Shannon Salter was on maternity leave when she noticed the Hadspen Post Office was for sale. A grocery manager at Woolworths at the time, Shannon found herself weighing up the pros and cons of a different kind of working life.
Three years on, she and her sister Brooke Lowe run the outlet together, serving the rapidly expanding township of Hadspen and the surrounding Meander Valley. It is a business built on familiar faces, word of mouth and a determination to offer more than just a place where parcels are collected.
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“We wanted to take the next adventure,” Shannon says of the decision she made while caring for her first daughter, Florence. “A bit more work-life balance, which the business is providing.”
Both sisters came from retail management at Woolworths, Shannon in grocery and Brooke in fresh produce, which gave them a strong commercial grounding even if the world of post offices was largely foreign to them. “I could never understand what a post office did until I bought one!” Shannon says. That education has shaped how they approach the job.
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One of the things they have pushed hardest is awareness of the varied services offered. Many customers, Shannon has found, do not realise how easy an online return has become. Retailers now send a QR code; the customer brings it to the counter, it gets scanned, and the label prints on the spot. “You look at it and you go, I’ve got to go print that out. It’s too much effort and you won’t do your return,” she says. Removing that friction, she believes, is part of what keeps people coming through the door.
The post office operates on a commission model. Australia Post runs the posties and contractors, but the outlet itself is privately owned and every dollar of income depends on the foot traffic Shannon and Brooke can generate. That reality has pushed them to broaden what they offer. Alongside postal services, the shop carries newspapers, magazines, cards, confectionery, and an expanding range of giftware sourced in part from the Melbourne Gift Fair, which they attend each August to get ahead of seasonal trends. There is also a printing and photocopying service, useful for customers without a home office setup. An online store is in development, aimed at people who might consider Hadspen too far out of the way.
Christmas is the defining season. Packages get sent locally, but also out to the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, often filled with Shapes, Vegemite and Tim Tams for Australians living abroad. Shannon’s daughter Florence has taken a role in the operation, stamping Christmas cards at the counter. “The old Christmas stamp still remains at 65 cents,” Shannon notes.
Hadspen itself is changing. A housing estate is going up across Meander Valley road, and Shannon has noticed more interstate arrivals settling in the area. New faces mean new conversations and new customers to introduce to services they may not know are available.
Shannon recently gave birth to her second daughter, Freya increasing the difficulty juggling work and life.
Long-term plans remain loose. Shannon admits she bought the business thinking of it as a short-term venture and has found herself still here, still building. The family hopes to stay in the area and send both girls through Hagley Farm School.
