By Alisa Huseyin and Emily Campbell
The rain came without warning. It fell in hard, ruthless sheets, drumming against the dirt streets of early Wollongong. The downpour in 1832, described by some as a great waterspout, filled the lagoons and overflowed into the sea through a channel that ran down to Brighton Beach.
For a town that had just secured a permanent water supply – once carted in by bullocks yoked in tandem like horses – this storm was both a blessing and a threat.
Amid the chaos rode Dan Sullivan, a mail carrier who ferried letters between Wollongong and Campbelltown on horseback. With the mailbag tied firmly to the saddle, Dan began his usual route.
Unaware this would be his last.
As Dan arrived at the Lodden River, a swollen torrent raged between him and his duty. With no bridge to cross, he urged his horse, Black Jack, into the merciless current.
The rain lashed against him, and the water roared beneath him.
Hours later, Black Jack staggered into Wollongong, the mailbags still strapped to his back. He carried no rider.
Telegrams and newspapers circulated news of the loss of Dan Sullivan’s life. Among the tragedy, Black Jack’s return marked something deeper, a rhythm embedded in Wollongong itself. A returning home.
Museum manager and Vice President of the Illawarra Historical Society, Mr John Shipp, knows this pattern well, his family having lived in Wollongong since the 1850s.
“That was the attitude, that if you wanted to do better, you left Wollongong. Wollongong didn’t hold us. But we all drifted back. We all come back,” he said.
Mr Shipp did leave, spending time in Europe and Sydney as an archivist and librarian, but like Black Jack, and so many others, he too returned.
At the heart of Wollongong in the 1860s was the Market Street Post Office, whose Victorian Italianate architecture still stands today. The pathway tiles in front of the building trace the building’s uses over time.
Mr Shipp said the building’s continual adaptation speaks to the element of Wollongong’s enduring ability to make do.
“The building was built in stages and added onto in a higgledy-piggledy way. The doors into the courtyard are all smaller than a normal door because that’s all they could fit. The staircase was made to fit into the space available, which was originally the mail sorting area, rather than creating space for a staircase. Throughout the building, you can see where they made do,” he said.
“There’s something about Wollongong that I can’t really describe. But it’s got to do with the working class. It’s got to do with our ability to make do. And it fascinates me.”
Although its purpose has shifted throughout the years, the building itself seems stubborn in nature, determined to give back to the community in which it stands.
It first housed the Telegraph Office from 1865 and then the Wollongong Post and Telegraph Office from 1870 until 1892.
As the construction of the railway shifted Wollongong’s commercial centre to Crown Street, where a new post office was built, the Market Street building went on to host the Harbour Trust, government offices, the Dole and Food clothing ticket office during the Depression, the recruiting office during World War II, and later the Motor Registry and Department of Labour and Industry.
Since 1966, it has been the Illawarra Museum.
Mr Shipp said giving back to the community is what led him to volunteer with the Historical Society after he retired.
“My family believed that unless you contributed to the community, the community wouldn’t exist, and it would fail. I believe you have to give whatever you can,” he said.
As a historian, Mr Shipp said he values honouring the everyday.
“All history has a personal component. I hold the view that ordinary people are as important as the well-known,” he said.
This belief is palpable in the Illawarra Museum. Its collection is a cumulation of donations from the community, each room of the old post office a love letter for regular life.
Twenty-two-year-old Wollongong resident, Ilaria Di Noro, said the Old Market Street Post Office’s presence keeps history and connections alive.
“I’ve grown up in Wollongong,” she said. “We went on a school excursion to the Old Market Street Post Office when I was in primary school. Even now, when I walk to the harbour, it’s impossible to miss. The building feels like something from another time.”
Ms Di Noro said her father’s family immigrated from Italy, while most of their relatives stayed behind. Years later, her father returned to reunite with distant relatives in their village.
“It’s wild to think that they all managed to stay connected for all those years before phones and social media, just through letters,” she said.
The human connection once carried in the letters that passed through the doors of the Old Market Street Post Office now takes the form of memory and artifacts, communicating the stories of previous generations.
When Black Jack returned without his rider, no one could say why. Perhaps instinct. Or survival.
Or maybe there’s something in the salt-soaked air. Its currents, a quiet pull felt by Black Jack, the people who’ve drifted away, and those who long to call Wollongong home.
It moves through Wollongong, gathering grains of sand and stories of connection, contribution, resilience. The specks of shell embedding themselves in buildings like the Old Market Street Post Office.
It’s in the exhale you feel as you travel down the escarpment, the ocean with its waves and whitecaps showing it feels it too.
