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00:10 This podcast was recorded at State Library Victoria on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.

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00:31 Hello this is Penny here. Just before we get started today with our episode of In Those Days, I wanted to talk to you about something that's going on with Trove and State Library Victoria at the moment. Trove's digitized newspapers are so extensive that sometimes I almost forget that it's not actually exhaustive. There are still major newspapers that haven't been digitized and one of those is the Sun News Pictorial. And State Library Victoria want to digitize this paper from 1922 to 1954 and they've got an appeal for donations at the moment and that's called “Save Our Stories”.
So why is the Sun News Pictorial important? It was one of the first papers to include a significant number of photos. It reported on smaller, local, community events, and it was one of the most read papers in its time.
So at the moment State Library Victoria has this paper in hardcopy and on microfilm. And that is really great for preserving the content for the future. But it's not so good for access now.
Firstly, people have to come into the library to access the microfilm or the hardcopies but actually it would just be the microfilm. And then that is very time consuming to go through, particularly if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. And unlike when something's digitised in Trove with the text generated from Optical Character Recognition, you can't search the text easily when it's in microfilm. When Sun News Pictorial is digitised, we'll be able to find photos and information on all kinds of things that people haven't seen before.
And I think it's very possible that we'll find pictures and information on topics that we've already talked about on this podcast.
If you are interested in this and maybe would like to support the campaign you can go to State Library Victoria's website and find out more about it. I'll put the link in the notes on the website for the show.
02:33 (piano music)
02:41 PENNY: Hello Christina.
CHRISTINA: Hi Penny.
PENNY: It's very exciting to be here today because we've got some other podcasters in here with us.
CHRISTINA: It is very exciting.
PENNY: We have the team from Stamps Aren't Cool. Gerard and Celeste McCulloch. They have the same surname.
CHRISTINA: I wonder why.
PENNY: Yeah, they're married.
CHRISTINA: Oh.
PENNY: Not brother and sister.
CHRISTINA: Okay, not like the many Tangey guests we've had on board.
PENNY: It's very amazing to have a couple of people here who I'm not related to and I didn't go to school with. So it's very brave of me to be honest. But Gerard is a comedian and a writer. And one of the reasons we have him here today is cos he's also a philatelist, which is actually not as exciting as it sounds.
GERARD: That's a bit rough.
PENNY: Well, when I hear philatelist, yeah, I thought it meant something different, the first time I heard it.
CHRISTINA: I felt a little bit unsafe when I heard that.
PENNY: But it's actually stamp collecting, which is why they then have a podcast called Stamps Aren't Cool because Celeste works in television in audio. And are you a stamp collector?
CELESTE: Absolutely not, no.
PENNY: Not into the old stamps.
CELESTE: Not into it at all.
PENNY: And so Christina and I have known Gerard for a number of years because we used to do comedy and then more recently I worked for Gerard at Hard Quiz. And he was my boss.
GERARD: I'd like to say worked with Gerard.
CHRISTINA: It was a collaborative.
GERARD: Especially the way they bossed me around at Hard Quiz. I get no respect.
PENNY: So do you want to explain, I've talked a little bit about it, but what's your podcast, what's the principle behind it?
GERARD: Well, it starts with me being a stamp collector, and by that I mean I was mad when I was a kid and then forgot about it for 20 years and then sort of heading into my 30s I got back into it. And it was a little bit more of a grownup intellectual pursuit. It kind of got its nails under my skin again and I got back into it.
PENNY: What was the catalyst for that. Like, did something happen?
CHRISTINA: Did you get a letter?
PENNY: Did you break both your legs?
GERARD: There was a very obvious catalyst, which was eBay started. And as a kid I used to think, 'I want to own all the Australian stamps ever.' And I was never gonna be able to afford that. And as I was exploring eBay with a grown-up income and maybe a grown-up bit too much time on my hands, I sort of thought 'Oh, there's some of those stamps that I never had.' So I bought one and then I bought another one
PENNY: That's how it starts.
GERARD: And I don't know, maybe I bought a magazine or something. And it started. And then I kind of rediscovered a lot of what I loved originally as a kid. Plus I discovered other things that I like now as a grown-up too.
PENNY: One of the interesting things that you said on your podcast Gerard, that made me think about stamps slightly differently, is that and I quote, 'More broadly speaking, we're interested in the history of people communicating using the postal system.'
GERARD: That's right.
PENNY: And I thought, well that also is a very boring sentence, but I get it.
GERARD: It sort of gets to what the intellectual appeal is. For some of us anyway. I think stamp collecting we tend to deride it as people collecting little pictures, which is also cool cos I like the pictures. But stamps aren't just about the stamps. They are also about the letters that they're on and you can look at the history of how people communicate and what needed to be said and it's, it ties into elements of history and politics and all sorts of stuff. So if you have a bit of a historical intellectual bent it can be up your alley.
PENNY: When I lived in DC I went to the US Postal Museum, which I think is on the Mall.
GERARD: It's near the Mall, near the station.
PENNY: Oh that's right. Near Union Station? Is it?
GERARD: We did go to DC about ten years ago?
PENNY: Did you not go to the postal museum?
CELESTE: I might have stopped him.
GERARD: I'm always conscious when we're on holiday that Celeste is not a collector and we're not here to just do Gerry things.
PENNY: And there probably are stamps all over the world and anywhere you go you could go with a stamp lens, if you wanted to.
GERARD: Yeah, that's right. I don't want people to think that we off on holiday overseas every single year but we did also just go to France and there were one or two little stampy activities but when we were in DC we hadn't gone to the postal museum but it was right next door to the big Union Railway Station. And we got early for our train we had about an hour to kill and Celeste said, 'Off you go'.
CHRISTINA: Very generous.
CELESTE: I did not come with him.
GERARD: So I barrelled through. I do remember seeing the keys to the mailroom from the Titanic. So that was pretty cool.
PENNY: That is cool.
GERARD: They sort of fished them out of the poor bloke's pocket when they retrieved his body. But historic.
PENNY: Yeah, absolutely.
GERARD: So ah, to answer your original question is I was into, I got back into my stamps. Recently I've had a few friends who are podcasting saying, 'You should do a podcast about stamp collecting'. And I've thought, no, cos I've heard a few and look I'm not. I don't know if it's natural material. And then one day Celeste said, I think she forgets this but, or she denies it. But she said, 'We should do a podcast and you can talk about stamps and I can just mock you.' And I thought that's a stamp podcast I would listen to.
PENNY: Cos that is an angle, isn't it? So, Celeste you’re not into stamps but have you ever collected anything?
CELESTE: I prefer getting rid of things rather than
CHRISTINA: Minimalist.
CELESTE: Definitely. Although.
GERARD: She's ruthless.
CELESTE: Yeah, I am a bit ruthless. I do kind of collect pot plants at the moment. Indoor plants.
PENNY: But that's beautiful. If you can not kill them.
CELESTE: Yeah, exactly. I think lots of people get joy out of that. I think even Gerard enjoys that collection.
CHRISTINA: The increased oxygen in the house.
GERARD: It's beautiful.
PENNY: Something for everyone.
CELESTE: Yeah, there really is. Yeah, but other than that, no I've never been a collector. I really, like you said, I'm a minimalist. So it's really difficult to get my head around wanting to accumulate things. It's just not my natural state.
GERARD: And my natural state is of a hoarder and so that is something that Celeste has smacked out of me in the course.
CHRISTINA: Yeah good.
PENNY: Beautiful balance though.
CELESTE: It works.
GERARD: It does. She's been very good stamp-wise, she's given me, well I've sort of taken over a cupboard and she showed a lot of patience and I have assured her that I'm getting through the cupboard very slowly and I'm whittling my stuff down. Any time the cupboard threatens to explode beyond the cupboard that's a sign that I've let it go too long.
PENNY: I'm the same with fabric. Cos I've got these big boxes to put the fabric in. If I can't get the lid on, I need to just take a break. I thought, because of the theme of your podcast we might talk about stamps and relationships. I looked up in Trove and there really, there were quite a few articles about that. Before we do that, I just wanted to ask, Celeste, do you use Trove much?
CELESTE: No, I've never used it before.
PENNY: Yeah, I guess you wouldn't for work, would you?
CELESTE: No.
PENNY: Whereas Gerard I think you would, sometimes for researching quiz questions.
GERARD: It does come in handy for quiz questions and also for the last 15, 20 years maybe I've been on a bit of genealogical bent. So
PENNY: Oh my god, yes.
GERARD: I've found some very juicy stuff in Trove relating to my personal circumstances, that would probably make for a whole other edition.
PENNY: Murderers?
GERARD: Yeah. Literal murderers. Convicts.
PENNY: That's what you want when you're looking in Trove. Absolutely. With your family members.
The first article that I wanted to read is titles 'Hobbies for Husbands'. And I think, well, three of us here have husbands, so I think this will be informative for us.
CHRISTINA: I like that I then had to count and check.
PENNY: And Christina only got married last year, so this might
CHRISTINA: Mine's still shiny.
PENNY: So this will be really good for you I think.
CHRISTINA: Okay good.
10:10 It's from the 16th of December 1905. So it’s awhile ago but I think it's still very, very relevant. And it's from the Australian Star. It says;
"Advice to Girls. An Amusing Article."
Well, we'll be the judge of that.
"Girls, it is a mistake to suppose that it is absolutely necessary to give up being In love directly you are married."
What do we think?
GERARD: Wow that's,
CHRISTINA: Gives us all hope, doesn't it.
PENNY: Yeah.
GERARD: There's some real Victorian brutality there, isn't there?
PENNY: Yeah.
"Of course, it is hard to love a lord and master as much as the sycophantic slave who told you over and over again that, he was entirely unworthy of your affection; who said, perhaps on bended knee, that it was incredible to him that so perfect a creature as yourself could possibly care for so worthless a being as he."
GERARD: That's how I proposed.
CELESTE: That was basically verbatim.
CHRISTINA: Wow.
PENNY: Beautiful. How did you two meet?
GERARD: We are a Comedy Festival romance. So, I was, at the time I was doing a festival show, this was 2004. I should stop, cos I like telling this story, but you can tell it.
CELESTE: You romanticize it a little bit.
GERARD: And Celeste was working as a techie at the Melbourne Comedy Festival for some friends of mine, the Pinch, who were a trio of comedians and ne'er-do-wells. It was a professional introduction and remained professional during the course of the comedy festival and then we just stayed in touch because Celeste wanted to move, to work in tv, so I got her along to follow me along. I was at 'Rove Live' at the time so she, well, she didn't follow me around, she followed the floor manager around and we just stayed in touch to the point where it got awkward and I wasn't sure if it was professional or personal and there was a comedic misunderstanding that resulted in a phone call that, where I had to lay my cards on the table. And she pointed out that there'd been a misunderstanding but it was all good to know and we ended up married.
PENNY: And you're still in touch.
GERARD: We are still in touch, yeah.
PENNY: Beautiful. Is that accurate?
CELESTE: That was, I think that was the simplest way he's ever put it and that's probably cos I'm staring straight at him.
GERARD: Like I said she's, she's made me very good at decluttering.
PENNY: Okay so the article continues:
"If you are really anxious to remain in love with your husband, even after marriage, it is a wise plan to arrange for him to have a hobby."
Now the rest of the article goes through quite a few different hobbies. Hosting parties, is a hobby, golf, chess etc. I won't read them all out but there was the next hobby is kind of relevant to Gerard so it says:
"To put money, into theatrical speculations is a good thing for the husband. It opens his mind, and if matters come to a crisis, the fact that he was "mixed up with theatrical people" is certain to produce sympathy for the wife."
PENNY: Have you found that?
CELESTE: You know what, I don't know if that has happened. Mainly because we probably hang out with the same people so
PENNY: Ah, you're both mixed up.
GERARD: We're both mixed up.
CELESTE: We're both a bit mixed up in that case.
PENNY: Yeah, they don't really take into account wives having hobbies and interests.
CELESTE: I might have a life as well.
CHRISTINA: It's hard to believe, really.
GERARD: I'm encouraged by this message though. Middle-aged comedy comeback here we come.
PENNY: I'd be excited. Gerard is very funny.
CHRISTINA: Thanks for pointing that out.
PENNY: He is! Well like one of my top ever performances was seeing you pretending to be an American at the Hi-Fi bar, I remember, it was just so exciting, it was so funny, it was so much fun being in on the joke and then other people weren't.
GERARD: Celeste can tell you, that character was called Hank Ruby. And he was fun. His entire modus-operandi was to try to get bottled off the stage. And when I bump into anyone who was around in those times, it's always Hank Ruby reminiscences and I came home from what was, well, sadly a funeral, but it was full of people I hadn't seen for a long time and I came home to Celeste that day and said, 'I'm pretty sure Hank Ruby's gonna be remembered long after Gerard McCulloch's comedy career.' I mean, it's nice to be remembered for anything really in this game. I should say, she rarely gets the chance to show it off but Celeste is also very funny and one of the things that I remember from her days as a techie is that a comedian friend of mine said that she had, 'comic timing in her fingers'. And if you're a comedian and you've got a techie who needs to do lights and sound, that sort of stuff, getting those sort of cues wrong can actually mess up your timing but Celeste just got it and she got it, and she got that if the audience was laughing a bit longer than usual at a certain joke, just hold off on the cue for a split second.
PENNY: Don't be like, 'That's enough.'
CHRISTINA: Let's wrap that up.
GERARD: So yes, so bit of a double-act I think.
CELESTE: Oh, thanks.
"Some husbands who have taken the precaution to marry wealthy wives write plays."
PENNY: So I don't know if you've done that.
CELESTE: Gerard has been wanting to write for, a screenplay, anything, for so long now and all of a sudden I feel really guilty. I might be the reason he hasn't.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, he keeps checking the bank account and it's just not happening.
CELESTE: It's not there yet.
GERARD: You weren't rich enough.
CELESTE: You can blame me now.
PENNY: It continues;
"Up to a certain point much may be said in favour of this hobby. It certainly takes the man away from home and detains him at Bohemian Clubs into the small hours of the morning."
GERARD: Well, I get in trouble for that, but this is saying it's a good thing.
CELESTE: No, no, I'm quite grateful. I love my Tuesday nights to my myself. When he's off at stamp club, that kind of works for me.
CHRISTINA: Stamp Club!
GERARD: It's Bohemian Club sweetie.
PENNY: "But a man who has once had a play produced becomes impossible as a conversationalist."
CHRISTINA: So true.
PENNY: "When he is not talking about himself and his "works," his anguish becomes painful even for the least sympathetic wife to witness."
GERARD: I'm really enjoying that the overall thrust of this article is here's how to get your man out of the house.
PENNY: It basically is, yes, absolutely. And then it moves on to why we're here. It says;
"Stamp-collecting is not a bad thing in its way. But you will have a pretty poor time if your husband brings philatelists home to dinner."
So my next question was; Does Gerard bring other philatelists home for dinner?
CELESTE: He has never. I think he's embarrassed of his friends, that's how I feel about it.
GERARD: Well, actually, one of the reasons why I wouldn't have literally brought stamp, other philatelists home to dinner is that it has, for a long time it felt like a solo hobby. And particularly if you're a younger collector, and they are out there. It's hard to feel like there are others like us. And something that has happened of interest in the last 5 or so years is we've found each other on the internet. This sounds like it's, that sounds stupid because the internet's been around for much longer than 5 years, but it turns out there were lots of younger stamp collectors all feeling like they were the only young stamp collector. Cos if you go looking into the world it feels like everyone's an old white man. And it's only fairly recently.
PENNY: There's middle-aged white men. Collecting stamps.
GERARD: There are middle-aged white men. Dare I suggest I'm one of them. But, but in this world I'm also one of the younger ones. It's a real relative thing. So it's only fairly recently that young people have sort of found ways to connect online and go, 'Oh, it's not actually all white men. It's actually quite a lot of younger women out there collecting stamps out there too. And it's only recently that I've started to meet some of them in-person here in Melbourne. So I've, like, I've met a couple for drinks or stuff. We just haven't
CELESTE: That's true, you've brought them home. We haven't gone out with them.
GERARD: We don't tend to bring our friends home. We really should do that.
CELESTE: No, not really.
GERARD: We've been very anti-social.
CELESTE: I think during COVID though, during lock-down you started having little meetings with them online and just having little bitch-sessions about the industry basically.
PENNY: The stamp industry?
CELESTE: Yeah, really.
PENNY: Oh well, yeah, cos there is controversies. Isn't there?
GERARD: I won't take you there in depth but there's a very traditional world that is very set in its ways and then there's the younger collectors going, 'those ways don't work for us anymore'. Some of those members of the traditional world don't even know the younger collectors exist. But there are two worlds it's, there's a great movie to be made about this one day.
PENNY: Christina, just in terms of younger stamp collectors, because you're a teacher, you're in, you're with young kids all the time, are the kiddies getting involved in stamp collecting?
CHRISTINA: Look, our Pokémon swap club is going gangbusters. That's running 3 lunchtimes a week. I haven't, we haven't had a demand for a stamp collecting club.
GERARD: It's not really a stretch to say a lot of kids, school-aged kids, don't even know what stamps are.
PENNY: They wouldn't know.
GERARD: They don't come through the post anymore. The younger collectors tend to be in their 20s and 30s once they've sort of seen a bit of the world and maybe inherited Grandpa's collection and gone, 'What are these things?' but luckily some of them stick around.
PENNY: So the article then continues:
"When three-cornered Cape of Good Hope talk is going on over the walnuts and the wine it is scarcely worth while to pay extra for being present."
I'd probably agree with that. But, Gerard, what is the three three-cornered Cape of Good Hope?
GERARD: They're a fairly classic series of stamps from a colony that became part of South Africa and they were triangular stamps, which were somewhat unusual for the day cos.
PENNY: Three-cornered.
GERARD: Because usually stamps were square or rectangular. So yeah, the three-cornered Cape of Good Hopes are very collectable.
PENNY: I have a question. I have a question. Squares or rectangles, what other shapes are there? Can we have them? Is it allowed? What's happening?
GERARD: There are. Sometimes there are circles. There are, there have been plenty of triangles since and there are, now that we're in a world of dye-cut shapes, where you can basically
PENNY: Are we in that world?
GERARD: We are in that world.
CHRISTINA: I didn't know we were there.
PENNY: I've dreamed of it.
GERARD: So you can now get stamps in the shape of Australia.
PENNY: Do we agree with that? What do you think of it?
GERARD: I'm a little bit of a traditionalist. Because I hate, those stamps are a world or what are peel-and-stick stamps.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, is it a stamp or a sticker?
GERARD: Yeah, and I'm not into the stickers because of the waste that goes into the wastepaper basket. Plasticated paper doesn't recycle.
PENNY: Yeah of course.
GERARD: So I'm a licky-stamp traditionalist. And I've always turned my nose up at the sticker-stamps. But I understand why people buy them when you, if you don't like licking the back of stamps or if you've got a thousand of them to do in your job.
PENNY: I've never even considered that, whenever I go to the post office, which is not that often to buy stamps anymore, I just get the book. But I should probably.
GERARD: Yeah, you can, and also there are usually more interesting ones available if you, if you sort of want a licky-stamp. But in answer to your original question, I want to say big-up to Tonga who pioneered banana-shaped and coconut-shaped stamps way back in the 1960s. And Sierra Leone put out stamps in the shape of Sierra Leone I think they were the first to do that little gimmick. Yeah, New Zealand put out stamps in the shape of rugby jumpers of course.
CHRISTINA: Bit sad.
PENNY: I mean that really is getting into the sticker range. What are you going to have? Like pants as well and a pair of shoes and you can mix-and-match.
GERARD: Someone's probably done it.
PENNY: Okay, I'll finish off this article. This is the end of it.
"I should hesitate to map out any scheme which would purport to suit all husbands. There are husbands and husbands."
So they are different guys. They're not all the bloody same. Okay;
"Some are even worse — some wear whiskers. If your husband wears whiskers make a point of fastening some straw in them before he leaves for business in the morning."
I do not understand this bit.
"He will not return. Don't advertise for him. They will treat him very kindly, where he is."
I don't understand it. Does anyone else understand it?
CELESTE: No.
GERARD: Those little turn of the century jokes are so arcane aren't they?
CHRISTINA: It sounds a bit Wurzel Gummidge.
GERARD: Yeah.
PENNY: There was probably something at the time that had happened.
GERARD: there's probably someone at my stamp club who is old enough to be able to explain that joke to us. It is funny though that this morning, look, it's been a long week, there's bus replacements on our trainline. I've had to get up half an hour earlier. My chin was a bit scuzzy and Celeste insisted that I have a shave because, as you said, I was looking scuzzy.
CELESTE: Yeah, I did.
GERARD: So I'm very glad that you made me do that. I mean, I've got some whiskers on, but luckily not enough for Celeste to put straw in.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: And send you out into the world never to return, apparently. We don't know why. But the next topic that I wanted to talk to you is about women and stamps. And I was wondering what the gender-balance is like in the stamp collecting world.
GERARD: I mentioned that split in worlds. Like, the old people, very, very male, not entirely but very male and in fact you still occasionally encounter these attitudes that I hate where even in, written in stamp magazines you'll see, 'You should squirrel away some money and not tell your wife that you're going to buy these stamps.' And I hate that language. But stamp dealers are reporting a real uplift in young people interested in collecting, particularly during Covid. And the majority of those people are female so it's sort of, it's actually tapped into a bit of a crafty thing. Sometimes people buy old worthless stamps and turn them into artworks and that's become quite popular online on Instagram. It's very Insta-friendly this hobby and that's where it's finding a bit of life.
PENNY: That's quite interesting because this article is actually from January 1935 and it was in the Adelaide Advertiser and it is sort of touching on quite a few of those themes. And one of the things that I was thinking of is that Celeste, that maybe that maybe you have been a little bit intimidated by the manly nature and the technical nature of the stamp collecting world. Because when you think about stamps you do just think, 'Oh wow, it's a very men dominated’. Is that part of the problem?
CELESTE: This is true, but as you started that sentence, I started really considering it and, mostly no, I still just find it incredibly boring.
PENNY: So you're not overwhelmed by little pieces of paper and just 'Oh where do I put them?'
CELESTE: Well, I know where to put them. In the bin.
GERARD: Once in our early days of going out I came home from some stamp event with a couple of stamps that I'd bought, just for fun, of polar bears, which she likes. And I said, 'Look at these beautiful polar bear stamps. And she did kind of say, 'Oh wow they are really pretty. You keep them.'
25:05 PENNY: Yeah, well this article is basically going to go through all the different ways that women can get involved. And don't, you know, don't be scared.
"The Woman' s World
Women Philatelists Are Discriminating Collectors
Stamp collecting, which the uninitiated may regard as a pastime for small boys and invalids"
I didn't say it.
CHRISTINA: No, you just read the words.
PENNY: I just searched for an article that said it.
"is rapidly becoming a serious hobby among women. This is not surprising, for, although women may be as ardent hobbyists as men, economic circumstances often forbid them the pursuit of finer arts."
Which is depressing in a lot of ways. Now I've got a rude question. How expensive is stamp collecting?
CELESTE: That's totally a you-question. I don't want to know. It's his hobby. It's his happiness. I wouldn't put a price on it.
GERARD: I could answer very simply. If you want to chase the same material that the rich old men want to chase, it's going to get very expensive.
PENNY: Absolutely.
GERARD: But it's really easy to find a little niche that you're into, that no-one else is into. Like I like the Aussie decimals of the 20th century. And 1980s and 1970s stamps and there's not a lot of interest in that. So that's quite cheap, I'm pleased to announce sweetie.
PENNY: And what about paraphernalia? Like do you have to get like special books and little tweezers.
GERARD: Yeah, you need your tweezers and stock books or albums to keep the stuff in and magnifying glasses. Most of that stuff is a one-off investment although if you keep collecting you're gonna keep needing albums but I have to say Celeste has become a dab hand at dealing with the old men who sell stamp catalogues when it comes time to buy me birthday presents and stuff like that.
CELESTE: Thank goodness for that paraphernalia otherwise I wouldn't know what to get him for his birthday.
PENNY: Actually, this is another reason for your husband to have a hobby, because then you can think of the presents easily. Mine just does physics. What am I gonna do? Get him a laser. No, he makes his own. It goes on;
"Philately, however, has no such drawbacks, and opens up unlimited avenues of knowledge at a negligible cost; history, architecture, and geography are only a few of the lessons to be learned from a study of the colored scraps of paper in the collector's album."
Which is kind of what you were saying before.
GERARD: Yeah, taps into other stuff that is actually interesting.
PENNY: Yeah.
"Women like Picturesque Type"
Of course they do. Pretty little things.
CELESTE: With your point before, or the article's point before. One thing that I really love about Gerard is that he really does get into things when he wants to know something he'll go, he'll deep dive into it.
PENNY: Oh, I've seen that at work.
CELESTE: Totally. I'm forever learning from him. And this is just another way for him to communicate to me just how smart he is. All the history and the stories behind the things that he collects. He can really show off what he knows. And that's just something I admire about him. So that's one part of the hobby that I appreciate at least coming from him.
GERARD: It's nice of you to say that. Especially given that you, that's not always the vibe you give off when I'm trying to tell you this stuff.
CELESTE: I don't always feel this way.
PENNY: It comes and goes.
GERARD: We are talking to the lady, once upon a time at Hard Quiz, a certain model of tractor crossed our radar and I was sceptical at first and then I decided, it was the Volkswagen Beetle of tractors and Celeste has maybe had to take photos
CELESTE: If I hear another word about
GERARD: If I spot a Ferguson T20, or something closely resembling it, I need the photo. But there's something interesting that you tapped on with that last article, which is there is a field of collecting known as thematic collecting or topical, subtle differences we don't need to go into. But it's where you don't collect on a country or an era but you, you're looking at what the stamps depict, like you might pick roses or cows or anything. It's amazing how many different topics there are. And that is a field that has traditionally been very popular among female collectors. And probably for that reason, it's a field that's been a little bit dismissed by those who have run the formal exhibitions and the judging. The old men.
PENNY: But I bet other people like it.
GERARD: Well other people do like it. And also, I have to say this, having said that first, that entire attitude has very much changed in recent times and collectors broadly have come to realise the gender balance, or the gender bias there, and have come to realise that also thematic collecting can actually be quite a fun way to collect. I use fun in a kind of relative sense. So there are issues, like what you were saying there, or what the article was saying there about women liking the pretty pictures, essentially there's a grain of truth in that. But also, everybody's starting to realise that we all like the pretty pictures.
CHRISTINA: Yep.
PENNY: Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you? I mean, what's an unpretty stamp?
GERARD: Oh there's some pretty ugly ones. I could name a few.
PENNY: Just a brown blob or something?
GERARD: I think even in this country we have a bit of a tradition of sort of going, 'Oh there's some big conference on. Let's put the conference logo on a stamp'.
PENNY: A logo.
GERARD: It's an ad.
CHRISTINA: Disappointing.
PENNY: That is crap.
GERARD: Although some logos can be brilliant.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
GERARD: So, swings and roundabouts.
PENNY: So about women the article continues;
"In discussing the increase in the number of women philatelists, a leading Adelaide dealer, who has the names of many feminine customers on his books,"
GERARD: That doesn't sound creepy at all.
PENNY: Well they may or may not be women, we don't know. Anyway,
"said that women showed excellent qualities as collectors. Generally, they had the right kind of eye for color —an important asset for a stamp collector—and although their fancies turned more to the picturesque type of stamp,"
CHRISTINA: Damn those fancies.
GERARD: Damn those pictures.
PENNY: "many wisely restricted their collections to specialisation in sets of countries, rather than to buying stamps haphazardly from all over the world."
Just screaming hysterically.
GERARD: That was me as a child.
PENNY: Exactly. If you were gonna collect stamps, Celeste, is there an area, like let's say you had to?
CELESTE: If I had to.
CHRISTINA: It's an imposed hobby.
CELESTE: I think, you're looking at me with the knowing eyes that it would be duck stamps. And Gerard has, I think you've bought me a few. I don't know where they are. A few stamps with ducks on them. Just cos they're my favourite animal. That's really all I can think of.
PENNY: You could have a beautiful duck-themed
CELESTE: Yeah, and I'm sorry it is a, a picture thing or a feminine thing.
GERARD: You don't have to apologise to me, you have to apologise
CELESTE: To all women.
PENNY: I've let you down.
CHRISTINA: The human race.
PENNY: My imaginary stamp collection.
GERARD: No, no apologies. We're shaking a fist at the old men of philately.
CHRISTINA: Duck stamps sound exciting.
GERARD: There's actually a whole field cos in America when you buy your hunting licence it comes in the form, the receipt is in the form of a duck stamp. And they have become really popular to collect so they make lots of money just by selling these stamps to collectors who have no intention of going and shooting a duck. And there's a, there's swings and roundabouts because beautiful stamps, but let's not ask what they're really there for.
PENNY: Yeah, is that what you're interested in Celeste? Is this really about shooting?
CELESTE: I'm not shooting ducks. Oh god. No.
GERARD: It's actually also about raising money for conservation. Because the strange thing about hunting is that they need to make sure the species is preserved so you can hunt some more. So it's all very murky.
PENNY: It's the circle of...no it's not. Okay the article continues;
"Several of his customers have excellent collections of Commonwealth stamps, and a correspondent from New South Wales has one of the most valuable groups of Australian stamps, including several rare issues of Sydney views. Some of the earliest and most valuable Australian stamps, by the way, depict convicts landing at Botany Bay. They were issued in 1850, and remained in use for about two years."
Are they still valuable Gerard?
GERARD: They are. Sydney views, particularly if you've got ones that are unused or really good condition, Sydney views are still a thing. And it's called Sydney views cos essentially it depicts a view of Sydney. And it's really primitive. It looks like a kid drew it. And it really does show some convicts just getting off a boat and sort of looking around basically. And it really, when you think back to the time, it's quite remarkable that they even put convicts on a stamp back then and sort of said, look this is who we are and this is where we've come from.
PENNY: That is interesting, cos for supposedly for awhile we were ashamed of it. But not, apparently not.
GERARD: But even in the last few years in my family we decided, well the descendants decided to give a certain pioneer a gravestone cos he was lying in an unmarked grave and some of the old-timers didn't want to have to have his convict heritage mentioned on the gravestone. Whereas most of us were like, 'But that's awesome!' And no, so those attitudes still prevail. And back in those days they usually just put the Queen's head on it. Cos it was all about the queen. So the fact that at that time, I think it's the 1850s that they drew a picture of convicts hanging around early Botany Bay, it's really quite remarkable.
PENNY: Yeah. The next heading is; "Echo Of S.A. Aviation History"
Sorry, South Australia Aviation History.
"Air mail stamps form another branch of philately which appeals to women's imagination; and nowadays, when almost every week some new development is projected or accomplished, the collector who wishes to be up to date in this department has to look lively."
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: I dunno. Why? Why did that appeal to the female mind? I have a theory.
GERARD: I'd love to hear it.
PENNY: Oh they just thought the aviators were hot.
GERARD: Yeah. There were aviatrixes as they were called back in the day. I also think there's something in the aviators were hot. They were rockstars of the time.
PENNY: That might have been part of it.
GERARD: It's hard for us to remember that. It was a big deal if someone flew from Melbourne to Sydney for the first time.
PENNY: And like people, thousands of people would come to meet them at the airport.
GERARD: Yeah, and it was quite common for any aviator to take a sack load of mail on a plane with them so
PENNY: Yeah, that's what Charles Kingsford Smith was doing. I listened to a podcast about it the other day and like one of the reasons why apparently, he kept doing all these flights was to try and prove that he'd be really good at delivering the mail.
GERARD: Yeah, it was all about, people just wanted to get news from their relatives faster and if a week on a plane was so much faster than 6 months by sea or whatever. It was a big deal. And those covers are still out there. They often got signed by the pilots or they got a special stamp saying, 'This was on Smithy's flight' and still very collectable.
PENNY: Oh, so you just used a technical term there Gerard. Now, I know what it means because I've listened to your podcast. You just said covers. What's a cover?
GERARD: Sprung. I try not to do that in conversation but you've caught me out. A cover is really what stamp collectors call an envelope. It's whatever's covering the letter. So thank you for calling me out on that. But yeah, I personally like covers more than stamps. They tell way more of a story. Because you can see where they came from and where they went and they might have a Charles Kingsford Smith autograph on it.
PENNY: And that's why you should listen to, I think it was episode 2.
GERARD: That was episode 2.
PENNY: That was really good. The article goes on;
"One of the most treasured possessions in the collection of a woman in England forms an interesting link with aviation history in South Australia. It is a postcard sent on the experimental flight across St. Vincent Gulf by the late Captain Harry Cutler."
In August1919. Which I looked up, I couldn't even find Harry Cutler. Anyone heard of him?
GERARD: I feel like I know the name. But he must have just disappeared into the pantheon of early aviators.
PENNY: Not one of the hottest.
GERARD: That was his problem. Too much of a fugo.
PENNY: "Stamps fascinated women when men did not bother about them. In 1841, only a year after the issue of stamps, it was advertised in one of the leading London papers that "a young lady being desirous of covering her dressing table with cancelled postage stamps invited the assistance of strangers in her fanciful project!"
So like you were saying, she was covering her dressing table with stamps. She was decoupaging.
GERARD: Sometimes it's reported as wanting to wallpaper her room. But yeah I suspect that story there is more likely. And yeah,
PENNY: It sounds like a pub toilet to me.
GERARD: It does. It sounds like something you'd see on Brunswick Street.
PENNY: In the 90s.
GERARD: But yeah, it's true she's credited as the first stamp collector and it was just ‘send me your old stamps cos I want to cover my table with it’, or whatever.
CHRISTINA: That's cool.
PENNY: And Celeste, is this a good birthday idea for Gerard? Wouldn't he love to come home and see his stamp collection.
CHRISTINA: Oh, a whole wall.
CELESTE: If I just went through it and got the old clag out and started sticking it on the desk.
GERARD: Look what I've done to our collection.
PENNY: I love you.
CHRISTINA: Ta-da!
GERARD: That'd be very funny.
CELESTE: It'd be grounds for divorce.
PENNY: We're getting to divorce in a minute.
CHRISTINA: Right. We've come full circle.
38:22 PENNY: When we finish this article.
"Women And Penny Postage"
Yes and my name is Penny.
CHRISTINA: It's all about you isn't it. Penny Postage.
PENNY: "It is no great exaggeration to say that women were instrumental in the introduction of penny postage, because it was a woman's action that convinced Sir Rowland Hill of the great necessity for a revolution in the cost of letter carrying. Many know the story of how he watched a carrier deliver a letter to a servant maid, who, after a close scrutiny of the envelope, reluctantly returned it to the bearer, saying she could not afford the fee of 1/6, and of how Sir Rowland stepped forward and paid it for her, only to learn that a certain mode of address had told her her lover's message without the necessity of having to pay the fee! Soon after this, penny postage was introduced"
Isn't it amazing how women can give men ideas. Like isn't that inspiring.
CHRISTINA: It is so inspiring.
PENNY: And had you heard that story before Gerard? Is that how stamps start?
GERARD: I hadn't heard that specific story but it is true that it used to be the recipient had to pay. So
PENNY: It's like in America, if someone calls you, you are paying as well.
GERARD: Oh, is that right?
PENNY: Yeah.
GERARD: Wow, still.
CHRISTINA: I thought that only happened from prison.
PENNY: It was years and years ago, I don't know if it's still the case.
GERARD: But yeah, you could annoy your enemies by sending them a letter from somewhere far away and if they didn't know who was sending the letter they'd pay the postage and then you'd open up the letter and go, 'Ha ha sucked in!' So that's, and that was, certainly it was Sir Rowland Hill who came up with the idea of universal Penny postage. Basically, it costs one penny to send a letter anywhere in Britain. And you can buy the stamp in advance. But what's also often forgotten and something that might be interesting to delve into, maybe we should do it on our podcast one day is, at the time paper was made by women and they made it out of rags. And it was just something that particularly working-class women did in the back, in the laundry tub. They would get rags and they would soak it in a certain way with certain I think chemicals probably toxic, who knows. And somehow they would turn that into paper. And it was on some of that paper that the very first of Sir Rowland Hill's stamps were printed. And I feel bad that I didn't refresh my memory and I could not tell you the name of the lady who made the paper that the first stamps were on. But it's always all about Rowland Hill. Sure he came up with this idea but shout out to Mrs so-and-so who made the paper.
PENNY: Which does sound like a nice hobby too. Making paper. I mean, not in those days, it would have been, she probably died from it.
GERARD: It feels like something that should have come back during lockdown.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, damn the sourdough. I'm making paper.
PENNY: Next pandemic.
CHRISTINA: Something to look forward to and plan ahead.
PENNY: Okay, it carries on. There's so many different ways women can be involved in stamps guys. It's quite extensive.
"Women Commemorated on Stamps.
Women have not yet distinguished themselves as stamp designers, but they have on several occasions provided the inspiration for stamp faces."
PENNY: Now Gerard, have, do women, are they allowed to design stamps now?
GERARD: I think we let them now. I think, you know, when the main designer's gone to lunch or something it's possible that the secretary jumps on the computer and knocks up a design. One of her pretty little pictures. No suffice to say, that was an entirely tongue-in-cheek and women are integral and very important part of stamp design these days.
PENNY: Not just making the paper.
"The head of a country's queen is, of course, invariably reproduced on its stamps. One of the most noticeable instances of a woman's action being honored in stamps is provided in the special issue of stamps to commemorate the death of Nurse Cavell during the Great War."
I think she was on a few different stamps. I looked her up, she was mur-, well she was executed, she was helping soldiers escape Belgium.
GERARD: Oh right.
PENNY: "and to signalise the sufferings of women and children in concentration camps during the Boer War, a special issue of stamps bore a reproduction of the Voortrekker monument erected to their memory."
PENNY: "The Belgian Congo has paid a pretty compliment to the work of nurses among the natives there, in an artistic stamp -which depicts a nurse weighing a chubby little black baby in the shade of a tropical tree."
GERARD: Oh wow, that's vintage reportage there.
PENNY: Are there many racist stamps?
GERARD: Oh, there would be. I mean the Nazis put out stamps for example. And I mean mostly, if you look at the imagery it's not so much
PENNY: Are you allowed to collect Nazi stamps? Cos you're not allowed to collect a lot of
GERARD: It's interesting, you're not, you're certainly. You can at the moment. There's talk of banning Nazi imagery. I think when you read into the laws that have been passed in some parts of the world it's usually about, it's kind of the promotion and the glorification. I think for the most part stamp collectors have been given the, they kind of fall under the academic fold. Where it's like, as long as you're just kind of studying the history of it. And not sort of seeking to glorify, that's fine. They didn't put the racism necessarily overtly on the stamps. It was more about hey, how great is the guy with the moustache. But it's an interesting historical field but there are very good reasons why people like, not so many people are into those stamps as some others. You do see historical attitudes, we can say, in some of those olden stamps. What's probably fortunate is that a lot of the time back in those days they would just put the monarch on. Or the president, or whoever. They didn't get too illustrative sort of up until the 1920s or thereabouts. You can sort of trace the development of say colonisation through Africa through the countries' names and Cyril Rhodes pops up in Rhodesia and it's not so much necessarily that the racism or the bad stuff is illustrated, but you know those stamps are historical artefacts that were around at the time that the bad stuff was going on. You could easily find letters that would make you just want to throw the letters in the bin. And certainly, even just reading postcards or fairly low-level stuff sent by normal people you can certainly hear a lot about the attitudes of the time.
PENNY: Okay, so this is the last section of this article.
"After The Ball
Many years ago, when the wife of the Governor of Mauritius despatched invitations to a ball she little knew hove valuable the stamps on them would become. The worth of stamps, however, like most other things, depends on supply and demand, and the fact that there are now only four of these stamps in existence sets their value at some thousands of pounds each."
So, you know those particular stamps?
GERARD: Blue Mauritius. Still a classic.
PENNY: Do you have one?
CHRISTINA: Sounds like a cocktail.
GERARD: I think one went to auction a couple of years ago and it was still on the original envelope and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, or pounds.
PENNY: That's like birthday and Christmas don't you think Celeste?
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
GERARD: That's the sort of thing I think Celeste might have heard about cos I would have got excited about it at the time.
CELESTE: I might have tuned out when you told me.
GERARD: Celeste is actually, the idea of this podcast I've realised and I haven't actually mentioned this on the podcast but I probably will is that Celeste has come up with a real good way to stop me talking about stamps all the other times.
CHRISTINA: Yes. Condensed into podcasts.
GERARD: I save it for the podcasts. So yeah, we have to find other things to talk about.
CHRISTINA: What a shame.
PENNY: Sounds like the plan is working. And so, what would be the most valuable stamp in the world now? like what kind of
GERARD: There's an old one from British Guyana, or British Guinea, which is now Guyana. And that's held up, that sold a few years ago for 8 million US dollars. And it is held up as the most expensive stamp.
PENNY: Would that be in a private collector?
GERARD: That was actually bought by a famous stamp firm called Stanley Gibbons in the UK. But up to that point to that point it was owned by kings and millionaires and that sort of thing. That's a really ugly stamp and there's a lot of questions now about whether it really deserves that moniker. A Japanese one sold last week for about 4 or 5 million Euro. Which means that's also up there in the ballpark. And it's the first time a Japanese stamp has threatened to. It's a sign of other parts of the world being interested in stamps apart from Europe and America. And so there are a couple similar rarities. There's a Swedish one that's sort of in the same world. What's tricky is sometimes they don't sell overtly. Sometimes they get swapped for stuff and you have to try and estimate what was the value of the material that that got swapped for and so luckily a world that I'll probably never have to worry about.
PENNY: And Celeste, now that you've heard all of those different ways that women can in fact, get involved in the manly world of stamps, do you, has it changed your mind at all?
CELESTE: I should definitely be featured on a stamp. That's what I took away from that conversation.
GERARD: That you should be allowed to design.
PENNY: Yeah, absolutely. And you've made the paper yourself. Done it all.
CELESTE: That's the only way it's gonna to happen.
47:30 PENNY: Now okay, this is going to be the last article that we're gonna read. I am bringing the tone down a little bit now but I think I feel like you guys can handle it. Having spent some time with you I'm not worried this anymore. I don't think I'll give you any ideas. This article was published in the Sydney Sun on the 27th of October 1946 and the headline is "Double Divorce Stamps Out Philatelist's Marriage"
CHRISTINA: Wow.
GERARD: Double divorce sounds exciting.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, how does that even work?
PENNY: Well, it's the olden days.
"AN Englishman has been given a divorce from his wife and his wife from him"
CHRISTINA: A double divorce
PENNY: "all at the same time."
CHRISTINA: It sounds like a game show.
GERARD: Yeah.
PENNY: To me now that seems like the only way because don't want to still be married to someone who's divorced you.
CHRISTINA: It could be awkward.
PENNY: But of course, this is back in the day when they didn't have no fault divorce and one person had to petition to divorce the other. So in this case they've both said that they had a reason and the judge has said, yes, they were both good reasons. So, the details are;
"The husband was Harry Findsberg, of Uxbridge, Middlesex. Mr. Justice Jones gave him a divorce because of his wife's adultery with Richard Taylor, of Stoke Poges"
CHRISTINA: I love that he's named as well.
PENNY: "Buckinghamshire."
Yeah well, yeah that's the other thing about the olden days.
CHRISTINA: Name and shame.
PENNY: It's good fun.
"The wife is Mrs. Edith Findsberg, now living In Stoke Poges."
GERARD: Oh. With Richard, obviously.
PENNY: "The judge gave her a divorce because her husband had been cruel. Said Mr. Justice Jones: "I could dismiss both petitions but it wouldn't be in the public interest to leave the parties married." Taylor was ordered to pay £150 damages."
So that's the guy she was having an affair with so he has to pay the husband basically for having a go on his property. The good old days.
"Findsberg is a philatelist. This caused trouble in his home. According to evidence, Findsberg, hot tempered, hurled his breakfast on to the celling after his wife had complained of hearing too much about stamps."
CHRISTINA: That's a dramatic start to the day.
PENNY: It is. And can you imagine if Gerard did that every time
GERARD: Just Weet-Bix on the roof.
PENNY: It'd look like my house. I've got 3 kids. But I cannot imagine Gerard throwing his breakfast, he'd probably just
CELESTE: No, he likes breakfast too much. He's not throwing it anywhere. ever doing that. Imagine if Gerard throwing his breakfast. He'd probably just
CELESTE: No, he likes breakfast too much. He's not throwing it anywhere.
GERARD: Yeah, I've gone to all the trouble of making my breakfast. But there must be times when you have thought, 'Yeah, wrap it up mate.'
CELESTE: I think I tell you.
PENNY: She's said.
CELESTE: I'm pretty sure I let you know. And I like that about you because you take it. You take it into account that we can't always be talking about stamps.
GERARD: And can I make clear that we don't. Sometimes I bang on about live music or and how I don't go there anymore because I'm too busy stamp clubbing.
CELESTE: Or the public transport system. You're quite good at
GERARD: I'm into the public transport system. So I'm into cool stuff as well.
PENNY: Yep, absolutely. Then the article goes on;
"Findsberg later wrote offering to "give up stamps — they've been my curse." But his wife would not forgive him."
Because she was banging Taylor.
CHRISTINA: Really not interested in stamps at that point.
GERARD: I'm starting to think it maybe isn't about the stamps.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: But they say;
"What puzzled court reporters is this— Taylor, the man with whom Mrs. Findsberg committed adultery, is a philatelist, too."
GERARD: Scandal.
PENNY: Twist at the end. And so, Celeste would you ever leave Gerard for another philatelist?
CELESTE: Perhaps one who didn't talk about it as much. That's what I think might be the difference here.
PENNY: That's your version of trading up.
CELESTE: Yep, exactly.
GERARD: yeah well some of the old fellas at Stamp Club aren't very talkative. Do you want me to introduce you? And they're likely to shuffle off a lot earlier than I am too most of them. So, you know, you could come into
CELESTE: Stop it, you're tempting me.
PENNY: Thank you so much for coming in and talking to me about stamps. Your podcast is great, I really hope you keep doing it.
GERARD: Oh thankyou.
CELESTE: Thankyou.
PENNY: Don't get divorced. Keep it to that hour. And I think you'll do really well. And how can they find the podcast? Where's it, and also your blog?
GERARD: Yeah so it is a podcast and it's called Stamps Aren't Cool. You'll find it on, hopefully, all your podcast channels. And we also film ourselves recording it and that's a good way to see the pictures and we sometimes chuck in some funny animations. And so we're on YouTube under the Stamps Aren't Cool as well. It's connected to my stamp blog, which is PunkPhilatelist.com and that's also where you can go when we put out a podcast if you listen to the audio version you can go to PunkPhilatelist.com to see the pictures that we were talking about.
PENNY: Which is very relevant. I think you do get more out of it when you look at the
GERARD: When you see one of the pictures.
CHRISTINA: See the visual.
GERARD: One of Celeste's early concerns about the podcast idea was how we, how are we actually gonna talk about something that you want to look at. And yes and you can find, we do the social media through my blog social media. So you can find me as Punk Philatelist on Twitter, and Facebook and Instagram. Celeste doesn't so much get into dealing with the social media feedback.
CELESTE: Definitely not. I don't want to know. I don't want to hear it. Thankyou.
GERARD: She doesn't want to spend her days talking to nerds. But of course, as you mentioned earlier it's geared not just to people who collect stamps but to people who maybe have a bit of a passing interest. Or people who don't collect stamps at all. We try to make it a little bit entertaining anyway.
PENNY: Yeah, like it really is. Like I mean I am a bit inclined to just like people talking about things that they're interested in and history and I really, really enjoyed it.
GERARD: Oh thankyou.
CELESTE: Thankyou.
PENNY: Oh, and rate and review. Their podcast and In Those Days as well because apparently that's very helpful. Everyone says it at the end of podcasts thanks guys.
CHRISTINA: Thankyou
GERARD: Thanks so much for having us.
53:50 (Piano music)