A ravaging fire has devestated the township of Charlton in Victoria, located 245km north west of Melbourne, in the Shire of Buloke, turning the historic post office into charcoal.
Buloke Shire Council Mayor, Alan Getley, appeared on Flow's Country Viewpoint program this week to inform listeners of the latest developments to outline Charlton's contingency plans with regards to postal services being provided to locals.
"An electrical fault in the rear of the post office sparked a devastating fire, destroyed the post office totally - luckily there's no loss of life or the family's beloved pets, they're all safe and sound," Getley said.
"Quite obviously their business has been destroyed and the shire had to bring in heavy equipment to knock the brick wall of the front post office down to have saved that falling onto the road or anybody just to make it safe.
"So I've been there again with the CEO of the shire, I just want to say that our shire staff, the CFA, volunteers and VicRoads - people have done a hell of a job there to firstly close the Calder Highway, control the fire and put it out again with absolutely no injuries to anybody."
Getley said while it was too early to entertain discussions as to what the long-term future of the post office in the town looked like, that contingencies are in place for residents to continue taking-up postal services.
"My understanding is that what's left of the post office will need to be cleared away and then I'm assuming the owner will then will just decide with his insurance company what they will do," Getley said.
"I mean, it's a bit of prominent site in the main street of Charlton so we'd like to see something put back there again I suppose at the post office, obviously the old building that it was will not come back, they can't be replaced unfortunately but hopefully we can get a post office back there of some sort sooner rather than later.
"The post office will be going into the Charlton Shire Hall, those arrangements are being made as we speak, it'll be a temporary setup but the services will be available and we just ask that the community be patient.
"We hope to see a mail delivery in the coming days and a very temporary service there in the Shire Hall, people will be able to do what they have to do at the post office, but obviously, the scale of things will be very limited but there'll still be those services available as we now work towards finding them a temporary permanent home until we understand what will happen on the post office side."
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