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John Palmer, a theatre owner from Bath, believed that the coach service he had previously run for transporting actors and materials between theatres could be used for a countrywide mail delivery service, so in 1782, he suggested to the Post Office in London that they take up the idea. He met resistance from officials who believed that the existing system could not be improved, but eventually the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, allowed him to carry out an experimental run between Bristol and London. Under the old system, the journey had taken up to 38 hours. The coach, funded by Palmer, left Bristol at 4 pm on 2 August 1784 and arrived in London just 16 hours later. Impressed by the trial run, Pitt authorised the creation of new routes. By the end of 1785, there were services from London to Norwich, Liverpool, Leeds, Dover, Portsmouth, Poole, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Holyhead and Carlisle. A service to Edinburgh was added the next year and Palmer was rewarded by being made Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office. Australia's first mail coach was established in 1828 and was crucial in connecting the remote settlements being established to the larger centers. The first mail contracts were issued and mail was transported by coach or on horseback from Sydney to the first seven country post offices – Penrith, Parramatta, Liverpool, Windsor, Campbelltown, Newcastle, and Bathurst. In 1863 contracts were awarded to the coaching company Cobb & Co to transport Royal Mail services within New South Wales and Victoria. These contracts and later others in Queensland continued until 1924 when the last service operated in western Queensland. The lucrative mail contracts helped Cobb & Co grow and become an efficient and vast network of coach services in eastern Australia. In Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia, a mail coach was a stagecoach built to a General Post Office-approved design operated by an independent contractor to carry long-distance mail for the Post Office. Mail was held in a box at the rear where the only Royal Mail employee, an armed guard, stood. Passengers were taken at a premium fare. There was seating for four passengers inside and more outside with the driver. The guard's seat could not be shared. This distribution system began in Britain in 1784. In Ireland, the same service began in 1789, and in Australia, it began in 1828. Royal Mail coach services reached their peak in the later decades of the 19th century, operating over thousands of miles of eastern Australia. In the 1870s Cobb & Co's Royal Mail coaches were operating some 6000 horses per day and travelling 28,000 miles weekly carrying mail, gold, and general parcels. Some Concord stagecoaches were imported from the United States and made in New Hampshire by the Abbot-Downing Company. This design was a 'thorough-brace' or 'jack' style coach characterized by an elegant curved lightweight body suspended on two large leather straps, which helped to isolate the passengers and driver from the jolts and bumps of the rough unmade country roads. Soon Australian coach builders using many of the Concord design features customised the design for Australian conditions. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_coach

Active in local government from the age of 26, Golding was an alderman (1917-21 and 1930-76) and mayor (1967-73) of the Gladstone Town Council. He served on the Gladstone Harbour Board for thirty-seven years from 1942. As chairman in 1946-48 and 1959-79, he worked to achieve recognition for the port—which was under-used because of its proximity to Rockhampton—planning each step and negotiating overseas loans for the expansion of infrastructure. Known as `Mr Gladstone’, Golding was involved with many community organisations. He served on the Gladstone hospitals board for twenty-five years, chaired the Gladstone-Calliope aerodrome committee, and was patron of the Little Theatre, the Municipal and Thistle Pipe bands, the Port Curtis Tennis Association, and the Gladstone Bowls and Turf clubs. He was appointed MBE (1957) and CMG (1971). During the latter half of his life Golding wrote and self-published six books on Central Queensland history. Source: monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/community/display/...

MOTOR TRANSPORT SCHOOL,.— Climbing a steep trackless hill may be all in a day's work for an Army motorcyclist. This Institution at an Army Motor Transport School shows students how to manage a bucking cycle In such a climb. Universal carriers and motorcyclists assembling for a training exercise in Queensland. Source: Telegraph, 23 Sep. 1942 trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/172607425/19738216

The AWAS played an important role in intelligence, signals, ciphers, electrical and mechanical training units, heavy convoy work, anti-aircraft and coastal artillery, gun sights and searchlights. They were cooks, clerks, orderlies, canteen workers, provosts, butchers, instrument repairers, and transport and ambulance drivers. When peace was declared in 1945, these women returned full of confidence with plans for their futures, but they were not wanted in the workforce. Many were required to care for returning servicemen in the confines of the home. Some of their stories were horrendous; coping with a traumatised, sometimes violent partner, without good advice or support. Source: tracesmagazine.com.au/2016/06/women-in-world-war-ii-the-a...