A local post service run by a Bermagui teenager is capturing the minds and hearts of people around Australia and beyond.
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Bermagui resident Miro Jones started the service on March 1, 2022, when he was just 11 years old.
The service has a website where Miro sells the beautiful postcards and stamps that he makes.
Most of the operation though is definitely low-tech.
Currently people can leave letters at two designated drop-off points, Strangers in Paradise vintage store and Honorbread.
He delivers the letters around the streets of Bermagui on his orange 1960s Malvern Star bicycle.
The stamps cost just 40 cents.
"Australia Post would charge you $1.20 for the same service," he said.
Miro is not in it for the money though.
"I really like delivering mail and having that service so people can write letters to each other," he said.
Global movement
Miro has always been a keen stamp collector.
He discovered the local post service movement on a YouTube channel about stamps and joined the Local Post Collection Society.
"It is based in the US and they have international membership," he said.
Fellow philatelists helped with advice and one in the US, Kevin Blackston, prints and perforates the sheets of stamps on lick-and-stick gummed paper.
Miro said the materials and equipment involved are difficult to get and expensive.
He has made a range of stamps featuring things like the Lunar New Year, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags and Bermagui's iconic Blue Pool.
Word is spreading
Angie Moore, co-owner of Strangers in Paradise, said the service is getting very popular.
"Sometimes there is nothing there and then suddenly there are a pile of letters to be delivered."
Miro said people from overseas and other parts of Australia are buying his stamps for their collections.
"It is a popular thing in stamp collecting.
"They are called locals or local post stamps," he said.
Ms Moore said that a parcel once arrived for Miro.
A woman who was enchanted by Miro's story sent him her old stamp albums because she thought he might like them.
Another woman from Dubbo, who had holidays in Bermagui, was equally charmed.
"When she came to see us, she recognised the shop immediately.
"Her family used to have this shop as a grocery store in the 1950s and she showed me a photo of her as a baby outside the shop.
"One thing leads to another, that community thing expanding from one small idea," Ms Moore said.
