KHS is pleased to announce the Official Opening of our restored Kinglake Post Office on Sunday 17 May 2026, 1:30 to 4pm at the Kinglake Heritage Centre.
This building, dating from 1914 so now 112 years old, has had a very interesting history - in fact, a charmed life, having three times escaped being burnt down when buildings beside it were destroyed. Its other claim to fame – it was arguably the smallest PO in Australia!
The first postal service for Kinglake was set up in 1883 at the home of Edward Staff on Mount Slide Road. When he left the district in 1890, the ‘post office’ was transferred to ‘The Oaks’, the home of Harry and Elizabeth Thomson. In 1895, the Thomson family left that property, bought land nearby (now the site of the present Kinglake hotel) and built their home, ‘Aurelia Villa’, which they operated as a guesthouse for some years. Harry added an extra building on the east side for the Kinglake post office.
In 1908, Harry was granted a Wayside Inn licence to set up a hotel but the post office could not be operated in the same building so a new post office was erected on the west side of the Thomson home.
In 1914, Harry Thomson retired from the hotel business and built a home, ‘La Mascotte’, close to the hotel. This required yet another new post office building beside the house on a slightly different site and this post office served the Kinglake township until 1991 when the postal service was transferred to a shopfront in the main street. In 1992, ‘La Mascotte’ caught fire and burnt down but the old post office building survived.
The little building was no longer required and was likely to be demolished. However, the Kinglake Neighbourhood House and the Kinglake Historical Society managed to have it saved from demolition and removed to the grounds of the Neighbourhood House for safekeeping. In the 2009 fires, the little building escaped destruction again.
In. 2023, the post office building, looking a little the worse for wear by this time, was removed to its present site beside the Kinglake Heritage Centre at Kinglake West. It has now been restored and we look forward to ‘unveiling’ it and explaining its interesting history to visitors on Sunday 17 May. We hope you'll be there.
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