Albany 2026: One of WA’s oldest government buildings, the Old Post Office served many purposes

Now a place of learning and scholarship, the distinctive clock tower, turrets and gabled terraces of Albany’s UWA campus on Stirling Terrace once served a different purpose — mail.

In a bygone era, post was the key method of communication, and by far the most popular.

The Old Post Office, now 157 years standing, was for a time the portal of this communication between WA and the rest of the world.

It was Albany’s first government building and was intended as a hub for administration that would host the budding town’s courtroom, local government office, customs, and bonded warehouse and well as its post office, with construction commencing in 1867.

Using granite extracted by prisoners from Mount Clarence for bricks, lime for cement from Limeburners Creek and sheoak shingles for roofing from the King and Kalgan rivers areas, the building rose into the elegant design formulated by architect James Manning and was in use by 1869.

It is WA’s oldest post office and in 1851, became the official mail port for the fledgling western colony.

It was also the place where WA first became connected to the rest of the world via the inter-colonial telegraph network, with the base station in Albany linking the State to South Australia and thus the rest of the world.

An account of the building’s history by its then postmaster Wally Offer in 1963 describes the importance of this occasion.

“In 1872, with postmaster Mr. E.W. Howard on £100 per annum, the telegraph service became available to the district, and in 1874 it was decided to link Albany with Eucla by means of a telegraph line,” the account reads.

“The first pole, which was installed by Governor Weld at Albany, may still be seen outside the old post office building in Stirling Terrace.

“At 7pm on December 8, 1877 the telegraph line between Albany and Eucla was opened, and teams of telegraphists from South Australia and Western Australia worked together in the same building at Eucla passing telegrams to each other by hand for onward transmission to South Australia or Western Australia, whichever the case.

“By 1877 mail was carried four times weekly to Albany, with the contract worth £200, while 1884 saw the first letter delivered by postman.”

In July 1888, the last mail coach, drawn by horses and driven by H.C. Chipper and his brother John, left Albany for Perth as the newly established Great Southern Railway took over the job of mail courier.

The famed tower and western end weren’t added until 1896, with contractors carrying out architect George Poole’s expanded designs for the sum of £4500 — roughly the equivalent of $1m today.

It’s impressive height of 25 metres wasn’t reached until 1901 when an additional six metres was added to allow the townspeople to check the time from a distance.

Mr Offer was the last postmaster to occupy the building as the service moved to a new home on the corner of York and Grey streets in 1964 and the space was repurposed as the Employment Office and Taxation Department.

This existence was short-lived as only three years later the council purchased the building and for the next three decades it was leased out for a variety of weird and wonderful pursuits, including the Fellowship of Australia Writers, Albany Pigeon Club, the Girl Guides and Mission to Seafarers — who bought the old mail counter off the office for $5.

The Old Post Office hosted meetings, theatrical performances, debates, lectures, concerts, socials, church services, a Post Office Museum, a restaurant (The Penny Post) and served as the home for Spectrum Theatre.

In 1999, seeking to further education opportunities for regional youth, the University of Western Australia moved in and transformed the space into a hub for education.

The grand three-storey building sits as a well-preserved relic of when Stirling Terrace served as Albany’s heart, rather than the more modern York Street.