Antarctic Territory are particularly treasured. This is why I have used some of the AAT stamps for the background image of this blog (notice what I did there.. AAT: that is the stamp-nerd acronym for Australian Antarctic Territory) . This week I thought I would properly share with you the stamps that so tantalisingly peek out around the edges of my blog.

$1 - Parahelion "Mock Sun".
(I have never heard the word Parahelion before, but I like it. I will try to drop it into everyday conversation soon.)

I generally love AAT stamps because they feature beautiful icy landscapes and cute penguins. But this particular set is about my favourite set of stamps EVER. I just love the fluoro orange that features on them.

Doesn't this helicopter look like it has come straight off a James Bond set?

I love the romanticism of Antarctica - the deserts of ice rather than sand that are so inhibiting yet exhilarating. A frontier if ever there was one. I have always wanted to travel there. And this set of 1966 stamps makes me want to go there even more.

I bought an incomplete set at the end of last year from "Rusty's" in Rosedale while there on a fieldtrip for work. Rusty told me that the higher value stamps were harder to come by. I loved them immediately so I bought the incomplete set. But thanks once again to Grandma Nellie's collection, I now have the full set. Not only that, but Grandma had kept the original packaging.

The series of stamps is highlighting Australian scientific research in Antarctica and the brochure that goes with the stamps tells me that:

• Antarctica was first circumnavigated by James Cook in 1772-5
• The first Australian Expedition was that of Mawson in 1911-14
• Australian scientists on Antarctica are involved in meteorology, cosmic rays (! More James Bond?), auroral displays, seismology, biology and geomagnetism. I don't know what geomagnetism is, but it sounds sexy.

Not only that, but the brochure gives a proper definition of what  a parahelion is:

"an antarctic mirage seen when microscopic ice crystals in the air reflect back the real sun and ghostly counterparts of it, ranged round the horizon and connected by bands of light."

I think I just found another reason to want to go to Antarctica.

As it turns out, when you used to buy philatelic material from the Australian Post Office in the 60s, not only did you get a brochure telling you all these cool facts - you also received a gorgeous little greeting card to match the stamp issue. And, oh how I am loving the ephemera! And on that note, just to prove once and for all that my collection is getting a little out of hand, last week I bought the following book - just because the illustrations were cool and it kind of matched my stamp collection:

1960 edition. This is the back cover - but I just love the orange snow-vehicle.

So. AAT stamps. Absolutely my favourite. Thanks for letting me show them off.

1c - Aurora and Camera Dome; 2c Banding Penguins.