The Postal History of the Northern Territory 1824-1988

In 1977, Ed Williams and Phil Collas published “Northern Territory: A Postal History, 1824 – 1975”. That publication, of 178 double-spaced typed pages, emanated from a manuscript which had won Phil Collas a silver medal at the National Philatelic Exhibition in Adelaide in 1972.

Ed Williams modestly calls his book a new edition of this earlier work, but it is far more than that. It is true that most of the chapters of Part 1 (The Postal History) preserve Phil Collas’ original wording as much as possible, but they have been embellished with new information where this has come to hand, with new maps, and with photographs of Northern Territory post offices, and of other subjects relevant to the postal service in the Territory, as well as of covers relating to the story. There are also two new chapters dealing with Cyclone Tracy, and “Facing the Future”, which brings the story up to 1988.

In the 1977 book the Post Offices and their Postmarks were dealt with in three Appendices, but in this new work the subject is dealt with in much greater detail, in a separate Part 2 containing twelve chapters, with many more illustrations. The markings used by the various Forces in the area in World War II receive greatly expanded treatment, and there are three chapters dealing with commemorative and permanent pictorial handstamps, special machine slogan cancellations, and Paid handstamps and machine cancellations.

A third Part has chapters on the “N.T.” Departmental overprints, and the later ‘O.S.’ overprints and perfins used in the Territory, on registration labels, and on Framas. The text ends with a most interesting chapter on the main sources of the surviving covers. There is an extensive bibliography and a detailed index.