Australia Stamps or Postcards

When it comes to collecting postcards and stamps, most people like to extend their collection to include stamps and postcards from foreign places. One of those foreign places is Australia. Australia's postal history makes their stamps all that more valuable. The Commonwealth of Australia is divided into six different colonies. These colonies are New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland.

Each colony produced and issued their own individual stamps. New South Wales issued their first stamps in 1850 as did Victoria. The next colony to issue their own stamps was Tasmania, which did so in 1853. Western Australia issued their own stamps in 1854. South Australia issued theirs in 1855 and Queensland in 1860. All the colonies postage fell under The Commonwealth's Postmaster-General's Department. This then turned into the Australia Post in July of 1975, making all the colonies use one postal system instead of six individual systems. This made all stamps at that time automatically the de-facto Commonwealth stamps.

These stamps were used until Australia switched currencies and stamps with the old currency became invalid for use to send items via the mail system. This happened in February of 1966. However they immediately became collectible items. If you do collect stamps from Australia, you maybe be fortunate to collect one of Australia's first stamps. These stamps were made with red in and had a picture of Australia with a kangaroo in the middle of it. The currency at that time was pence so you will even see the P next to the value of the stamp. You definitely cannot get these anymore.