Redan Post Office

The Redan Post Office has provided postal services in the area since the 1860s. The Redan Post Office currently operates from the former Ditchfield's grocery store on the corner of Drummond Street and Darling Street. The Post Office has been located in several different buildings in the area.

Sites

 * c1867 - Hertford Street. A newspaper advertisement in December 1867 places the Post Office in Hertford Street, now in Sebastopol.
 * c.1978 two sites on the west side of Skipton Street, since demolished. The sites are now the ASTEC building, and Dennis Shaw's Cycling Centre.
 * c.1990 Skipton Street, it was in a shop on the east side of Skipton Street as part of a mixed business.
 * c.2000-2020, cnr. Drummond and Darling Street, in Ditchfield's grocery store, 628 Drummond Street.

Map
There are two historic receiving pillars still in use in Redan, one on the south west corner of Skipton Street and La Trobe Street, and the other on the south west corner of Darling Street and Ripon Street.

History
In November 1869 a concerned resident wrote to the paper about the Borough of Sebastopol requesting the closure of the Redan Post Office: "REDAN AND COBBLERS POST-OFFICES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, By referring to the report in Friday's Star of the doings of the Sebastopol Borough Council, it will be seen that the works committee ' had instructed the town-clerk to inform the Hon. C. J. Jenner that it was desirable that the post-offices at Cobblers and Redan should be done away with, and pillars erected instead.' Now, I should like to know on what grounds this statement is made. It cannot be economy, as the doing away of the said post-offices would entail another postman. Nor would it be any additional convenience, inasmuch as the people would then have to travel to the central post-office for money orders and to register letters of value. Having due regard to the other outlying portions of the borough, I am quite certain that it would be no additional accommodation to the inhabitants proximate to the branch post-offices in question. -Yours, &c., 13th November. A Ratepayer."

The post office must have closed, as lobbying by the Redan Progress Association saw it reopen in 1935: "The district postal authorities, in response to representations by the Redan Progress Association, are instituting a post-office to serve that locality. The office will be in Skipton street, near Darling street, and will be opened in about a month's time."

The Skipton Street sites were described by a local resident: "The Redan PO was opposite us just next to the tyre place. It then shifted down the middle of the block in a little brick shop by itself just opposite the blue shop in the picture where it eventually ended up there for a number of years before it located to where it is now." The second Skipton Street site was remembered by a local resident: "'In 1978 the PO was on the opposite side of the road. It was run by a lady in her 50's/60's. Seemed quite old to us in those days...the shop was a mixed business incorporating the Redan P.O. operated by an English couple until it relocated to its current location.'"