Misplaced post goes to postcode twin

Only two letters, a and l, determine whether our post goes to the far side of the world or comes to Embach. Occasionally the post office makes a mistake and instead of coming to 5651 Austria, it goes to 5651 in South Australia. Fortunately, there is a nice man in 5651 Kyancutta, South Australia, who re-addresses our envelopes and returns them.

So where is Embach's “postcode twin” and how similar are they? Well, both are small agricultural communities, both pretty close to the centre of a continent. But beyond these and the postcode, we don't have much in common.

Mail returned from round the world trip to Kyancutta -
making it clear where Austria is

Kyancutta lies astride the Eyre Highway, which crosses thousands of kilometres of the desolate Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia. Farming is mainly of cereals and the village is dominated by a huge grain silo. A look at Google Earth shows a scattering of buildings spread out along the road with sparse vegetation growing in the rust red soil of southern Australia.

In stark contrast, the houses of Embach huddle together on a sunny shelf of land, meadows and woods rise steeply behind the church and a stream chuckles its way over a mill wheel and through the village. To the north, the land drops steeply into the Salzach river valley.

Kyancutta's glory days lie behind it. First settled in the early 1900s the township was proclaimed in 1917. Over the years, as the population grew, a hall (The Institute) was built for functions, a school was opened, a museum whose minerals attracted world interest was established, and a cottage hospital cared for local needs. Once there was an airport where flights between the east and west coasts would land and refuel and regular train services carried freight and passengers.

Now things are looking pretty different. Planes fly over without a glance below. Children are driven to another town for school and patients can no longer have minor ailments treated locally. There is a village store with petrol pumps for the long-distance traveller making his way along the highway – which connects Perth to the next state capital, Adelaide, thousands of kilometres away.

The Todd Highway runs south from Kyancuttta

Kyancutta's general store and post office

However, there are some things that haven't changed. That nice man who re-addresses the mail, Newton Luscombe, Ned to all in Kyancutta, is a multi-tasker who for years with his wife, Margaret, has maintained a three-hourly weather observational programme which is fed to the National Bureau of Meteorology. Ned is also curator of the museum, school bus driver, silo manager, sexton and probably scorer for the local cricket club when they can rustle up a team. His daughter has recently taken over his former role as postmaster and now runs the post office from the local store.

Kyancutta's main street and store

Although Embach is a tight, but flourishing community, with active clubs and village band, one or two new homes being built each year for growing young families, it has no museum, petrol pump or post office. It lies on an ancient north-south trading route along which produce was carried over the mountains. The church is centuries old and many houses have along history behind them. The snow we welcome every winter is never seen in the hot, dusty plains of the Australian south.

Despite our differences, we have a postcode in common and whenever a letter arrives with a Kyancutta postmark and Ned's “G'day” wishes on the back, I feel a pang of kinship, a sharing of something more than just four digits.

Embach's huddle of houses and the mountain rising behind the church