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!

Adventures in Indonesia

Hello friends, followers and strangers in cyberspace! Lovely to be back online and touching base with the blogosphere. I have just returned to Melbourne after a very fun, jam-packed and delicious two-week sojourn to Indonesia. I was hanging out in Java mostly, but I also managed to spend a couple of days on Bali, embracing my inner bogan.

And whilst I indulged in a LOT of lounging by poolsides, I also managed to climb a couple of volcanoes, hit some hot springs and visit many exquisite temples. I jumped aboard an overnight train, a couple of ferries, hitched rides in minibuses, and I even once caught an ojek - a motorcycle taxi. It was a very grand adventure.

Yep, I had fun.

And I of course found some time for post. First off, in my hunt for post, I went to the Bandung post office. When I buy stamps overseas for my postcards, I always get a few extra for my stamp album. However, I was a very lazy tourist who didn't have much (ok, any) Indonesian (I learnt how to say 'thank-you': terima kasih)- so I walked up to the counter with a smile and asked in English for some stamps to go on postcards to send to Australia, and if it wasn't too much trouble, it would be great if they could be beautiful, because I collect stamps. Terima kasih! (insert big smile here).

The post office lady  looked at me somewhat blankly, but then retreated out the back, and came back with her supervisor, and a whole bunch of these stamps:

She apologised and said that she was sorry, they only had this one design for stamp collectors! I was thrilled! What a great stamp! So I bought several for my postcards, and kept one as a souvenir. Perfecto. Thankyou wonderful post office lady.

But later that day, I hit the post jackpot, when I stumbled upon this little store:

Inside, there was all sorts of trash and treasure... and amongst everything, there were all these vintage first day covers pinned up for sale. Oh yeah: pay dirt!

So, in this little store in Bandung, which I had just stumbled upon while wandering around the city by myself for the day, I managed to find some great post souvenirs to take home and add to my collection. 

The one above is my favourite because it ticks all the right boxes. It:

             a) includes maps with stamps on them,

             b) is postmarked Bandung, the city where I was staying, and

             c) is commemorating a solar eclipse, which makes it just generally COOL. 

And this one not only  includes a map stamp... it is a map stamp with an airmail envelope. Double cool. I actually really like the designs of all these stamps. Here is a closer look:

And again with the Bandung postmark. 

I was pretty thrilled with my haul of FDC postal goodies. But then, once I started asking the guys behind the counter about the covers, they then bought out all these stamp albums for me to look at. Unfortunately I couldn't just buy the stamps I wanted, I had to buy the whole album. So I did. Anyhow, these are a couple of the best stamps from the album I bought:

Yep - stamps celebrating Homo erectus. Wicked.

As you might be able to tell from the scans, some of the stamps were individually wrapped in plastic. That too made me happy (such a careful action, to wrap a stamp so delicately!).

The album is pretty cool... so watch this space. It warrants a blog post all to itself, so at some stage I will scan the album and share it.

Anyhow, in short, my Indonesian holiday was wonderful. And I am excited to have some post to remind me of such a fun trip. And just to be a bit self-indulgent and rub it in, I will sign off with a few little holiday snaps:

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.

Animal Definitives: Sunday Stamps

Ok. If it is one thing Australia has, it is plenty of strange wildlife. The fauna (and flora) confounded the Europeans when they arrived here a couple of hundred years ago and the unique animals cohabitating our continent continue to amaze and inspire.

So it is no surprise that there are plenty of animal stamps issued by Australia Post, as our native fauna helps us to define ourselves. We are a young nation (albeit with a long indigenous past) and quirky animals are easy totems by which we can distinguish ourselves in the world.

 All of which is to say, our animals are basically kick-ass.

Australia Post has issued stamps on our reptiles, our birds, animal welfare and even our bugs. But I thought the above definitives issued in 1986 and 1987 were appropriate to share this week on Sunday Stamps which has an animal theme.

And just to prove how nationalistic animals can be, I also dug up this 1995 joint-issue with China which celebrates the Koala and the Panda.

But just for good measure, and a bit of frivolity, I thought I would also share this cute dog stamp from Japan, which is perhaps the cutest stamp in my whole collection.

You gotta love an irregularly shaped stamp. Especially one featuring a puppy. Awww. Cute.

That's it from me for this Sunday. Have a great week all!