The Tomatah Sauce that saw more of Australia than I did!

Getting mail while travelling Australia is harder than it sounds.
Here’s how I learned that the hard way.

In July I was in Port Augusta and ordered three bottles of Fancy Pants Tomatah Sauce from Fenglehorn Sauces in Cairns. It’s beautiful tomato sauce. It’s so good I now have a problem: I’ve run out. The label says it’s fancy, and it is.

I set up a Parcel Collect address at the Port Augusta post office and tracked it. The parcel made it from Cairns to Adelaide. Then, for reasons nobody has ever explained, it turned around and went back to Cairns.

By then I was packing up to leave Port Augusta. I rang Fenglehorn, who were excellent. They said it would probably come back to them and they’d send me another parcel at no cost.

Which raised a question I hadn’t thought about. Where would I be in ten days?

I guessed Coober Pedy. I set up a second Parcel Collect address there, and they sent the replacement. It ran late too, for different reasons, but I ended up staying in Coober Pedy a few extra days anyway. So it found me.

The original parcel made it back to Port Augusta about a week after I’d left. It covered more kilometres that month than I did.

The lesson

Don’t order to where you are. Order to where you’ll be in ten days.

If you travel like me, you often don’t know where that is. Sometimes you guess right. Sometimes the sauce goes on holiday without you.

How I handle mail

Letters

My car is registered in Queensland, and my licence is from Queensland, so I use a friend’s address there. When something arrives, they read it and bin it, or scan it and send it to me, or ring me and ask what I want done. It works because they’re reliable. Not everyone has that friend.

Parcels

At the moment I’m based around Alice Springs. I go out camping in the national parks for ten days or two weeks, come back into Alice for a couple of days, then head out again. Having a town I keep returning to makes parcels easy.

Your options

A friend’s address.

Best for letters. You need the right friend, for years.

A paid mail scanning service

The professional version of the friend. A company gives you an address, opens and scans your letters, and forwards anything physical. You pay monthly.
Search “paid mail scanning service Australia “ in Google.

Parcel Collect

Free, through an Australia Post MyPost account (you’ll need ID to set it up). You choose a participating post office and get a personal address with your customer number. You have 10 business days to collect. Parcels only, up to 22kg. Find participating post offices at auspost.com.au/locate.

To set up your account:

On your phone: https://auspost.com.au/customersetup/signup/app

On a computer: https://auspost.com.au/mypost/dashboard/

Parcel Lockers

Same as above. MyPost account, but this suits travellers best.
Lockers are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Roll into town at six on a Saturday night after the post office has shut, and you can still pick up your parcel and be gone by Sunday morning.
You get 2 business days to collect, so weekends don’t count against you.
After that, it moves to the nearest post office, where you get another 10 days.
There are over 1,500 lockers, mostly in bigger towns.

Poste Restante

The old “care of the post office” method.
Address it to your name, C/O the post office, town, state and postcode, then collect it with photo ID.
Australia Post no longer mentions it on its website. The last official rule I could find was a 30-day hold, but busy offices may hold it for less. Ring ahead. It works best in small towns with only one post office.
I wouldn’t bother with this one anymore.

Mail redirection

Australia Post forwards everything from one address to another. It costs $40.50 for a month up to $202.50 for twelve months, and less with a concession card.

The catch

Parcel Collect, lockers and Poste Restante only work if the parcel travels with Australia Post. If the seller uses another courier, it won’t arrive. Check how they ship before you order.

If you’ve already moved on

You can’t redirect a parcel to a different Parcel Collect point while it’s on its way. Once it reaches the post office, though, you can have it transferred to another one. Fill in the transfer form here. And pay $7.20 when you collect.

I didn’t know that in July.

For $7.20, my sauce could have followed me to Coober Pedy instead of going back to Cairns.