A months-long mail mystery has puzzled residents of a bustling beachside community in northern Queensland.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Letters are arriving weeks and months after they are sent to addresses in the Townsville suburb of Bushland Beach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Australia Post has confirmed residents’ suspicions that the reason for the delays are improper practices by one contractor who was sorting mail from a makeshift workspace on an undeveloped housing block.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long-time resident Kane Seaborn received electricity bills and subsequent late notices on the same day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bushland Beach resident Kane Seaborn has gone weeks without mail. (ABC North Qld: Chloe Chomicki)<\/p>\n
“I am absolutely disgusted. This is a government service which shouldn’t be done this way,” Mr Seaborn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’re only 10 minutes away from the city. It isn’t a rural suburb.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We used to receive three to four letters a day and now it can be weeks.”<\/p>\n
Jennifer Murphy, another resident of the community of 7,000, had a similar story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said she was unaware she had $120 outstanding on her council rates until she received a letter from a collection agency one month after it was due.<\/p>\n
“To get a letter … for an unpaid bill when you didn’t realise the bill hasn’t been paid \u2014\u00a0not good enough,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[I’m] so sick of receiving letters two, three months after the fact.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bushland Beach is a Townsville suburb home to about 7,000 residents.\u00a0 (ABC North Qld: Chloe Chomicki)<\/p>\n
Issues reported<\/p>\n
Townsville City councillor Brodie Phillips said residents had been vocal about the issues since they began, writing on social media and to local representatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“People are reporting receiving their mail in six-week blocks,” Cr Phillips said.<\/p>\n
“Residents are reporting receiving bills late, jury duty [notices], bank cards and mail from the hospital.”<\/p>\n
Australia Post assured Bushland Beach residents its delivery partner would now use an official sorting facility. (ABC News: Christopher Gillette)<\/p>\n
Despite its large population, daily mail deliveries in the suburb stopped in October when Australia Post appointed a “caretaker delivery partner”.<\/p>\n
An Australia Post spokesperson said the contractor stepped in at short notice to deliver mail in the area, which has more than 3,000 delivery points.<\/p>\n
“We acknowledge our usual standards have not always been met while this caretaker delivery partner came up to speed with the additional delivery round,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“The mail sorting issues for Bushland Beach have been resolved.<\/p>\n
“We thank the community for their understanding as we work to find a permanent street mail delivery solution for the area.”<\/p>\n
The ABC understands that Australia Post has received five formal complaints about delays in mail delivery at Bushland Beach since October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A months-long mail mystery has puzzled residents of a bustling beachside community in northern Queensland.\u00a0 Letters are arriving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39837,196975,196979,43,92761,196978,196976,196977,44,41,39,42,40,6649],"class_list":["post-361494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia-post","tag-bushland-beach","tag-complaints-about-mail","tag-headlines","tag-mail","tag-mail-contractor","tag-mail-delays-in-bushland-beach","tag-mail-sorted-on-empty-block","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-townsville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}