Yes, back to the business of business. I suppose that it helps pay for time away from work but that seems all too rare. I can't recall the last time I had two full weeks off or went away for more than four days, though I've certainly enjoyed the time that I've had off just recently, even though it meant coming back to a week and a half's work to do.

This is a post office's private letter boxes. Australia Post has been complaining recently about falling profitability now that so much correspondence has become electronic. And yea verily that's true. So what's their response to it?

To cut back hours, and to shut down some local post offices completely.

Now let me see if I understand this correctly. Australia Post is under challenge from the Internet but, as it boasts, it still delivers 2/3rds of the parcels of goods which are ordered via the Internet. Which presumably means that 1/3rd are going via courier. And their plan to hold and extend that margin is to continue with the 9 to 5 hours that they were used to doing when they held a near-monopoly, and to indeed cut back on the few post offices (including mine) which used to be open for part (not all, just part, mind you) of Saturday so that people who are expecting a package now have to take time off work to pick it up.

Hmmm. Yes, good plan, I see it working out quite nicely.

For the courier companies, anyway.

There have been quite a few letters in the Sydney Morning Herald about this recently as well. I certainly know that other businesses have found {cough}"success" in reducing rather than increasing services. For certain values of "success".
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Edit 09 August 2024: I believe that this was taken in the Campsie post office's collection centre which was just outside the Campsie Centre shopping centre. I was, and still am, cagey about revealing too much personal information about where I am so I would often tag places just as "Sydney". However I do know that I did need to collect mail from Campsie back in the day for a time, and this was before I moved south, so it was probably Campsie. The main post office was on the first level of the centre, but the PO Boxes were in a small shopfront just outside the centre's main doors so that you could access it (with a PO box key) after hours.

It looks like that place, as best I recall after 13 years.

Australia Post is running fewer and fewer post offices now and are outsourcing them (and PO boxes) to small businesses which also operate as newsagents. Well, the part of newsagents which sell Lotto products anyway.

I just saw some comments that I wrote in 2023 about another shot relating to Australia Post which read, in relation to classic "snail mail", "As of 2020, however, the volume had plunged to about 60% of 1988 levels and was still in a power dive at close to a 45% angle year on year." Australia Post is keeping itself afloat by parcel deliveries. A system of "drop lockers" is making it less important for the post offices to be physically open. Of course, that is now, not 13 years ago so the comments that I made at the time still stand.