Over the years, many complaints of mail delays have been made to the Post Office but only once have they been the cause of an Australian town threatening to secede and set up a separate British Colony.

The town was Williamstown in Victoria and the move to break away from the young colony was made in 1855. The move failed, but the events surrounding it make an interesting chapter of postal history. Prior to separation from N.S.W., the early settlers in the Port Phillip district had a grievance. The ships carrying mail from England for Melbourne by-passed Port Phillip and went direct to Sydney. It was then sent back overland or by sea to Port Phillip with a sixfold postage charge, payable on delivery.

Public meetings were held and petitions drawn up to convince the Government that "we would rather not have our newspapers and letters taken past our doors and sent back to us after a delay of 3 to 6 weeks."

With the discovery of gold in 1850 and the granting of separation in July, 1851, Melbourne gained a direct and more-or-less regular overseas postal service.

But the early colonists of Williamstown,.still smarting, from the treatment they had received from Sydney, found the new direct service to Melbourne still not to their liking.

Mail from England was off-loaded on to a mail cutter in Hobson's Bay and landed, not at Williamstown, but at Liardet's Beach (now Port Melbourne). It took the name Liardet's Beach from Wilbraham Liardet, who for many years had the mail contract to carry the mail by dray from the beach up to the G.P.O., which was then a timber building in Elizabeth Street.

This, of course, meant several days before letters addressed to Williamstown reached the young settlement. Public meetings chaired by Williamstown's former postmaster, Mr. Thomas Mason, were held and, in 1855, a petition was sent to the Postmaster-General in England asking for a direct mail service between London and Williamstown.

The Melbourne "Argus" of those days described Mason as a man “who, with indefatigable zeal, identifies himself with the interest and progress of the town”. Mason was a Londoner who opened a general store and post office in Nelson Place opposite the present Gem Pier.

The petition was sent to England in an envelope designed and printed at the Williamstown Chronicle. In place of a Victorian postage stamp, printed in the top right-hand corner was a diamond-shaped Williamstown imprint "stamp". Only three of these envelopes were printed and, as far as is known, the only one still in evidence is held by Williamstown Council's Historian, Mr. Wilson Evans.

When the petition failed, meetings to secede from the young Colony of Victoria were held but with rumours that Williamstown was to be instituted a Borough and proposals of improved postal service, the agitation died a natural death.

The young Victorian Government evidently viewed the Williamstown move seriously for the following year, 1856, Williamstown was proclaimed a Borough with the former postmaster elected as the Council's first chairman. He later represented that district in the Legislative Assembly.

By September, 1859, work had commenced on the £1,570 two-storied post office in Cole Street that was to provide Williamstown with postal facilities equal to any in the colony. It opened for business on the 4th December 1860 with Mr Richard Piper as its first postmaster.

Although over the years alterations have been made, the original building shown above still part of the Williamstown Post Office - a fine monument to the fighting spirit of those early settlers who pioneered what is now one of Victoria’s most historic cities.

Extracted from “Post Age” – December 1962