Indigenous place names will now be recognised by AusPost technology.
Last year, Australia Post delivered more than 2.8 billion items. However, none of those letters, packages or deliveries contained the Indigenous place name of the sender or the receiver, effectively helping to erase Australia’s traditional landowners from memory or map. (Featured image: Matthew Paul Argall)
In an attempt to rectify this and put First Nations place names back on the map, Gomeroi woman Rachel McPhail began a campaign on Instagram in August last year where said, ”every area in this country had an original place name, prior to being given its colonial town/city name” and her belief that including these place names was an important acknowledgment.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the First Nations place name of the town I grew up in. And, it wasn’t till much later in life that I was made aware that Australia was home to hundreds of Countries prior to the British arriving and that their history here went back 60,000 years.
However, this is all changing thanks to Australia Post jumping on the campaign in November and now having released guidelines of how to include the First Nations place names in addresses.
To do so, all you basically have to do is include the traditional place name after the person’s name and before the street address. This is for both senders and receivers. Check out the example Aus Post shared below.
To find traditional place names, check out this map from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, or ask the relevant local cultural centre.
In a caption to one of their posts, Australia Post wrote that, ”acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land, their ancestors, elders and the commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Australians is very important to us.”
Australia’s rich history should be important to all of us, and including the First Nations place name is a simple and easy step in acknowledging the world’s oldest civilisation.