Inverted Stamps. New Zealand Lighthouse Stamps. What is an insurance business doing with its own stamps? A philosophy held by New Zealand Governments until the late 20th Century was that it was a good idea for government to be involved in many fields of commerce - so as to keep the others honest. Insurance was one of those fields. The Government started a Government Life Insurance Department in 1869. It did not restrict itself to life insurance and late in its existence sold other sorts of policies.
A lighthouse was used as its corporate symbol. When sea travel was the only way New Zealand was linked to the rest of the world and a common experience of many, the symbolism of safety aligned with a lighthouse must have been more powerful than perhaps it is today. As a government insurance business, it gained the right to use its own stamps after disagreements with the Post Office about how much postage it owed. The words New Zealand do not appear on any of the stamps - only the common abbreviation, N.Z. See: James Cook on Stamps ? New Zealand Chalon Portrait. Captain James Cook Through Stamps.
Home > stamp sites > cook on stamps This page is about portraits of Cook, the artists who made them and the use of the portraits on stamps. Other pages: The death of Cook and use of depictions of it on stamps. The ships of the three voyages and the use of contemporary representations on stamps. Some artefacts, both european ones taken on the voyages and Oceanic ones collected on the voyages, used on stamps. The first stamps about Cook and the ships. This site does not try to tell Cook's story. There are other sites that do that very well. The Contemporary PortraitsThe portraits here are of Cook, though others on the voyages appear on stamps as well: Banks, Solander, Bligh and Parkinson.
Later Portraits I have restricted this site to sculptural portrayals. Artists William Hodges was an official artist on the second exhibition. Omai, Banks and Solander by W Parry Parkinson's Depiction of a Maori Man Parkinson's original sketch. Mirroring A lot of early engravings are mirror images. Thursday Island Australia Philatelic Covers. HOME > STAMP SITES > THURSDAY ISLAND COVERS and POSTCARDS Thursday Island Covers and Postcards Where is Thursday Island? - here is a Google Earth link Thursday Island.kmz. It is at the northern extremity of Queensland, Australia. Photo album from my 2009 visit Bill Snell's pics from 1963 Wikipedia article View Larger Map William Bligh of mutiny fame sailed past here in the Bounty launch in 1789 on his way to Batavia.
The island was known as Waiben to the local people. It was fortified by Queensland against the Russians from 1891 and after federation the fortification became a federal government responsibility. The Federal Torres Strait Islanders Act of 1939 recognised the indigenous people as different from aboriginals and eased, but did not end paternalistic control. Today much of the Thursday Island population is of mixed Asian and Asian-indigenous origins. The Post Office was established by the Queensland Government in1878 and has been on the present site since 1887. Postcards 1910 Postcards. Thames New Zealand Postcards. A collection from internet auctions - those below are thumbnails. Thames is an old gold-mining town so the older images often relate to mining.
Originally two halves of the town were called Grahams Town and Shortland so those names are used on some of the old cards. Sorry about any repetitions in the array below - its hard to remember what is there! STAMP SITES.