Despatched by Tin Can Mail

Kym bought in the coolest bit of "show and tell" to work recently - her Grandfather's cover from 6th September 1937. It was thrown overboard in a sealed tin can from the Cruise Steamer "Maunganui"to be collected by canoe from the Tongan island of Niuafoou (or Niuafo'ou) before it found its way to the faraway Victorian country town of Kerang.

This is possibly the coolest item of post I have ever seen. And I don't think I am overstating it. I had heard this story of the Tin Can Island from Meredith, when she shared her son's stamp collection with us a few months ago. But to see an actual piece of Tin Can Mail... what a treat!!

How wonderful are all the stamps on the reverse? There is even a little bit of Cyrillic thrown in!

So I am very delighted to discover that Meredith's fantastical story of the Tin Can Island is in fact true - I have seen the post to prove it! Thanks so much Kym for sharing this wonderful little treasure (I do so love "show and tell")!

Show and tell: vintage ads and Aboriginal art

This week I am just doing a short little post with some show and tell. I love show and tell... have I mentioned that before?

Since it's my party and I'll cry if I want to - scrap that, its my blog and I'll write what I want to, I am straying from post this week to bring you some vintage ads from the April 1974 edition of National Geographic. I just had to share this advertisement with my archaeologist friends:

100 stone arrowheads for just $15!! We are wasting our time looking for stone tools in the field, we can just mail-order them! Who knew??

Turns out I don't have to stray too far beyond my favoured topic of stamps to bring you the arrowheads ad though, because right below it was another one that also caught my attention:

It has been a quiet (yet busy) week in my little post world, but I don't want to leave you empty handed, so here are some pretty stamps to ponder.

The above stamps are from 2003 and feature acrylic on canvas paintings created by the Papunya Tula artists of the Western Desert. These works are all recent paintings produced between 1999 and 2002 and my "2003 Collection of Australian Stamps" book explains "the painting movement has helped to preserve traditional cultural aspirations, protect tribal lands and revive inherited concepts of social order". All the artists are Pintupi people. I think the paintings, and the stamps, are exquisite.

In sharing the above contemporary works of Aboriginal artists, I also wanted to flag with you, lovely readers, an upcoming extra special blog post that will explore rock art. Should be fun! So watch this space!

Guest Collection: Phillipe's Tongan Stamps

Hello friends, fellow stamp enthusiasts, nerds and hipsters...
This week here on iheartpost we have an exciting new development: I'm featuring a guest collection!

Spot the map stamp! :)

Phillipe, the 9 year old son of my work friend Meredith, collects stamps. And because he is a total champion, he was good enough to let his Mum bring them in to work for show and tell. (I love show and tell).

Click on any image for a better view!

As you can see, Phillipe has a fantastic collection of minisheets from Tonga. Aren't they pretty? Explorers, space and sheep. And a little bit of royal kitsch, just to make me especially happy:

It is possible that the King of Tonga one could be my favourite of all.

As well as the issues from the Kingdom of Tonga, one of the Tongan islands, Niuafo'ou, issues its own stamps.

Niuafo'ou was once known as "Tin Can Island" and it still issues its own stamps as a historic throwback (ahem) to when the mail delivery was thrown overboard from boats in tin cans, and bobbed to shore on the current! Or so Meredith tells me (and I believe her). Thankfully, their mail now arrives slightly less sodden, in a different sort of tin can (one with wings):

Thank-you, thank-you Phillipe for sharing these brightly coloured philatelic pieces of an island paradise with us!

In other iheartpost news... I am heading off on a little sojourn to Indonesia for the next couple of weeks. I am skipping the last two weeks of winter (I am SO OVER winter) and searching out some beach/sun/adventure etc. So, until September peeps... keep it real. Nerd out.

The Queen, Clunes and a Coronation Collection

This weekend my friend Jaz and I took a road trip to a small town in the Central Victorian goldfields district to check out the Clunes Booktown bookfair, which proved to be a very fun day out for a nerd like me. There was a veritable bonanza of second-hand books on offer, in the setting of a beautiful old town that has a streetscape barely changed since the gold-rush era. Joy.

I am not sure whether it was because I wrote about Royal Kitsch last week, and it was therefore in the forefront of my mind, or whether it was because I knew I wanted to share some coronation first day covers with you, my lovely blog readers; but either way, somehow I came home from Clunes with not one, or even two, but three books on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Whoops.

The end papers of the books are my favourite thing! They are so decorative! And one of them is even a map! There is so much to get excited about when the books are "colourgravure publications". These books are a techni-colour dream!

I must admit that I purchased many more items other than these coronation books (the temptations were great), and although these books aren't strictly speaking 'post', I love them and couldn't resist sharing them.  I do love a bit of "show and tell". And it was such a fantastic day, that I wanted to share something of that experience too. Next year I think we might have to spend the whole weekend at Clunes Booktown - one day wasn't enough.

And now to the post connection. The weekend before last Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Isobel gave me some more of Pa Bert's first day covers. Some of the most stand-out are the Qantas FDCs celebrating the Queen's Coronation. I now have eight of them - all from different colonies.

The details on these FDCs are so exquisite, that this blog doesn't do them justice. I think the design has been letter-pressed and the texture and feel of the old paper and print is special. Not to mention, the regal gold and red is just lovely.

The FDC from New Zealand has a really fantastic postmark on the front,  while the issue from Ceylon has all the stamps on the reverse of the envelope.

The Malayan FDC is beautiful, and covered with stamps on the front and back:

All of the FDCs are sealed, but some of them feel like they have cardboard in them - and a couple of them might have a pamphlet in them. But I am too afraid to open them to find out!

So somehow, now I have a collection of coronation books as well as a collection of coronation first day covers, and a collection of coronation stamps. Is there a word for a collection of collections?