I’m not usually one for complaining about our postal services: Australia Post delivers millions of articles safely to their intended recipients every day and only now and again do they get it wrong. But my goodness, they have got it spectacularly wrong with a parcel that I’ve been expecting for a few days now!
When the publicist from the Folio Society emailed me to ask if I would like to review their new edition of Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet, it took me only a millisecond to reply. The one Tim Winton book that’s missing from my Miles Franklin award-winners collection, and the one that everyone loves? Now published in a stunning new edition with quirky illustrations by Sam Pash and an introduction by Alex Miller?
Yes please!
As you know, The Folio Society have been generous to me, sending me Muriel Sparks’ The Girls of Slender Means and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando for review so they already had my post office box address. But alas, that is not where Australia Post have sent it!
They are good at tracking, I’ll give them that. When the alarmed publicist rang them this morning to find out where my copy has gone, she learned that it has been delivered to a street address in an entirely different suburb 10km north of my PO Box address, and that the recipient (with a name that neither the publicist nor I have ever heard of) had actually signed off receiving it!
Hmm, it seems to me that a remarkable number of people have failed to notice some critical differences here:
- a street address ≠ PO box address
- different recipient surnames
- different suburbs, and
- different postcodes.
Australia Post, I’m expecting you to go and get it back!
PS The next day: I guess they did go and get it back, AusPost, all is forgiven!
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
I feel for you Lisa, I know how annoying its. The Australia Post lost my signed copy of J M Coetzee’s book; The Childhood of Jesus. I hope you have better luck than me, and your Cloudstreet (the best of Winton’s for me), turns up today!
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By: Meg on October 4, 2013
at 2:50 pm
Oh my, a signed Nobel prize winner, that would be irreplaceable, I guess.
And yes, I now have the book – and it is *gorgeous*!
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By: Lisa Hill on October 4, 2013
at 4:22 pm
damm post people ,hope it turns up looks rather stunning cover I ve a old vintage copy my self ,all the best stu
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By: winstonsdad on October 6, 2013
at 3:37 am
Do you mean the first edition? That would probably be worth a bob or two if it is…
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By: Lisa Hill on October 6, 2013
at 12:49 pm
I can’t wait to read your review of Cloudstreet, if you ever get it! It is one of my favorite books of all time!
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By: ted on October 6, 2013
at 9:57 pm
*chuckle* I am a bit nervous, I liked it many years ago when I read it the first time, but what if my tastes have changed?
(It has arrived safely BTW, and it is gorgeous. Reading Folio Books is such a delicious luxury!)
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By: Lisa Hill on October 7, 2013
at 5:47 pm