SA - ST stamps

South Australia - Colonial period: 1855-1900.
Departmental overprints - Superintendent of Telegraphs.

Postage stamps with a special overprint were used in South Australia from 1 April 1868. They were stamps intended to be used for official purposes to pay the postal charges on letters sent from a particular Government Department.

Each Government Department had its own overprint - for example:

S. T. was for Superintendent of Telegraphs;
B.M. was for Bench of Magistrates;
P. was for the Police Department;
L. A. was for the Lunatic Asylum;
S. was for the Sheriff;
T. was for the Treasury.

The stamps to which the overprints were applied were those printed by De La Rue and issued for normal use. theye were stamps which had been either rouletted or perforated. Many of the stamps are in a condition which would not normally be accepted because they had been withdrawn from sale to the public on the grounds that they were of inferior quality. To exacerbate that problem, many stamps with poor centering were trimmed with scissors to improve their appearance - they then, of course, appeared to be imperforate.

The first stamps overprinted were issued on 1 April 1868 with the overprint in red. Later in the same year, the colour of the overprint was changed to blue and then, in late 1869, changed to the most commonly recorded black overprint. The system was replaced in 1874 by using O.S. overprints for all Departments.

All the S. T. stamps for use by the Superintendent of Telegraphs are very rare and none is known on a complete cover. Anthony Presgrave provided the estimates shown for the red overprints and notes that there are no records of the numbers prepared for later years.

The following tables provide examples of the overprints by denomination, watermark and perforation for each colour of overprint. Empty cells indicate the existence of the overprint on a stamp wit the characteristics noted but anexample was not available to include.

Another page shows examples of the overprint with date stamps from various towns in South Australia.

Overprint

Watermark

Red overprint

4,080 2d stamps prepared;

720 6d stamps prepared.