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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this story contains the name and image of a person who has died.
Ninety-nine years ago today, a small snippet of an extraordinary life was noted in an Adelaide newspaper.
On page 17 of the Saturday Journal, readers were introduced to Koolbiri, also known as Mailman Jimmy.
In the 1870s he delivered the post between Eucla in Western Australia and Fowlers Bay in South Australia.
The two Nullarbor communities are now linked by a 371-kilometre stretch of Eyre Highway, but that did not exist back then.
Every month, Koolbiri set out on the 700km-plus round trip on foot.
“He ran with the mail bags every fortnight from the Bay to Eucla, a distance of 280 miles, and returned during the following fortnight,” the paper stated.
“He could do the journey in faster time than a man on horseback.”
The newspaper report also said Koolbiri had recently died.
An article published in another Adelaide newspaper in 1928 said he was a “remarkable character, well known on the west coast”.
“He had astounding endurance,” it said.
“And [he] was recognised as The Royal Mail between Fowlers Bay and Eucla for a long period.”
Almost a century later, Mirning elder Uncle Bunna Lawrie said Koolbiri’s story was a source of pride.
“The only man who could walk as fast as a horse,” he said.
“Some people really didn’t believe it – they thought, ‘This man must be a magic man.'”
Tom Gara, a historian who has worked with Aboriginal people on the Nullarbor since the 1980s, said Koolbiri’s incredible feats were still remembered, both in records and in oral histories.
“He’s quite well known in the early historical sources relating to the Nullarbor Plain,” Mr Gara said.
Meagre payment for amazing feat
Without Koolbiri’s efforts, Mr Gara believes the new Eucla settlement would have had no means to communicate at all.
Mr Gara guessed Koolbiri probably did the mail run from about 1871-72 until 1875-76, before the telegraph station was built in 1877.
“I imagine once they started to build the telegraph line, they would have had an established track going from Fowlers Bay to Eucla,” Mr Gara said.
“They would have got the local telegraph inspector to carry the mail or something like that.”
While Mr Gara said mail was delivered on foot by other postmen, he had never heard of any travelling nearly as far as Koolbiri.
“He was supposedly rewarded with tobacco, which sounds like a pretty meagre payment for what he was doing,” Mr Gara said.
The author of Koolbiri’s obituary also noted he took almost nothing with him, aside from the mailbags.
“The most amazing thing to me was that he found sufficient food and water to carry him through the journey,” it said.
But Mr Gara said that made sense.
“He survived by hunting along the way, and getting his water from the rock holes and things that he knew about,” Mr Gara said.
“So he was surviving traditionally out there, which is not surprising.”
Uncle Bunna hoped other people would learn about, and draw inspiration from, the mailman’s story in the future.
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