Karekare Rivals Claim For Oldest Postmark

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30535, 2 September 1964, Page 22

Karekare Rivals Claim For Oldest Postmark

"Th* Press" Special Service

AUCKLAND, Sept. 1. A post office which really is not one has a square circle stamp-cancellation mark to rival the Eureka post office, up to now thought to have the last in New Zealand.

Karekare, just south of Piha, and possessor of a 1902 date-stamping machine, Is gazetted as a post office. The local storekeeper, Mr E. E. Pauli, and his wife

could claim the titles of postmaster and postmistress. But the grand days of the milling town of Karekare—when it boasted a school, general store, butcher and two boarding houses (one with 54 boarders)—have gone. Thera are now four permanent residents. The post office, established In the first days of the century, has now become a telephone exchange.

The rural delivery van takes all mail to New Lynn to be cancelled.

But the stamp still has its uses. Mr Pauli employs it when filling out his toll cards, which have to be sent to Wellington on the fifteenth and final days of the month. “Every call that comes in has to be made out,” he said. So the unusual postmark appears regularly in Wellington in thick wads of cards. Of the claim by the Auckland Philatelic Society that Eureka, 11 miles from Hamilton, is the last post office using the square stamp in New Zealand, Mr Pauli said: “In a way they are right. Although we are listed in the Gazette we are strictly only a telephone exchange." Mr Pauli said several requests were received from stamp collectors for the postmarks.