58 Gawler St /33 Hutchinson St, Post and Telegraph Office (Von Doussas)
In the original plans for the town of Mount Barker two blocks of land in the centre of the town were set aside. One was reserved for the Post Office and Police Station, and the second was for the use of the Church. The Post Office was a little slow to get up and running, so at first mail was handled by the police station, which opened in 1840.
In 1847 John Banks Shepherdson (1809-1897) took up a position as Mount Barker’s postmaster. He had come to South Australia in 1837 as South Australia’s inaugural schoolmaster, but rather than returning to England at the end of his contract in 1840 he had turned to farming in the Mount Barker area. Needing a steadier income for his growing family, he moved into Mount Barker to take up the Post Office job, as well as a position as clerk in the local Magistrate’s Court.
Shepherdson purchased a block on the corner of Gawler and Mann Streets which had previously belonged to overlander Captain John Finnis. There he set up the Post Office in a makeshift hut while the rudimentary house on the site could be made ready for his family. He ran the Post Office from that address until he resigned his position in 1854. The house still stands at 74 Gawler Street, and is currently a cosmetics clinic. (See here.)
The local mail coach services during Shepherdson’s time were as follows:
Daily between Adelaide and Mount Barker
Three times a week between Mount Barker and Wellington
Three times a week between Hahndorf and Inverbrackie
Three times a week between Hahndorf and Echunga
Three times a week between Mount Barker and Staughton
Weekly between Wellington and Mount Gambier
When Shepherdson resigned, the mail was handled at the other end of Gawler Street, at A.W. Richardson’s chemist shop (see 15 Gawler Street). But Mount Barker was expanding, and the town needed a dedicated Post Office building. At the same time, the invention of the telegraph was ushering in a new era of social and commercial communications. By 1857 telegraph lines had been constructed from Adelaide to Gawler, Port Elliot and Goolwa. Mount Barker risked being left behind.
To meet this need, this substantial two-storey building was constructed in 1860 as the Mount Barker Telegraph and Post Office. People queued at the Post Office window to collect their mail, while the upper storey provided accommodation for the Postmaster. The Post Office, National Bank and Institute together created an impressive architectural centre for the town in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The Mount Barker Heritage Survey of 2004 found the Telegraph and Post Office to be “an outstanding building which is significant for its high integrity, its fine design by prominent colonial architect G.E. Hamilton [who also had a hand in the National Bank], its outstanding construction, and its significant associations with the early development of Mount Barker.” The building was briefly threatened fifty years after its completion when options were being considered to replace it with a larger structure. Fortunately it was retained, and a new Post Office was erected next door in Gawler Street. The original building was then used for Post Office accommodation until it was sold in 1983. It currently houses legal offices (see https://mtbarkernationaltrust.org.au/history-post/charles-louis-von-doussa/).
The ”new” Post Office was itself superseded in 1997 when the Post Office was relocated to Walker Street in 1997. The 1914 building has since been utilised as a retail shop and more recently as an insurance and real estate office.
The photo below shows the original Telegraph and Post Office, date unrecorded (click to enlarge).
