Have drones, emails and Snapchat made mailboxes redundant?

It’s 2023 and my mailbox, like yours, is all but useless. Politician pamphlets. A dog-walking service. One or two bills I’ve forgotten to get emailed. My kids use it to store chalk and interesting rocks. Once I found a melted Freddo. I rarely see the postie, but the man who delivers junk mail and supermarket catalogues sometimes filches old bits of wood from the front yard, for unspecified reasons.

Oh, for the glory years of mail. The postie delivering twice a day. Handwritten letters from far-flung friends and family. Correspondence chess.

After my gran died, I found a letter written by my grandfather, who I never met. He was on a boat after Singapore fell, being evacuated to India. My grandmother had already escaped to Perth. “If I die you must marry again, for the sake of the children,” he wrote. I pictured him in some cramped dormitory, bracing himself against the swells. Now that’s what mail was meant for. Heartfelt communication at a distance.

Now we’ve got the virtual version. Communication is instant and free. Are emails the successor to letters? They lack the pleasing physicality. But unlike musty boxes of love letters, they never moulder. Emails just stay there, only a thought away. Your adult history. The changes you’ve gone through. The sheer cringe of your existence as a 19-year-old. It’s all there, un-ageing. Unlike you.

Small wonder the post as we knew it is gone. The only surprise is it’s taken so long. Australia Post revealed profits are down 88 per cent from the same time last year. Revenue from letters is in “unstoppable” decline. By the end of the decade, they estimate, each household will get less than a letter a week on average. Amazing work, whoever is still keeping Australia’s average above zero.

So why do we still keep mailboxes? Can we opt out? If I can take my house off gas, why can’t I uproot my mailbox?

Posties don’t need them. The source of their real power lies elsewhere, in those little notes on your doorstep summoning you to the nearest post office, where you have a 50 per cent chance of a very pleasant interaction and a 50 per cent chance of feeling like you’re at Karen’s Diner, treated with hostility and contempt just for trying to get on with your day. I’ll take those chances. You gotta live a little.

What we need instead is something cooler. In suburbia, the future never seems to arrive in any satisfying way. So let’s make it happen. Tear out your mailbox, and in its place, spray paint a beautiful red X on your driveway, porch or entry to your apartment block. This is the future done cheap. It’s your package portal. Your drone delivery receptacle. Your own source of power. On your phone, you can summon a delivery person in hi-vis to bring you whatever you need. Sixty rolls of toilet paper. Bluetooth speakers. Bike parts. Whatever. The mailbox is 19th-century technology. That was us thinking small, like titchy letters. Let’s think bigger boxes.