Stage Number: MBSH.05.02.03
Group: Western
Local Study Area: Corinda-Oxley
Epoch: Late 19th Century
Street Address: Junction of Blunder and Ipswich roads
Latitude & Longitude: -27.56658333,152.98036111
Time Link: 1862
Map Link: 1876
Image Time Point: 1876
Oxley was declared a post town in 1862, meaning that mail could be addressed specifically to a person living in ‘Oxley’. The first post office opened there in October of that year, with hotel licensee John McDonald serving as the first postmaster. The post office was initially inside the hotel itself, to the consternation of the more ‘respectable’ locals, one of whom wrote to the Brisbane Courier; ‘…apart from complaints of incivility and the like, it is generally admitted that a public-house bar room is not a proper place for a post-office. What respectable female would like to enter a bar room, amongst men three-parts intoxicated, to enquire for her own or her husband’s letters? Or what parents would send their daughter, even though pressed for time themselves, to post letters when the post-office is a bar room?’ The area was susceptible to flooding and the hotel had to be relocated to higher ground by the 1890s. The post office was moved to the junction of Ipswich and Blunder roads and survived until the late 20th century, before the Ipswich Road was upgraded to the Ipswich Motorway in 1989.
The Courier, 4 October 1862; Brisbane Courier, 2 May 1865.
The position of the Oxley Post Office. Brisbane City Council. Brisbane Images. Street Map Brisbane and Suburbs 1959. Record number. BCA1702.
QSA. QSA Series ID 1015 Moreton District 20 Chain Maps – AG3. 20 chains to the inch. Parish of Oxley, County of Stanley. 532954
