Denise Tripp
Mail Sorter
Townsville Mail Centre
Without Denise Tripp and her crew of night mail sorters, our letterboxes would go hungry. Clocking on at 7.09pm, Denise starts her shift at the Delivery Annex in Sturt Street and gets to work sorting the mail for Ayr. It all has to be sorted, bundled and put in runs for the posties so it’s ready to go on the 1am truck to Bowen/Ayr.
“I don’t think people realise how much there is to do and it’s all got to be done by a certain time,” Denise says. “We hand-sort all of the mail for Ayr, Bowen and Charters Towers first then move over to the Delivery Centre, where all the posties are, to start sorting for the 22 Townsville runs.”
The four-strong crew of sorters listen to music to keep them going. Most nights they work till 4 or 5am – as long as it takes to get the mail sorted.
“We all get tired and snappy occasionally but we just let it all pass. We don’t take it to heart. The crew know to leave me alone when I’ve got ‘that look’ on my face,” Denise laughs. “I’m really lucky – we’ve got a great crew who just get stuck in and get the job done.”
We all get tired and snappy occasionally but we just let it all pass. We don’t take it to heart.
Denise says the most frustrating part of the job is when people don’t address their mail correctly.
“Sometimes we’ll get a name on a letter and the address is ‘no fixed address’,” Denise says. “Surprisingly, we get that quite a lot. We do our best to find the right address but if we can’t we just have to ‘return
to sender’.”