Lorne Victoria Australia

Mr Stewart joined the Lorne Post Office in 1914 as a 12 year old messenger boy. Having just left school, he started on 15 shillings a week as a telegraph messenger. It was his job to take the mail to Wye River every Wednesday, a 17 kilometre trek by foot which took about four hours around the track that became the Great Ocean Road.

He would set off with his mail bag and sandwiches, taking the beach route at low tide and returning at night with the outward mail from Wye River. It wasn’t till the young Mr Stewart reached 14 years of age that his father gave him a pony and he could make the trip more comfortably.

Mr Stewart’s family arrived in Lorne on the 12th day of the 12th month in 1912. His parents started up the Kalimna Guest House in Lorne which is was then run as a motel by fifth generation member of the Stewart family, Norman and his wife. The motel was later demolished and replaced by privately owned villas.

Sources

• Lorne Historical Society Collections, Lorne News