Postie delivering more than mail in remote ageing communities
MELBOURNE: The postman is growing his role beyond mail delivery into community monitoring oversight.
It is only about 130 kilometres from Hobart, but in many ways Miena is another world.
Only about 80 people call the small town of fishing shacks home.
Steven Kurtz, 61, is among them, having lived in his shack for about 27 years.
“It’s the only place I’d like to live. I can’t live down the coast — it’s just too stupid down there, there’s too many people,” he said.
“You get used to it after a while, I do get lonely every now and again but it’s nothing severe, nothing I’ve got to call some phone number for and get some help or anything like that. It’s alright.
The Great Lake Hotel is the gathering point and visits there are often the only time the locals see another living soul.
Kaylee Hattinger has been running the pub for the past 15 years.
“Even though there’s not that many permanent residents up here, we do care about each other and we do interact on a really regular basis,” Ms Hattinger said.
“I feel very much like their mother … I tend to bully them a little bit and if I don’t see them for a few days … I will go around or send someone around to make sure that they’re not dead.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had to go around and find someone dead because we haven’t seen them for a couple of days, or we get our local policeman to do a welfare check on them, because some people … we are all they have.”
Rural Alive and Well Tasmania’s Liz Little said it was easy in places like Miena for people to lose touch with the outside world and effectively become hermits.
“Isolation isn’t always a geographical thing … it’s also a state of mind,” Ms Little said.
She said services that city slickers took for granted, such as the postman visiting, were vitally important to the mental health of those in places like Miena.
“People like the postie or the person that delivers your paper are enormously important. Human beings are social creatures — we need to see each other and if people are in fact withdrawing and being isolated they are doing that for a reason,” she said.
“They’re doing that because something is wrong physically and they can’t cope with the world, or something is wrong mentally and they are not engaging.
Bothwell postmaster Mark Kirkland has been delivering the mail to the Great Lakes region for almost seven years.
“I deliver the mail to the Great Lakes, out to Arthurs Lake and out to Miena,” he said.
He has realised over the years that the mail run is more than just dropping off the post.
“That’s what they say, the mail must get through,” he said.
“But yes, it’s important, especially up in the Great Lakes and places like that because, it’s the only delivery they get.”
Miena is also one of the coldest places in Tasmania. Its isolation is increased when thick snow blocks the roads and not even the mail can get through.
It is not uncommon for the locals to be snowed in for days at a time.
“We need to be concerned about isolation all the time because we know that is the key indicator of people being at risk of suicide or mental health issues,” Ms Little said.
“It is dangerous and it’s certainly dangerous if you’ve already got risk factors — if you are already potentially depressed and whatever else and then you completely withdraw in winter.”
Mr Kurtz is one of those who ‘hibernates’ in the winter.
“[I] hate the snow, I don’t like the cold but like I said, I couldn’t live down the coast, it would just drive me mad down there,” he said.
“Every year just have plenty of wood, build your fire and stay warm and don’t go anywhere. It’s not a normal situation to a lot of people but it’s just what I’m used to.”
And even in a world blanketed in snow, the shack dweller can see a silver lining in the postie not making it through.
