BIG MAILS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 147, 19 December 1927, Page 10

BIG MAILS

CHRISTMAS IMPORT

HUNDREDS OF TONS ARRIVE

PROBABLY A RECOED

During to-day and to-morrow tho. mail sorter's life at the G.P.O. will be hardly worth living, for in one big rush the thousands and thousands of Christmas letters and parcels from overseas will be pouring into the Dominion, nearly all arriving in Wellington. The Tahiti's mail this morning, the last to arrive direat from Europe before Christmas, comprised 3030 bags, or approximately 45Q tons, of mail matter for the Dominion. The Tahiti also carried 2104 bags for. Australia, the total of 5134 bags probably constituting a record. The average mail arriving by that route is about 2000 bags, the 50 per cent, increase being due to Christmas, a time when absent friends are remembered and ■ tho postal organisation is severely taxed. It was nearly 9.30 this morning before the big mail was unloaded, being hurried to the G.P.O. to be sped on its way north or south. The sorting down on board of course facilitates the dispatch, when landed. The sorters will hardly have got through this when they will have the Marama's mail,; to deal with; she arrives from Sydney to-morrow with 598 bags of Australian mail, 673 bags from beyond, and 343 parcel receptacles. On the top of all this the Taniaroa has added her quota of 599 parcel receptacles, so that it looks as if New Zealanders are going to be well remembered this year by friends and relatives in England and-fclsewhere. The incoming Christmas mail last year was not so large, the Makura bringing 2500 bags, the Sydney boat 1300 bags, and another Home liner 700 bags. That it is not a case of receiving without giving adequately in return is borne out by the figures of the Christmas mail dispatched from the Dominion. Between 11th and 2oth November four dispatches Homeward accounted for 2500 bags of letters and newspapers, 6169 parcels in 408 receptacles also being sent away. Christmas mails to Australia consisted of 948 bags of letters and newspapers together with nearly 2000 parcels.