My primary area of interest is the postmarks of the Victorian colonial era, most particularly the Barred Numerals, and this project is the expansion of an idea which first found expression as a topic on Stampboards.com and has, over time, grown outside its original framework. My initial thought was to give a little background to the cancellations of the post offices as they appeared over time, but the more I delved into the subject, the more enmeshed I became in the rich and diverse tapestry of events and people which shaped the Colony's evolution after the coming of the Europeans.

There is already a vast array of information on European history in Victoria, freely available both on the internet and in your local library: there is even quite a lot of information available for postal historians. Historical Societies throughout the State are repositories of many interesting facets of their own Towns and Shires, but sometimes they do so in isolation.

On this site, hopefully, I can strike a balance between the centralized versions of history, and the "big" picture, which is sometimes so large that the human element gets lost. Victoria's European history is made up of real, flesh and blood, people; in every essence, exactly like people today - the good and the bad. They were the driving force who forever transformed the landscape which had been home to peoples for thousands of years, a fact which was accepted by some but disregarded, or completely ignored, by many more.

For anyone with the slightest interest in things philatelic, the STAMPBOARDS website is well worth at least one visit.