The Old Wollongong Telegraph and Post Office is a heritage-listed former government offices, telegraph station and post office and now local history museum at 11 Market Street, Wollongong, in the City of Wollongong local government area of New South Wales, Australia. James Barnet designed the 1882 extension and expansion. The telegraph and post office was built from 1864 to 1882 in varying stage by S. E. Bloomfield (1864), George Brown (1870), George Billings (1882), Andrew Herd (1885) and the NSW Government (). It is also known as Illawarra Historical Society Museum; Wollongong Museum; and Illawarra Museum. The property is owned by Wollongong City Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 27 February 2015.
History Aboriginal land For more than 30,000 years prior to European occupation, the Illawarra area was home to the Dharawal people and their ascendants and used for all manner of cultural and ceremonial activities. There was an abundance of food from the combined marine and riparian environment. Archaeological evidence of this extended occupation by the Aboriginal people is found in extensive middens in the area.Rogers, 1988Hagan & Wells, 1997Organ, 1993
Colonial history Following the colonisation of Sydney Harbour by the British convict settlement in 1788, the Wollongong area, 80 kilometres to the south, was slowly affected by European occupation. Although relationships between the Aboriginal people and early European settlers were initially peaceful, by the I830s they had deteriorated as a result of the Europeans laying claim to land. The Aboriginal population declined sharply but descendants continue to live in the area.Howard, 2001
In 1809 the first official postal service in Australia was established when the Sydney merchant Isaac Nichols was appointed as the first postmaster in the colony of NSW in April 1809. Prior to this, mail delivery was neither secure nor reliable as it was distributed directly by the captain of the ship on which the mail arrived. Charles Throsby came down the escarpment at Bulli in 1815 and established grazing lands near the present harbour.
John Oxley surveyed the area in 1816, leading to the granting of land to selectors. The first official land grants in the Illawarra were made on 2 December 1816 or 24 January 1817.
During the 1820s shipments of produce and timber destined for the Sydney market as well as supplies into Wollongong were transferred by small flat bottomed boats to ships anchored off the beach. In 1825 the colonial administration in Sydney was empowered to establish a local postal service, which had previously been administered from Britain. In 1828, the first post offices outside Sydney were established, including offices in Bathurst, Campbelltown, Parramatta, Liverpool, Newcastle, Penrith and Windsor. By 1839, there were forty post offices in the colony and more post offices opened as settlement spread.
Between 1826 and the 1830s, a garrison was established in Wollongong in 1826, marking the official beginnings of European occupation. The settlement developed as a cedar port from 1826, and also as a dairying and agricultural centre.Winkworth, 2011 In the early days mail arrived in Wollongong once a week by boat and was administered from the court house. 'The amount of mail collected for and sent from Wollongong during the 1830s and '40s would fill no more than a saddlebag.'
Following a visit to the Illawarra in 1834, Governor Bourke proclaimed the Town of Wollongong as officially surveyed by Thomas Mitchell. In 1838 the postal service was shifted from the Wollongong's magistrate's office to E. Palmer's store.Kass, 2010 During the 1830s and 1840s Governor Bourke ordered the construction of a harbour at Wollongong. The work of excavating a safe harbour out of the headland was carried out by hundreds of convicts. The harbour enabled safe berthing for ships and expanded the commercial capacity of the region.
The first coal mine in the Illawarra was opened in 1849. By 1865 "mail deliveries to and from Wollongong had vastly improved. There was a daily delivery by horseback and a steamer called in at least three times per week".
The telegraph line linking Australia to the rest of the world arrived in Wollongong on 13 August 1862. In preparation, the Department of Public Works had advertised for tenders for land to build a telegraph station. The tender was awarded to Robert Haworth, who owned a large portion of land between Crown Street and Market Street and had been elected MLA to NSW Parliament in December 1860. The lot in Market Street on which the telegraph office was built, next to Haworth's Queen's Hotel, was valued at A£500 but there was talk that it went for A£5. Herben suggests that Haworth may have sold the land cheaply to the government in order to generate activity around his hotel. Indeed, the electric telegraph line was initially set up in Haworth's Queens Hotel while the telegraph office building was being completed. However the location was not very convenient to the Wollongong town centre.
In 1864 NSW Public Works tendered the construction work for the telegraph station to Mr S E Bloomfield of Wollongong. The overall cost of the building was A£670.The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 1864, quoted in Herben, p. 11
Herben reports an Illawarra Mercury published article of 20 September 1864 questioning the probity of the decision to locate the telegraph office Market Street, some blocks from the centre of the town. 'The story goes that it is the inconvenience of the whole town to gratify just one man. Why should everyone trudge a mile or half a mile or less daily just to benefit Mr Haworth? . . . "If there really be such an unusual and suspicious bargain in existence . . . the whole transaction from beginning to end demands investigation". No record of an official investigation has been found.
In 1868 a petition to the Mayor requested a public meeting to petition the government to erect a new post office in Wollongong. This petition was unsuccessful. In December 1869, a tender from John Brown was accepted "to extend the Telegraph Station building to allow the Post Office and Telegraph Station to be incorporated into the one building. The newspaper reported that a new wing was to be added to the building to be used as the post office".Illawarra Mercury, 28 December 1869, quoted in Herben, 2013, p. 12 It is likely that the "time ball", erected on a post in the front of the single storey building, was added to the premises around this time:
In 1879 the postmaster proposed that a storey be added to the building to provide further office space as well as residential accommodation for the postmaster. Colonial Architect James Barnet prepared drawings in 1880 for the first floor addition and also a new facade for the building, at a cost estimated at A£1,050. Although other plans were also in contention "Mr Barnet considered that his design was least expensive and more ornamental.". While the new storey was being added, post and telegraph services were temporarily relocated to the empty old Royal Hotel on the corner of Crown and Corrimal Streets. By 1882 the now two-storey post and telegraph office was completed and its time ball was placed on the roof.
In 1885 a second, larger "Battery room" was built on the west fence line to a design by Barnet and constructed by Andrew Herd & Son whose tender proposed a cost of 327 pounds. Further alterations costing A£110, unspecified, were undertaken at this time. In 1887 a railway linked the northern mines to Wollongong and to Sydney, meaning the more costly and hazardous jetties were no longer needed. Among other impacts, the railway moved the centre of the town away from the harbour, but brought more tourism to the region as visitors came to see the sublime view from Bulli Pass. In 1889 local lobbying finally resulted in a more conveniently located post and telegraph office for Wollongong being built on Crown Street, next to the Town Hall, known as the East Wollongong Post Office (also designed by the Colonial Architect's Office, completed in 1892 and listed on the State Heritage Register No.1616). The time ball was relocated to the top of the new building where it remained in operation until .
From the 1890s to 1964 the old telegraph and post office building remained in the ownership of the NSW Government. It was first used as the offices of the Wollongong Harbour Trust, but this organisation was disbanded in 1895. 'The next tenant was the Department of Public Works. The upstairs became the residence for the Manager of the Public Works and his family. The Department of Public Works, at that time, was constructing the breakwater at Port Kembla Bay. Other users of the building were the Dole and Food clothing ticket office during the Depression of the 1930s followed by the Recruiting Office from 1939 until 1945, the Electoral Office 1946–47, the Motor Registry Office from 1947 and then the Department of Labour and Industry until late 1964.'
History since Federation Following the Federation of the Australian colonies into a single nation in 1901, all post and telegraph offices were passed onto the Commonwealth Government. In 1928 The Hoskins iron and steel works opened in 1928, and were taken over by BHP in 1935. In a freestanding air raid shelter was constructed at the rear of the premises of the former post office building during the early years of World War II. The floor was concrete with walls of double brick and the roof at least 100 to 125 mm solid reinforced concrete. There was a blast wall on the northern end, allowing for safety from explosions. The blast wall was removed prior to 1966.
The Illawarra Historical Society was founded in 1944 following a public meeting called by the Mayor of Wollongong. 'The development of a collection of objects, photographs and documents was an integral part of the original purpose of the Society" and members began collating their collections of small local artefacts and photographs. After some years of being stored in members" homes, the first formal repository for the collection was the World War II air raid shelter originally located in Crown Street between the Town Hall and the East Wollongong Post Office.
In a fibro garage was constructed on the premises of the former post office building, with a driveway entrance onto Queens Parade, also a rotary clothes hoist (located behind the 1885 Battery Room), all since demolished. In 1963 the Illawarra Historical Society wrote to Council proposing a need for museum premises for their local historical collections and suggesting possible sites in the locality (the old Court House near Wollongong Harbour and the old Bulli Council Chambers were both considered). The 150 year anniversary of colonisation of the region on 2 December 1966 was approaching and they wished to commence preparations for celebrations (letter dated 22 February in Council file D336/63). In 1965 the Illawarra Historical Society became aware of the now empty former Telegraph and Post Office building and began lobbying state and local government to make it available to the society for use as an office and museum.