Mails: Why so slow?

An airmail package to Canada should take six days. I posted a package there a few weeks ago, and it took more than 2 weeks to arrive. I feel my money was extracted under false pretenses.

I've been reading a lot of biographical and historical stuff about Henry Lawson (1867-1922) lately and have been struck by the evidence of a very fast mail service. The speed with which letters got to their destinations was truly extraordinary, given the distances and modes of transport of the day. And other things I've been reading about late-19th century London indicate that there were several deliveries each day. We get one a day now.

Even when I was a kid, almost but not quite in that century, we had post deliveries morning and afternoon, and Saturday mornings -- eleven a week as opposed to five now. The only significant difference I can see between now and then is that Australia Post (formerly the PMG) has grown increasingly privatised. A post office used to be a very spare office, obviously just for posting items. Now it's a boutique full of products made in China, and a TV blaring commercials at the people standing in the long queue.