From Private Bag to doorstep: the epic journey of our mail

There’s not much about living on D’Urville Island that could be considered ‘normal’. From sourcing our water, to travelling around the Island, to hauling in supplies. Everything we do acts to remind us that we’re no longer attached to any semblance of ‘normal’.

Except for one thing: we do get mail.

Yep, once a week the outside world encroaches as far as our mailbox and, holding a local newspaper in one hand and bank statements in the other, we get to feel like most of the other residents of this beautiful country.

But the fact that we get mail is where the similarities end, because everything about how we get our mail brings us back to the reality: that nothing about living on this Island is ‘normal’!

Stage 1: from Private Bag to mailbox

To start with, our postal address is not for where we actually live, it’s for a ‘Private Bag’ stored at a post centre in Rai Valley—a small agricultural outpost at the base of the Marlborough Sounds that sits on the main road between Blenheim and Nelson.

Anything that gets posted to us either gets put in, or with, our Private Bag (depending on size). Brilliantly, even signature-required courier items will make it to us via our Private Bag address.

Every Monday afternoon, all the Private bags for D’Urville are driven the hour-and-a-half up to French Pass settlement before being boated across to the Island for delivery first thing Tuesday morning.

This is when the mail splits into two directions. Those Private Bags destined for the south-west and centre of the island, including ours, are taken by road, while the rest, mostly bound for the east coast, are taken by sea. Some of these properties have boat access only and if residents want their mail, they must be on the shore, ready and waiting!

As for our mail, all that remains is for our ‘mailman’ (a very part-time position) to pop our Private Bag, containing our week’s worth of mail, into our mailbox (which is actually more like a mail ‘hut’) and pick up our empty bag from the week before. And so it rotates, exchanging full for empty, much like the milk-bottles of old.

Job well done for the postal service.

All we have to do is come and collect our mail.

And it should be that simple…..but surprise, surprise, it’s not! (though it is the best fun!)

Stage 2: from mail-hut to front door

Like most tasks here, what would be an ordinary activity elsewhere, becomes a thrilling adventure.

You see, to make things sensible for the mailman, our mail hut is located at a point just off the main road so it can service all the other people living further on in that direction (of which there are just a handful, and not all permanent).

This places it at an elevation of 480m, 5km up our steep and winding four-wheel drive track. And, because we rarely have the need to drive anywhere, most weeks this means making a special trip up the hill just to collect our mail.

*Looking down into our valley from just above the mail hut*

Thank goodness for our motorbikes! Because this is where they’re in their element.

Not only do they make the job quicker, easier, and more economical, but, more to the point, the track up the hill makes for some premium dirt-bike riding. With the switch-back corners, steep rutted gradients, and patches of native stinging nettle ready to catch you if you stray, it’s so much more fun to collect the mail by motorbike than just regular-old ute!

And, since we have four bikes, the party is different each week. Sometimes it’s a group event, sometimes we send all the kids, sometimes just the boys race each other up (freed from waiting for their slow mamma). Occasionally, Danny and I go up together for a leisurely cruise and from time-to-time, if the excitement of receiving something specific can’t be born another second, someone might go alone, backpack donned.

This was the case recently, when Rowan rode up by himself, eagerly awaiting some elusive item he’d ordered from Ali Express (yes, we still get that here!) But when he got to the mail hut, it turned out that there were so many awkwardly shaped packages (because our mail bag also services another family in the valley) he couldn’t fit them all in his backpack.

Fortunately, the mailman happened to be there at the same time and, with true Island let’s-make-it-work mentality, he proceeded to lend Rowan some string and help him tie all the big items to the outside of his pack.

Of course, this suited Rowan’s MacGyver-esk nature down to the ground, and there was great satisfaction and laughter on his face when he finally made it home!

An all-weather event

Admittedly, collecting the mail is not quite as fun when we have to wrestle with rough Island weather. If it’s been raining then the track can be slippery and the corners sketchy—tires slide out and trousers get muddy. If it’s been windy then we sometimes have to stop and clear branches. Once, finding our way totally blocked, we even had to go home for the ute and chainsaws.

At such times, it can be good to remember that the mail doesn’t have to be collected on a Tuesday!

I think in all the time we’ve been here though, I’ve only been forced to use the ute once. It was lashing it down and even the ute was slipping around on the track. I was expecting my new laptop to arrive and as well as not wanting to leave it in the mailbox, I didn’t want to risk sliding out on my bike and crushing it—or myself for that matter!

Who cares about Public Holidays anyway?

Being the only fixed event in our D’Urville Island schedule, we often make the mistake of thinking that mail day is set in stone. We forget such things as public holidays—which tend to pass us by completely unheeded anyway.

For us, the only thing special about public holidays is that, along with the rest of NZ, it throws our mail delivery out by a day. More than once this has resulted in us missioning to the top of the hill, only to realize at the sight of the empty mail hut, that we get to repeat the adventure all over again tomorrow!

And apparently we’re not rural

Perhaps the most ironic thing about our mail system though, is that it’s not technically counted as a Rural Delivery. This means that, for all the travelling our mail does to get here, we pay no extra charges to receive it than anyone living in, say, Auckland would.

Having previously lived in a string of Rural Delivery properties that were practically urban compared to D’Urville Island, this fact is particularly amusing. Our last house, for instance, was a mere 4km away from Oxford town, and yet we had to pay the extra bucks for ‘Rural’ Delivery! Go figure?

Gratitude to the New Zealand postal service

In the end, I think receiving mail out here says a lot about the tenacity of the New Zealand Postal Service, and the pioneering attitudes that shaped this country’s recent past: mail is a lifeline, and it is a basic right for everyone to receive it.

Like the settlers before us, we’re constantly grateful for this service. Though we try to avoid filling up our Post bag with unnecessary ‘stuff’, there are times when being able to receive mail has meant the difference between say, being able to get a motorbike back up and running in a couple of weeks compared to a couple of months; or saving hundreds of dollars on birthday presents because we didn’t have to mission off-Island to get them.

And, on the occasional week when we’re all counting down the days for something special to arrive, mail day can seem like Christmas—its jolly red sack a reminder that the outside world isn’t that far away after all!