Our collection now features a set of cards by Ian 'Spike' Farrawell, bearing Australia Post mail bag designs.

Spike Farrawell is a Canberra based artist specialising in printmaking and bookbinding, who also worked for Australia Post for 35 years. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, he celebrated his long career with Australia Post by hand carving and printing past mailbag designs onto cards.

The designs were used on Australia Post mailbags from 1986 until 2022. Most of these bags are no longer in use, which inspired Farrawell to record the designs before they were forgotten. It took 2 years to track down the 41 designs, carve and hand print the cards, which are housed in a hand printed box. Farrawell made 20 boxes or sets of the cards, and gifted a number of them to his postal colleagues as an acknowledgement of how hard they had worked during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The original Australia Post logo was developed in 1975 by Pieter Huveneers (1925–2017), an influential corporate designer who lived and worked in the Netherlands, the UK and finally Australia. Huveneers designed an icon featuring a post horn (traditionally used by European postmen to announce post riders or mail coaches) with a 'P' in the negative space.

These unique hand printed cards capture a vital part of Australian postal and design history.