COMMUNICATING across Australia's vast distances has never been easy. To this day there remain pockets that are as isolated as anywhere on Earth. Our national carrier, Australia Post, has a remarkable history of adapting from pony carts and telegrams to experimenting with drone technology.
So, too, has it adapted from a vital, subsidised public service to a behemoth of a company that is expected to hold its own financial ground. 
But something valuable is being lost. Australia Post is descending into a half-way world where it delivers neither huge profits nor customer satisfaction.
The same taxpayers who feel enormous ownership of the business are also increasingly feeling gouged by a long series of increasing costs and decreasing services.
Managing director and CEO Ahmed Fahour took home $2.1 million in 2014 - the same year it was decided to sack 900 Australia Post workers. He did knock back a performance bonus reported as $2.9 million.
The business has already applied a lowering of services while charging customers more - stamps took a jump from 70Â¢ to $1; delivery speeds slowed and the principle was introduced that those who want better service should pay more. It's all a far cry from a service that provided universal, equal affordable postage. Concession card holders can still buy a 60Â¢ stamp but that raises the prospect of someone being expected to provide information about their income to a post office clerk.
Now Australia Post wants to charge up to $9 for not delivering parcels. Under the scheme, when a client isn't home to receive a parcel from their local postie, the parcels would go back to the local post office where they would be allowed to sit for five working days; after this time charges would be imposed. Currently, there's no charge to hold a parcel at the post office.
It's Australia Post itself that still chooses its main delivery times to be during regular business hours - times when fewer and fewer people are actually likely to be at home to accept delivery and just as unlikely to be able to make it to a post office to collect. Australia Post, by not adapting to the needs of its clients, is forced to hold parcels.
The business is struggling to adjust to a new world. Its revenue from general letters is falling as people rely on online communications but its revenue from its parcel service is steadily rising for much the same reason - people shop online, receiving their goods by parcel.
The growth of digital communications is not the death of the post office but an opportunity to refine and adapt. If it could be done for the end of pony mail and telegrams, it should be able to be done now without creating the overall impression that Australia Post's core business is about profit rather than service.
For the first time in 206 years the parcels business accounted for half the overall revenue of $6.37 billion.
And yet Australia Post doesn't seem to be doing much about addressing what changing work patterns mean to those consumers who would still prefer to deal with the same postal service they've known all their lives. Almost any consumer will have had some experience of the lack of flexibility which is a failure to address changing needs of post office clients.
Competitors are coming up fast. Japan Post is now the main stakeholder in delivery giant Toll Holdings, a service that also applies sliding charges for delivery times, delivery speeds and special delivery instructions but doesn't have the historical legacy of being a publically-funded, publically-used service. Goodwill counts a lot for a business like Australia Post and goodwill is what is being squandered with every seemingly greedy or ill-explained business decision .The business posted an after-tax loss of $222 million in its last reporting period but there is an argument that a large part of that loss, perhaps up to $190 million, came from the cost of retraining staff to implement new measures - measures that have presumably been judged to be ultimately beneficial and profitable. The previous year there was a $116 million profit.