Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

, a state of Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and formerly a British colony, established its postal service soon after the British settled in 1829; in December of that year, Fremantle

Fremantle

Freemantle is a suburb of Southampton in England.Fremantle or Freemantle may also refer to:- Places :* Fremantle, the port city to the capital Perth, Western Australia...

's harbourmaster was appointed postmaster

Postmaster

A postmaster is the head of an individual post office. Postmistress is not used anymore in the United States, as the "master" component of the word refers to a person of authority and has no gender quality...

. A post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

 in Albany

Albany, Western Australia

Albany is a port city in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, some 418 km SE of Perth, the state capital. As of 2009, Albany's population was estimated at 33,600, making it the 6th-largest city in the state....

 opened on 14 October 1834, and the main post office moved to Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

 in 1835.

First stamps

The colony issued its first postage stamp

Postage stamp

A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

 on 1 August 1854. The 1d black stamp featured the Black Swan

Black Swan

The Black Swan is a large waterbird, a species of swan, which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. The species was hunted to extinction in New Zealand, but later reintroduced. Within Australia they are nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent upon climatic...

, a design used for most of the colony's later stamps as well. This stamp was engraved in England and printed by Perkins Bacon

Perkins Bacon

Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co was a printer of books, bank notes and postage stamps, most notable for printing the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamps, in 1840.- Origins :...

; later in the year, local lithographer Horace Samson produced 4d and 1sh values by taking an impression of the 1d's swan vignette and adding different frames. Alfred Hillman's mistake in the repair of the printing stones in 1855 resulted in the frame being inverted, yielding the extremely rare Inverted Swan

Inverted Swan

The Inverted Swan, a 4-pence blue postage stamp issued in 1855 by Western Australia, was one of the world's first invert errors. Technically, it is a "frame invert"....

 error.

Later issues

In 1857, Hillman produced 2d and 6d values of the swan design by imitating the existing stamps, though with the swan on a blank background, but these were only used until 1860, when Perkins Bacon plates of the 1854 design were used in Perth to print all values.

A new swan design, for the 3d value, appeared in 1872, and variations on it finally superseded the 1854 design starting in 1885, with a definitive series of eight values.

After federation, the states continued to operate their own postal systems, and 1902 saw a new series of swan definitives, along with stamps depicting Queen Victoria

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

for the first time, on the values from 2 shillings to 1 pound. The Victoria stamps are also unusual in having the inscription read "WEST AUSTRALIA" instead of "WESTERN AUSTRALIA" as was the norm. These stamps continued in daily use until Commonwealth stamps were issued in 1913.