Ivan, the owner of the Mingela Hotel, asked if I wanted a ride from Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam Campground, a distance of 50 miles.
I’ve refused rides a number of times when people asked me if I wanted a lift. To me, there is no need for a ride in a motorized vehicle if I had planned to bike the route anyway. But if something looks interesting, and requires that I ride in a car, I do so. Going on a mail run with Ivan sounded like an interesting thing to do.
Ivan is the mail deliverer and receiver for the area, and was going to make his weekly rural mail run. His Wednesday drive in the countryside covers the route that I was going to take on my bike, so he simply asked the question as a gesture of helpfulness. And I said yes.
SIDE NOTE ABOUT THE MILES (for the biking purists)
As of this writing, the mileage on my GPS is at 4,650 miles/7,480 km (I am writing from the Gold Coast, Queensland). For those who track riding miles, I did not ride all those miles. Here are the miles in which I rode in a car:
— With Sebastian from Warakurna to Docker River: 70 miles
— With Peter from Townsville to Woodstock: 30 miles
— With Ivan from Ravenswood to Burdekin Dam: 50 miles
— With Chris from Gympie to Eumundi: 30 miles
TOTAL: 180 miles out of 4650 miles (thus far) was ridden in a motorized vehicle.
Mingela is a town of 6 people about 60 miles south of Townsville. He and his wife Moana are 2 of the 6 people. Between Mingela and the Burdekin Dam, there are several cattle stations, with houses so far back from the road that you can’t see them. Cattle stations are loosely equivalent to the US cow ranches, with their homes in the far reaches of the area. They have their mailboxes, which are usually large oil drums converted to hold things, by the edge of the road. Ivan drives around and drops mail or packages into these boxes, and picks up what’s there for him to take back to the post office– just like a mail man.
Ivan is a warm man who runs a hotel in Mingela with his wife. From talking with him, I can tell he was a generous man, not driven by money, even though he had a business sense to him. He is a part-time mailman– contracted out to do only one thing: deliver and pick up mail on a set route every Wednesday. He runs a hotel as his livelihood. He only gets a small fee from the postal service to make this weekly run. So if one lives in these areas, one can only expect mail to arrive once weekly. Mail in outback areas is run this way.
I had already biked ahead a day to be in Ravenswood instead of staying in Mingela (I could have stayed an extra day in Mingela and ridden all the way to Burdekin Dam in the car with Ivan, but I chose to bike to Ravenswood, where he would pick me up the next day.) So on that Wednesday, I waited at the Ravenswood post office, which is really a small general store, for Ivan to come by in his 4-wheel-drive. When Ivan arrived, he had packages and mail from Mingela for the people in the general store to process. It seems his route begins in Mingela, but Mingela has no post office. So he brings it to Ravenswood, where one employee, also contracted out, processes the mail and packages from Mingela.
In the meantime, we load my bike on the back of his vehicle.
When the mail is ready, all sorted by drop-off points, it is given to Ivan. And off we go.
It takes about 2 hours to reach the final destination of the Burdekin Dam offices. In between, we stop here and there, where he gets out of his truck, checks the roadside bin for any material to take with him, and deposits the new material to be delivered to that particular cattle station.
There are about 5 mail drops total in about 60 miles. And only enough quantity to qualify for weekly runs. . Which is why Ivan has this side job for a little extra income. All in all, a regular mail day like any other, except for some logistics. It was fun riding and discovering this mail system with Ivan.
I thought I would close with some pics of mailboxes I have seen, although they weren’t on the route Ivan traveled:
