The Seymour Mail Centre is each day home to deliveries for the wider north-east region.
In the sorting room, the names of towns hours away are plastered on posters above large cages containing all kinds of mail.
From Shepparton to Corryong, Wangarratta to Bright, the local mail centre is the engine room behind much of regional Victoria’s delivery service.
Paul Burke, the facility manager on site, has worked in various roles at the mail centre for 33 years and knows the ins and outs of the site.
“We service the north-east of Victoria, country Victoria and the Goulburn Valley. We go as far as Wodonga, Mount Beauty, Corryong, and then come down to the Murray. We’ve also got Yarrawonga, Cobram, Shepparton, and we go as far south as Broadford,” he said.
“We’ve got about 68 staff who work here, 54 of them are corporate and 12 of them are contractors.”
The mail centre acts as a halfway point between deliveries, with staff sorting parcels and letters before they are taken to their next drop-off point.
“We process the mail and the parcels through the night so they get delivered to the post offices and delivery centres to then be delivered the next day,” Mr Burke said.
“We’re open six days a week, from Sunday right through to Saturday morning.
“We have to be a day ahead of the posties so we can get the mail to them to be ready to be delivered the next day.”
The hard work of the team on site was exemplified during the recent peak period, where a significant amount of mail went through the doors of the local centre.
“Our peak period goes from November to the end of December, and probably into the first week of January because of the Boxing Day sales,” Mr Burke said.
“Here at Seymour, we went through about 5.4 million articles (letters and parcels) ... that’s more or less for about five weeks.”
Over the years, Mr Burke has witnessed the evolution of Australia Post, seeing the storage of the letters coming through the doors downsizing from a large section of cages to a tiny corner, as well as the implementation of a developing tracking system for customers.
He said he continued to enjoy his decades at the centre.
“It’s been good for me and my family, it’s a good company to work for,” he said.
“I started off as a mail officer and now I’m managing, so there are great employment opportunities here.”
He said he also loved the community feel of the team and brought up the example of a worker recently spending hours of his own time in a fire-affected town to ensure people could collect their mail despite the barriers of closed roads.
“He did it off his own back, and that’s the type of community we have here,” Mr Burke said.
“Australia Post people want to service and help people as much as they can.”
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