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Posting Yourself In The Mail

I must defer to the classic insider understanding possessed by @escargot1 on this, but I understand that at one time it was possible to send even an elephant as letter-post via the Royal Mail (for reasons of speed and favoured handling). My fractured recollection regarding this is that this was an entirely-seperate stratum of superior speed than mere First Class or Second Class.

Naturally, common-sense would dictate that an elephant being sent via Royal Mail would normally travel as Parcel Post. Probably.
Right up until relatively recently the railway system in the UK had what was called "Common Carrier Status" which basically meant they were compelled by law to move anything that was presented to them. That's anything from a single sewing needle to a 500 ton electrical transformer and everything in between. Boxes of day old chicks, pianos, corpses in coffins were all moved up and down the length of the country at great inconvenience to the railway. This obligation was removed as part of the British Railways modernisation plan reforms in the late 1960s but before that the railway had to keep thousands of different types of wagons standing by on the off chance including, yes, some for moving elephants.
 
Can you help?

Are you Irish, were you in Australia in 1965 and did you happen to help a homesick Welshman airmail himself home in a wooden box?

Brian Robson wants to contact Paul and John - he can't remember their surnames - who helped him get out of Oz. Brian, from Cardiff, was 19 years old when his two friends helped nail him into a crate so that he could mail himself from Melbourne to London. He couldn't afford the air fare but he was desperate to get home.

The journey proved much more hazardous than he had imagined and almost spelled the end of his life. But he lived to tell an incredible tale. As a teenager, Brian had taken a job with Victorian Railways on an assisted immigration programme in Australia, but he was deeply unhappy.

He couldn't just buy a ticket home - he had committed to spending two years in the country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-56648439
 
... Brian Robson wants to contact Paul and John - he can't remember their surnames - who helped him get out of Oz. Brian, from Cardiff, was 19 years old when his two friends helped nail him into a crate so that he could mail himself from Melbourne to London. He couldn't afford the air fare but he was desperate to get home. ...

Speaking of Robson ... This CNN article provides a detailed account of his desperation to get home from Australia and the trials he endured during his time in a crafe.
The Welshman who mailed himself home from Australia in a box

He'd only just arrived in Australia from Wales, but teenager Brian Robson quickly realized that he'd made a big mistake by emigrating to the other side of the world.

Unfortunately the homesick 19-year-old didn't have the money to cover the cost of abandoning the assisted passage immigration scheme he'd traveled with in 1964, as well as his return flight home.

After realizing his options were pretty limited, Robson, from Cardiff, hatched a plan to smuggle himself onto a plane in a small box and travel back in the cargo hold. ...

FULL STORY: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/welshman-who-mailed-himself-home/index.html
 
Speaking of Robson ... This CNN article provides a detailed account of his desperation to get home from Australia and the trials he endured during his time in a crafe.


FULL STORY: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/welshman-who-mailed-himself-home/index.html

There's a couple of things in his story which don't quite add up:

He says they did a trial run the day before when he was sealed in the crate then taken to Melbourne airport. Then the following morning he got back in the box which John & Paul nailed shut for the real thing. Did they stay the night at the airport with him? If so where, you can't go into cargo storage areas willy nilly at an airport. Or maybe you could in 1965. I doubt it though. Where did he stay after getting out of the box - in a cargo depot? John & Paul somehow manage to get access to where the box is to re-seal the next morning.

He then says after flying to Sydney & sitting upside down for 22 hours - [he really should've had 'this way up' painted on the box] - he was put on a plane to LA & "the flight took about five days". There's no way that flight would've taken 5 days - maybe it stopped off en route, but he doesn't say so. Maybe he means the whole journey from Sydney 'til touchdown in London took 5 days with several stopovers.
 
There's a couple of things in his story which don't quite add up: ...

Actually, there's a lot that doesn't add up if one goes back to the original accounts of his trip (more on that later) ...

The trial run supposedly happened on the day before he was finally sealed in the box and submitted for transport. This would have been on Thursday, May 13 (1965). My guess is that the "trial run" consisted of his being transported to the airport and then reclaimed by his accomplices there. There's little in the way of details about this trial run, but his pals obviously had access to the box between the time the hired truck took it to the airport and the time it was finally accepted for shipment. I can't find any clues as to whether Robson remained at the airport the whole time between his two sealings (into the crate).

The crate was indeed labeled "this way up" and annotated to indicate fragile contents (computer equipment).

The flight didn't take any 5 days.
 
If one goes back to the original newspaper reports on the incident the flaws in the CNN account become clear. The following comes from the 1965 news article in a Sydney paper.

First - the punch line to this already farcical affair ... He didn't have to try this stunt in the first place. Australian authorities had already decided his assisted immigration effort had proven unsuccessful and he would be repatriated to the UK at no cost. If Robson had checked in with immigration authorities as he was supposed to do after finishing a 5-month jail term circa 3 weeks earlier he'd have known that.
From the Archives, 1965: Stowaway’s box seat in airliner
First published in The Age, May 18, 1965.

If Brian Robson, Melbourne’s air-borne “migrant in a box,” had contacted the Immigration department when he came out of gaol in Brisbane on April 27, he would now be back home in Cardiff, Wales — without cost.

Robson’s friends discovered in Melbourne yesterday that his highly dangerous trip home was unnecessary.

The Immigration department had already decided to send him back to Cardiff, Wales, free of cost. ...

An Immigration department spokesman said Robson arrived in Australia by air from Cardiff, on July 8, 1964, as an assisted migrant recruited by the railways.

“Due to an unsatisfactory record in his short time in Australia, and as there seemed little prospect of his successful settlement, Robson was to be offered repatriation to Wales,” he said.

“Before this decision was conveyed to him he apparently left Australia.

“Had he reported to the department after leaving gaol in Brisbane in April, as he should have done, Robson would now be home in Wales,” the spokesman added.

It was reported from Brisbane last night that Robson completed a five months sentence for false pretences on April 27.

FULL STORY: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/vic...y-s-box-seat-in-airliner-20210409-p57hui.html
 
So he was in the crate for 92 hours after the trial run, including the 22 hours upside down. I wonder what the 'false pretences' jail term involved. Still a bit of a mystery as to how & where he & accomplices managed to nail him back in, presumably at Melbourne airport, after the trial run where he managed to get out for a while.
 
The details of the trip timeline in the 1965 Australian news article clearly demonstrate Robson didn't spend as many as 5 days in the crate.

However, the article includes a section or addendum datelined Los Angeles on Monday, May 17, which claims Robson had spent an exorbitant amount of time in the box:

... But instead of being placed on a direct 36-hour Qantas flight from Sydney to London, the crate was shipped by Pan Am.

And at Los Angeles airport yesterday, cargo officials heard knocking and saw a flashlight shining out of the crate.

Inside, cramped and too weak to walk they found Robson — 92 hours and 8000 miles after he had been nailed into the crate in Melbourne.

When he was unloaded in Los Angeles on Saturday night he didn’t know where he was. ...
(Emphasis added)
"Yesterday" = Sunday, 16 May 1965 (Los Angeles time; using LA dateline at face value)
"Los Angeles on Saturday night" = sometime on Sunday, 16 May 1965 (Australia; ignoring LA dateline)

Now here's the problem with the claimed time spent enclosed ... This claim (92 hours) is less than 4 days total time in the box.

More details about the flight indicate Robson's actual time inside the box was significantly shorter than that.

Robson was nailed into the crate at his Albert Park (Victoria) boarding house on Friday. He expected to be consigned to London via Qantas.
Instead, he was flown to Los Angeles by Pan American Jet and discovered inside the crate by a freight worker at Los Angeles airport.

Friday = 14 May 1965. (Australia) / Thursday 13 May 1965 (Los Angeles)

Even if one extends things back a day earlier I'm not sure it would all add up to as many as 92 hours of actual enclosure from the beginning of the trial run to the time he was finally discovered at the LA airport.
 
He's made contact with one of his mail friends

The Welsh man who airmailed himself from Australia in 1965 has made contact with one of the two Irish men who helped him with his unorthodox journey.

... Mr Robson tried but failed to resume contact with the two friends on his return but after The Irish Times recently reported on his efforts, one of them got in touch. Mr Robson said his friend wished to remain anonymous but he was happy to let people know they had made contact. The Irish man is trying to establish contact with the second man. “We don’t know 100 per cent where he is, to be honest. He could be anywhere,” Mr Robson said.

Mr Robson said it was “really brilliant” to get an email from his old friend. To be certain it was him, he asked three questions, which only he and the other Irish man could have known. “And not only did he answer the three questions, he added more to it. We are still getting on as well as we were 56 years ago, which is nice,” he said.

“He’s a lovely chap and his wife is wonderful. My ultimate aim, when the [Covid-19] virus stops spreading around, is to meet up.” ...

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/off...o-helped-airmail-him-from-australia-1.4539579
 
From FT93:

"A prisoner escaped from jail in Dusseldorf, Germany, by posting himself in a cardboard box. Josef Schmid, 43, was in charge of mailing clothes made in the jail to a clothing warehouse. He hid the clothes, which were ready to be packed, climbed in and taped it shut from the inside. The next night at the warehouse, he cut himself free and made his getaway."
 
Random observation - with a single word swap this thread could be called 'mailing yourself in the post' and still be accurately titled.
 
It puts me in mind of the joke about the airman shot down during WW2.

He ended up in a prison hospital, being treated for his wounds, and one day the doctor came in and said to him,
"Unfortunately, your left leg is so badly wounded that we are not able to save it, and we will have to amputate"
"Okay" replied the airman, "But do me a favour, put it in one of your bombers and when you are over my country, drop it on home soil?"
The doctor agreed to this.
Then a week later the same doctor visited him again and explained that his other leg was also beyond saving.
"Oh that's terrible" said the airman "but again, could you drop the amputated limb over my home country?"
Again, the doctor agreed to this request.
Then another week later the doctor visited the airman again, and explained that unfortunately his right arm was also too badly wounded and it too would have to come off.
Yet again the airman made his request about having the severed limb 'repatriated' over home soil, but at this point one of the guards burst in and said "NO - WE CANNOT DO THIS!"
"Why not?" asked the airman.
"Because....." replied the guard ".....we think you are trying to gradually escape!"
 
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