Today in Postal History

   
New Guinea to England
March 20, 1933

This registered airmail cover left Wau on its way to England on this date.
Wau is in the mountains near the headwaters of a river
which goes into the ocean at Lae - Salamaua on Huon Gulf in northeastern New Guinea.
It's about 250 km north of Port Moresby and about 40 km inland from the Solomon Sea.
It doesn't exactly appear to be a metropolis!
There are two Wau, New Guinea, CDS on the face of the cover.

Registration was accomplished by a script notation 'R Wau 2066' below the stamps.
The 2066 was subsequently crossed out and a new serial number '2426' was added.
The cover also received a crayoned blue registry cross on both sides.

It was routed first to Salamaua where its transit
was noted by a March 21 'POST OFFICE' datestamp.

Its next postal stop was Sydney, N.S.W., in Australia
where it received a registry mark on April 18 - a slow passage.

There is no postal evidence of the date of its arrival in Bristol.
Bristol is due west of London on the Mouth of the Severn.*

The franking consists of the 1932 Raggiana Bird of Paradise
stamps overprinted with a small biplane and AIR MAIL.
There is  a 3d. blue and a 6d. bister brown (SG 194 and 197).

Note the small stamp on the lower right rear of the cover.
I believe this is the stamp of a one-time owner of this cover.
The combination of uncommon stamps and unusual
origination make this a nice cover for the postal historian.

*Jim Whitford-Stark found the present occupant of 69 Queens Road in Bristol is a launderette.
He wonders if the sender was sending his laundry home.

Pastnotes Index - The First 300 and the Next 208
provides more tidbits about stamps and collectors.

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