New Zealand Philatelic Federation

Southland
Philatelic Society

Meetings
Meetings are held at the Senior Citizens Centre, corner Forth and Nith Streets, INVERCARGILL, at 8pm on the first Thursday of every month, excluding January. Junior Meetings are held at the same venue on the same evening as the adults.

Contact

Our mailing address is: P O Box 300, INVERCARGILL.
Contact the Secretary, Marie O'Regan.
PRESIDENT: Murray Acker
SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT: George Stewart FRPSL
JUNIOR VICE-PRESIDENT: Vacant
SECRETARY: Marie O'Regan
EDITOR: George Stewart FRPSL antqgevi@es.co.nz
TREASURER: Brian Hinton hbh@xtra.co.nz

Programme

Oct 2	Society Monthly Meeting at 8:00pm

	4 page competition	Four stock pages of air mail covers

	Auction	Lots will available for inspection from 7.30pm

	Display	While the sale is being tallied up Ritchie Dick will show reproductions of the world’s rarest stamps.

Subscription Information

FULL ADULT MEMBERSHIP:	$17.50 per annum.
COUNTRY ADULT MEMBERSHIP:	$14.00 per annum.
JUNIOR MEMBERSHIP:	$9.00 per annum.
FULL FAMILY MEMBERSHIP:	$22.50 per annum.
COUNTRY FAMILY MEMBERSHIP:	$17.50 per annum.

New members also pay an entrance fee of $2.50 (Adult) or $1.00 (Junior).
All these subscription charges are discounted by $5.00 if paid by 30th September.

Our Members on the Web

Dave Joll keeps some information on recently issued world stamps at the aptly titled Worldwide Stamp New Issues.

"South of the Old Coach Road" John R Slattery

South of the Old Coach Road being The Postal History of South-Eastern Southland, New Zealand, Southland Philatelic Society (Incorporated), Invercargill, 2004, xii + 170 pages, illustrated, bibliography, references, index.

As George Stewart has given me the credit for acting as a catalyst to get John Slattery’s work on the Postal History of South-Eastern Southland published, it is a privilege to be asked to write a review.

The book is packed with a wealth of detail on the post and telegraph offices of the chosen area, with listings of postmasters, dates of opening and closing, datestamps used, in fact everything the postal historian or indeed historian, would want to know. The information for each office follows a standard format, is well set out and easy to read. All sources have been identified and are gathered together in one section at the end of the book. That section alone runs to five pages, an indication of the extent of the research carried out, when one bears in mind the many items that must have been searched where no information of value was found. There is a good bibliography, and a good index to both place names and people that works well.

Writers on philately and postal history know that their market is limited and that therefore, their work must be produced in a way that will attract sales. This unfortunate fact tends to reduce the quality of illustrations, particularly of buildings, and this work is no exception. From a personal point of view, I would have preferred perfect binding to ring binding, recognising nevertheless that as produced here, it lies flat and allows one to photocopy individual pages easily, and with a footer on every page, one will know in the future where the copy comes from.

The preliminaries are well done, with an excellent Contents Page, Lists of Maps, Illustrations and Photographs. Yet it is here that there is a major criticism – which has nothing whatever to do with the wonderful amount of information contained therein. Why, oh why, did the publishers not obtain an International Standard Book Number for this work? It is free and only a telephone call away to get the form to obtain one. Granted one then has to submit copyright deposit copies of the book, as one should anyway, but the free publicity generated by national and international listing that results in sales more than offsets the cost.

Allan P Berry, FRPSL, FRPSNZ

The book is available from the Southland Philatelic Society, P O Box 300, Invercargill at $NZ25 plus post and packaging.