Why Australia Isn’t Really a First World Country

Today I enjoyed a lunch time trek to my ‘local’ post office to pick up a package that the Australia Post was unable to deliver to my home.  In fairness, it was too large to go through my mail slot.  The package however was not too large to be left with my building’s 24 hour reception.  Apparently I have lots of free time to do the mailman’s job and go to the post office that is open from 9-5, Monday through Friday and is located nowhere near my house or my office.

Alas, half an hour after leaving my office, I had package in hand and asked to file an official complaint against the mailman / Australia Post.  For the umpteenth time in two years, I received no first notice that I had a missed delivery / package waiting for pick-up, only the final notice.  And the final notice was pre-dated a day when it arrived in my mailbox.  The woman at the post office told me that final notices are actually mailed through the post, and not delivered by the mailman in lieu of the package if they fail to find you at home a second time.  Which means that yes, Australia Post does not try to deliver your package more than once.  Postage here should really be called a ‘storage / DIY pick-up fee.’

Apparently I was supposed to be grateful that unlike my last package, this one wasn’t immediately returned to sender without any attempt or notice at delivery (a separate complaint was filed multiple times for that, to absolutely no avail).  I was also supposed to be grateful that the final notice was delivered to my mailbox instead of to one of my neighbour’s mailboxes (yes, that has happened multiple times) or the floor of the apartment building foyer (yes, that has also happened multiple times).

Since the Australia Post can’t seem to manage to do their job, I think I’ll stop doing the job that inadvertently fell to me when H & I moved into our Perth home two years ago…returning all of the mail of prior tenants to sender.  Because in Australia, it costs money to forward mail or change your address and in the fair go spirit, none of the dozen or so former tenants of our apartment felt the need to do this.

Australia Post should be ashamed of itself.  In Qatar we literally didn’t have an address, just a landmark that we lived near, yet somehow all of our mail got delivered there.

There Are Some Things In Life That I'll Never Understand

One of our neighbors who owns a car like this:

decided that they needed to take the valve caps off the tires of our decidedly less flash car for their own use.  I’m thinking that whoever took our valve caps is either a kleptomaniac or really lazy.  Given that we live down the street from a tire shop, I’m thinking it’s the former.  

If H didn’t check the tire pressure so frequently, I’d be tempted to rub some poison ivy over the next set of valve caps as a present to the neighbour who decides to borrow them.  Instead I guess that I’ll have to resort to either vacuuming or playing loud music very early in the morning, cooking unpleasantly pungent food to perfume the hallways, spreading my junk mail between the neighbors' mailboxes, or getting a guard dog to deter the resident kleptomaniac from actually entering our home (excrement outside neighbors doors and repeated barking would be a side bonus). 

Just kidding, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do any of the above.  Well, I may already distribute my unaddressed junk mail between my neighbors boxes when I don’t feel like taking it to a trash can.  While the Australia Post is terrible at delivering mail that’s actually addressed to us, they do an excellent job of filling our mailbox with Domino’s menus, real estate ads, and mail from about two dozen former residents.   Hey, I’m just trying to share the love.  Who wouldn’t want a special discount on one of Domino’s Biggest Losers’ pizzas?