This cover was sent from Port Moresby, Papua on August 2, 1907. It proceeded to Cairns, Queensland, the most northerly port on the east coast of Queensland - over 400 miles south of Somerset, the northern point, arriving there on August 21. The long time required by this leg must be the result of infrequent visits to Port Moresby by vessels suitable for carrying mail world wide. From there it went to Brisbane where it received a transit CDS dated August 22. The next noted stop was its destination, London E.C., noted by a roller stamp as September 30.
The cover is franked with a single 1906 'Papua.' overprint of a British New Guinea 2½d ultramarine (Scott 14). There are two Port Moresby, Papua, CDS dated August 2.
jimbo
PS: Sheryll, You beat me by 1 minute! Will Puppies do as well?
A Pair of Pennies 
and a the famous Poached egg on a good example of Poste Restante.
Current definition of Post Restante from the GB Post Office web site:-
How it works
It’s easy to stay in touch when you’re travelling with Poste Restante.
- Apply
For Foreign Travellers in the UK -.Before you travel to the UK, write to or call the Post Office to request the address details for the post office that you would like to use in the UK town where you will be staying.
For Domestic travellers in the UK - Do this in person at the branch you’d like your post sent to. Please note, the Poste Restante service may not be available everywhere. - Tell everyone the address
Tell your friends, family and business contacts the Post Office address you’ll be picking up your mail from. This is how it should be written:
Your name
POST RESTANTE
Post Office name
Full address of the Post Office
Postcode of the Post Office
Country (if applicable)
Your Poste Restante address will be active straight away but don’t forget to tell them they’ll need to include a return address on the back of the envelope. - Pick up your post
Pop into your designated Post Office branch to pick up your mail. It would be ideal for you to take your passport as a form of identification for you. If you normally live in the UK, and travelling within the UK, you must also take proof of your address with you such as a utility bill in order to collect your mail.
Jimbo - Hope you can fill in for me in the next couple of months whilst I'm in Oz!
Puppies are allowed if you can find a philatelic connection or postcard.
Speaking of Postcards...
I picked this up today. The image on the front and the slogan cancel PRAY FOR PEACE are concordant.
This slogan is the most common in my collection and is used by the most towns.
Hmm, I think I can do a few P countries, especially after the last couple or three years. Here's a start with Pitcairn Islands, an easy one since it started to issue stamps the same year as my collecting stops. 🙂 (Notice the completion, there's a used stamp sitting behind each mint stamp... Of course most of them are likely CTO.)
Portuguese Africa, My page has changed somewhat from this, since there were two paper types for the War Tax stamps, I'm missing just one paper variety in one perf.
Portuguese Congo, only the first couple of pages are scanned so far... I'm looking for the perf varieties to fill in a bit before I go whole hog.
P is for Pelican Island. Pelican Island was a small island off the coast of Barbados and its capital Bridgetown, and was used from early times as a quarantine station. In 1900, Barbados experienced a smallpox epidemic, and the island was used to quarantine those with the disease. Between 1900 and 1901, mail from Pelican Island was handstamped with a maltese cross and "P I" to identify it as originating from an infected area. This local cover to Bay Mansion dated November 24, 1900 bears a nice strike of this handstamp.
Today, landfill has made Pelican Island part of the Barbados mainland, and the area is known as Pelican Village. The area contains a number of tourist shops that cater to the cruise ship crowd.
P is for the Paris print of the Large Hermes Heads of Greece. Below is the 80 lepta value of this print from my collection:
Here's the Portugal page for 1882 issues, looks like two have the cancel type, both Lisbon. Look also at the telegraph stamp on the next page... It's got a different town. From there on they're pretty common. Do you know who made the octangular cancels?
P is for the P in Port-Vila which is malformed in an Alavoine forged cancel (usually 16 NOV 11).
PM2 is the correct cancel.
PU7C is the Alavoine cancel
In the middle is a NSW stamp with an Alavoine forged cancel.
P is for Peru.
Tacna lies in southern Peru about 22 miles north of the Chilean border. Its history includes being occupied by Chile after the War of the Pacific which ended in 1883. After the war, there was to be a plebiscite on which nation Tacna would join. However disputes continued and no plebiscite was held. The issue remained unresolved until 1929 when occupied Peru was divided and Tacna returned to Peru.
Juan Tidow was a German businessman with varied interests in Ilo, Peru, a coast city about 35 miles northwest of Tacna. Tidow's "industry produced toilet soaps and hotel type, shaving soaps, roses and lemon soaps, creams for footwear oils nugget, almond milk, toilet water, olive oil." Tidow was Mayor in 1928 and 1929. He also appears to have been involved in power generation and beer brewing. This letter was probably a message to a German relative or friend.
The airmail cover was franked with 1924 10c orange red Lequia x3 and 1s bister brown De Saco, 1928 15c deep blue Jose dela Maro, 50c violet brown Numeral (Scott 245, 249, 285A, and J48, respectively). Scott notes: "In 1929 during a shortage of regular postage stamps, some of the Postage Due stamps of 1921 were used instead." There are three strikes of the Tacna CDS. Unfortunately, we don't have a scan of the back to see if there are any backstamps to chronicle the requested route of Airmail via New York.
All in all, an interesting usage from an interesting sender.
jimbo
PS: Don't ask how I got here.
