Island Airmail: Sunday Stamps

This Sunday I heart post comes to you direct from my Dad's study. I am home visiting  my parents, and also my sister who has just flown back to Australia after living in Sweden for the past couple of years. (Welcome home Elspeth!). So for this week's Sunday Stamps, I decided to flick through my Dad's collection of First Day Covers from when he was a boy, to find something suitable for the theme of 'the post'. Any regular readers of this blog would know that I am particularly fond of 'post' and choose to define it broadly.

Although I did not find any stamps with post boxes or stamps on them - I did find two covers celebrating airmail. The one above is from Western Samoa (which has now dropped the 'Western' from its name and is officially the Independent State of Samoa).

Also within Dad's collection I found another contemporaneous cover celebrating airmail from Papua and New Guinea, also issued in July 1970.

The stamps are very nice, with the planes flying over volcanoes (after my recent trip to Indonesia I am most definitely into volcanoes: almost to the point of starting a second blog called "I heart volcanoes"). But the other thing I like about the PNG cover is the stylised image of Australia and Papua and New Guinea linked by the plane. Pretty cool. 

I am seriously starting to wonder why I loved just plain old stamps all these years, when I could have been loving first day covers, which are stamps with the added bonus of designs on envelopes and fancy postmarks. Who knows why I was so slow to catch on, but the important thing is now my passion for post has enlarged to definitely include FDCs. And when airmail and volcanoes are involved, it is just the icing on top!

For other post related blogs this weekend, check out Viridian's Sunday Stamps through the button above. Happy Sunday!

Brunei and Tongariro; Envelopes and Scale bars

Last time I went back home to my parents house and slept in my old bedroom, I found four envelopes that I had once sorted stamps into, labelled, and tucked away in the bookshelf above my old cast-iron bed.

This afternoon (after I clocked off work of course), I sorted out some of the stamps and tried to take some photos of them on the photography table at work. That is why, in the above photo, for my own great amusement, I have included a scale bar (hello archaeologist friends!).

Anyhow, in the envelopes, as you would plainly expect, there are lots of treasures.

There are a whole heap of stamps from Brunei, all with the Sultan's head on them. These came from my cousins who lived in Brunei in what must have been the late-eighties/early-nineties. This was about the time, I think, that my Dad thought it was hilarious if he got us to do salaams and call him Master. I think he fancied himself a Sultan. We didn't fall for it for a second.

 Anyhow, the stamps are all very beautiful, and I am not sure what I am going to do with them. Put them in an album? Make gift tags out of them? Leave them in their envelopes, so that in another twenty years when I am rifling through my stuff, I find them and get great pleasure out of tipping out the contents and discovering the delightful treasures anew? Hmmm... I am not sure. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

So many pretty pictures, so many lovely lovely treasures... but just as I was putting away the stamps, I found this one:

It shows the Tongariro National Park and Chateau. I had no idea that I had this stamp, but I totally totally LOVE it. Last year, my Mum and I went to NZ and hiked the Tongariro Crossing... and the next day went and had high tea at the chateau. So this completely wonderful little stamp epitomises a really fantastic holiday! YAY for cool stamps! Big-ups to New Zealand Post!

Mount Tongariro

High tea at the chateau with Mum

And one of the view from the top.. below the snow level. It totally made the 19km hike worthwhile!

FDCs from PNG

While visiting my parents at Christmas time, my Mum gave me a white plastic bag with "Stamp collecting is fun!" emblazoned on it, which was full of stamps and envelopes. She couldn't really remember the details, but given that it was postage paraphernalia, she assumed that wherever it had come from it was meant for me. I took a bit of a look inside it, and then proceeded to stash the bag in the boot of my car (alongside other miscellany that I have yet to find a home for, including a blue glitter cowgirl hat and a picnic rug).

Last weekend I remembered the bag of post from my Mum and I took it out to explore.  To my delight, it was a veritable treasure chest of post, and post-related items. Mainly it was a bag of First Day Covers. My own stamp collection does not encompass FDCs, which I always thought of as basically an empty envelope with a fancy postmark from the first day of a stamp's issue. But it turns out that FDCs are way cooler than I had realised, and the ones I discovered this weekend are pretty special for a number of reasons.

The first reason is that many of the First Day Covers are addressed to J. H. Kiddell, my Dad's grandfather, my great-grandpa, who was always referred to as "Pa Bert".  Pa Bert passed away well before my time, but it makes me pretty happy to think that he was a bit of stamp nerd, just like me. Or rather, in this respect, I am just like him.

The second reason this collection of FDCs are totally cool is that they are all from "Papua and New Guinea" - and date from the late 60s up until the early 70s, when Papua and New Guinea was still a Territory administered by Australia.  I am completely besotted with 'post' in a large part due to the history inherent within stamps (and other postage related items!). This is beautifully exemplified by one of the FDCs within the collection: a 1972 issue commemorating "constitutional development". Papua New Guinea eventually became independent from Australia in 1975.

The third reason that this collection of FDCs totally knocked my socks off, is because within the envelopes were delicate little brochures explaining the stamps. The decorative envelopes! The graphic design! The history! And to top it all off there are brochures inside! Wow. I heart FDCs.

My favourite of the FDCs from Pa Bert is an issue from February 1970. It stands out amongst the crowd because the stamps feature two things that, if I were Maria von Trapp, would be incorporated into a song about brown paper packages tied up with string:

• A map - more precisely an antique map from 1606 (on the 25c)
• An archaeological artefact (a prehistoric amulet on the 5c)

Maps, artefacts, stamps: these are a few of my favourite things. And they are all combined into one perfect First Day Cover.  Thankyou, Pa Bert.

Department of Posts and Telegraphs!