He’s out of the saddle, pedalling hard up a gentle suburban incline, a flash of fluoro yellow against a moody grey sky. His legionnaire's helmet cover flaps about behind him and the flag at the back of his hefty e-bike wobbles from side to side as a cold breeze blows through Craigieburn.
It’s just after 9:30am on a Friday morning in Melbourne’s far north and Matt Bailey has just begun his daily round as a postal delivery officer with Australia Post. He’s been at work since 3am, sorting letters and parcels for him and his colleagues to deliver, and now it’s time for his daily delivery to begin.
I ride along a couple bike lengths behind Matt as he blasts towards his first drop-off of the day. I’ll join him for the entirety of his morning round, to see what life is like as an e-bike-riding ‘postie’; what it takes to help deliver the vast volumes of mail that Australians receive every day.
We duck off Grand Boulevard into a sidestreet and the work begins. We’re now within Matt’s delivery area and the time for riding fast without interruptions is over. We take on a more stop-start cadence as Matt moves from letterbox to letterbox.
Up and down the backstreets we go, riding the length of each street on one side before turning around and coming back down the other. Matt rides on the footpath (where he’s limited to 10 km/h) and I ride on the road nearby, trying not to get in his way, trying to take it all in. In this pocket of Craigieburn, on the far northern edge of metropolitan Melbourne, it seems every house is brand new. New housing developments are everywhere; the city’s slow but inexorable expansion happening before our very eyes.
Matt reckons that in a normal delivery shift he’d cover between 20 and 30 km in roughly four hours of riding – not a whole lot faster than walking pace. Today’s delivery route will be shorter than usual – his 3am start was a couple hours earlier than normal, and he’s been given a smaller load to ensure his shift doesn't run too long.
The morning’s rhythm
Matt’s load today is a mixture of letters, parcels, and advertising pamphlets. Not every house has a letter or parcel to be delivered, of course, but every letterbox without a “No Junk Mail” sign gets an advertising pamphlet for a local internet provider.
There are six main storage areas on Matt’s bike. One over the front wheel, two on the handlebars, then three at the back. There’s nothing haphazard about the way they’re all packed – everything has its own place to ensure Matt’s round goes as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Parcels are stored in the large bag that’s suspended over the front wheel, likewise several bundles of letters. Another bundle of letters – the one Matt’s delivering from – sits in the handlebar bag within easy reach as he rides along.
Each bundle of letters is stacked in order – by street and by house number, according to the route Matt is following. With a glance in his handlebar bag, he can quickly see which house gets the next letter.
While the letters are easily visible, the parcels are tucked out of Matt’s view. It’s a curious thing, watching him stop at a house, pulling out a parcel to deliver, even when he couldn’t have seen that parcel while in the saddle. How does he know there was one to deliver for that house, I wonder? Has he memorised which houses have parcels today? Not quite.
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