New Post Office At Woolston Opened

Press, Volume C, Issue 29662, 4 November 1961, Page 13

New Post Office At Woolston Opened

“The Post Office is an enormous trading organisation, and should be run as such,” the PostmasterGeneral (Mr Kinsella) said at the opening of the new Woolston Post Office yesterday. He performed the opening and unveiled a plaque commemorating the occasion.

Under the new financing system, by which new works were to be provided, in general, out of revenue instead of from loans, he hoped that the department would catch up considerably with its backlog of work over the next few years, said the Minister.

The waiting list for telephones in the Dominion was 27,000, and 39,000 new applications were received every year. Two hundred exchangee still did not provide all-night services, and 190X100 subscribers were still on manual working. The department planned to replace all manual exchanges by automatic ones as soon as possible, helping to break down the isolation of country districts where manual exchanges did not operate through the night. Over the last three years, six new post offices had been opened in the Christchurch

area, three old ones replaced, and five relocated out of leased premises. Many more were planned for the near future to meet the "tremendous growth” of Christchurch, which was destined to become one of the major industrial regions of the country if not the major industrial region. The Mayor (Mr G. Manning) congratulated the department on the new building and on the general high standard of its service. He announced that the new Post Office to be opened early next year in Walker street (in the south-west inner city area) was to be called the Moorhouse post office after W. S. Moorhouse, an early provincial superintendent. Mr J. Mathtron, MJP„ also spoke. The wife of the Christchurch chief postmaster, Mrs C. J. C. Simpson, presented sprays to several of the women visitors, including Mrs Kinsella and Miss A L. B. Dean, who was postmistress at Woolston from 1926 to 1944.

Among others present was Mr C. Round, who was a measage-boy at Woolston at the time of the opening of tiie office in 1908.