Tracey Marshall is the Whanganui River Road's new mail contractor. Photo / Bevan Conley
Tracey Marshall is the Whanganui River Road's new mail contractor. Photo / Bevan Conley
What has to be one of New Zealand's most unique mail runs - doubling as a guided tour of the Whanganui River Road - has a new contractor with a local voice. Laurel Stowell reports.
Tracey Marshall is the first person raised up the Whanganui River to take thehelm of Whanganui Tours and Mail Run.
It's a background which comes in handy given the role is more than dropping mail into the 70-odd mailboxes on the Whanganui River Rd.
It also involves being a tourist guide for those paying to hitch a ride.
Marshall and her business partner Linda Andracic took over the contract for the run last month.
Koroniti is Marshall's marae, she went to Parikino School and she remembers the days when mailman John Hammond drove a dusty gravel road to deliver bread and milk as well as mail.
Marshall takes passengers to her own marae. Her sister Karleen was principal of river school Te Kura o Te Wainui-ā-Rua for seven years and she still has family there.
The tourists stop to have morning tea from a thermos somewhere along the road - perhaps the Jerusalem convent building, or the viewpoint at Pipiriki. The Matahiwi Gallery is usually open in summer.
"I tell them about the river, the importance of the river to Māori. I also tell them the importance of all the marae along the way, and then my family history up there.
"They get to hear a lot of stuff that your average tourist probably wouldn't hear," Marshall said.
Guests on the Whanganui River Road Mail Run get a guided tour of the area from new contractor Tracey Marshall who has expert knowledge. Photo / File
From Monday to Friday she begins work around 5.30, collecting the mail before picking up passengers. They are usually back in town by 1.30, and the tour costs $75.
If three or more people are booked with Whanganui River Adventures for a jetboat trip to the Bridge to Nowhere Marshall will wait in Pipiriki while they take the tour, then drive them back to Whanganui.
These days the road is fully sealed and there are more couriered online purchases to deliver, and fewer groceries.
The river settlements have changed since Marshall grew up. There are fewer people, and only one of the former five schools is still going.
Sealing the road has made the city more accessible, and the river less remote.
"The good thing is the older generation can still live up there now, because of the road," Marshall said.
She has previously driven for Courier Post, and she and Andracic have owned Abbott St's Gonville Post Shop for two years. It's managed by Andracic, with two part-time staff, and Marshall has to help out.
"It's been crazy busy since the post shop in Victoria Ave closed," she said.
