‘Welcome to the old Kaukapakapa Post Office at the Helensville Museum, where you can exclaim, “Oh, remember those scratchy pen nibs we used to dip in inkwells and address our postcards and sign our postal notes with!”

Or, “Oh, gosh, I used to operate that manual telephone exchange“. (It went electronic in 1983.) Younger visitors might marvel (or giggle) at such primitive equipment now that their tiny devices can be connected to anywhere in the world in seconds. But it worked fine at the time.

The time-line around the walls, illustrated with black and white photos, shows the advances made in the post service from 1863, when John McLeod served as the first Te Awaroa/Helensville Postmaster, to the present day Post Shop at PaperPlus.

The handsome old Helensville Post Office in the main street is now privately owned and also features as the police station in the popular tv series, “The Brokenwood Mysteries.”

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