Mail boxes

I saw this group of mail boxes on a trip out into the country. You see lots them by the side of the road, sometimes in groups, like these, or sometimes standing solitary. Some of them are bought, ready-made, from a hardware store but mostly they‘re just made from junk - old metal drums, plastic containers, anything that can be cut open at one end and nailed to some kind of support.

Occasionally, you see some that are real works of art, complex metalwork creations, weatherproofed sculptures of birds, animals or strange machines, and you can almost picture their creators in their workshops down the end of the farm track, designing yet another mail box as a way of relaxing after a hard day on the land.

Mostly, though, they’re just bits of recycling left to stand out in all weathers, mostly blazing sun and wind-blown dust but some torrential rain, by the side of the road, just about affording some protection for the mail left inside. They seem rather frail and vulnerable, and not really up to the job of protecting what’s inside. After all, in spite of the web, lots of important stuff still comes by mail - from banks, the utility companies, solicitors - so why leave it in the care of half an old seed drum?

You can stand by many of them and scour the surrounding landscape for the house they serve without seeing a sign of habitation. The owners clearly don’t take a casual stroll down to pick up their mail and would more likely drive or check it when they were getting into the ute to go into the nearest town. The boxes are really out on a limb, almost abandoned. And yet no one worries about their mail being stolen, which says a lot for rural communities.

The one below seems to have a definite identity - 287 Irvines Road. If you were in a town, you’d look at an A to Z and find Irvines Road but here there’s just the tarmac road from Macksville to Bowraville and then the two dirt tracks heading off who knows where, both unmarked. And there’s no sight of number 287, or 285, or 289. Just the mail boxes.