With the advent of smartphones and social media, the practice of sending postcards overseas has largely been consigned to a bygone era.
But for the past 18 months, Newport man Peter Ramadge has been staging a one man postcard revival, sending thousands overseas and helping many others do the same.
His motivation for bringing back this retro form of international correspondence? The war in Ukraine.
“When Putin invaded Ukraine, I thought he was just sabre rattling,” said Mr Ramadge of his reaction to the Russian dictator’s invasion launched in February 2022.
“And I don’t know why, I’ve got no connection to Ukraine, but I was personally insulted by what he did, so I ordered a Ukrainian flag and put that on the front of the house and it will remain there until the war is over.”
Not content with flying the Ukrainian flag, Mr Ramadge wanted to send personal messages of encouragement to soldiers defending their homeland too, but after his initial attempts went nowhere, it was a suggestion from his housemate that he try Postcrossing, an online postcard platform, that finally got things moving.
“I joined (Postcrossing) and in January 2023 I put up a post saying I wanted to send lots of cards to Ukranians,” Mr Ramadge recalled.
“I got a response from Tamara saying I run Postcards from the Front and this is what we do. I thought this is perfect.”
Tamara is Tamara Levit, a Ukranian woman Mr Ramadge has never met, but who has helped him funnel thousands of well-wishing postcards from Australia to Ukranian defenders (he prefers defenders to soldiers are many are not professionally trained troops but civilians who’ve taken up arms).
“Tamara gets them from where she is and distributes them to the front line,” Mr Ramadge said, adding that unsurprisingly, the correspondence was mostly one way.
“We don’t get a lot of feedback but we get occasional photos from Tamara,” he said.
“The front lines are pretty damn dangerous and the guys who deliver the cards, I take my hat off to those blokes.”
And despite the lack of response, Mr Ramadge is no doubt that the postcards are greatly appreciated by those who receive them.
“They make a huge difference. According to Tamara lots of defenders carry cards in their top pockets.”
Now running Postcards from the Front Australia, Mr Ramadge has sent more than 14,000 postcards to Ukraine since March 2023, with an average of between 500 and 600 cards being sourced from across Australia each month.
However, despite with the war now being well into it’s third year, Mr Ramadge said demand was growing with a record 1250 postcards were sent to Ukraine in August.
“Recently they’ve gone beserk over cards,“ he said.
“Tamara recently had a demand for 3000 cards from a Ukrainian charity and a week after that someone else requested 800 cards from Tamara. She gets them mainly from locals and Europeans, but I’m doing my best as well.”
To meet the demand, Mr Ramadge is calling on more locals to put pen to paper and send a postcard to the front.
“This is something everyone can do and we have evidence that these cards motivate the defenders,“ he said.
“There is no cost at all involved in this.“
While there’s no cost involved, the task of sourcing and sending the postcards to Ukraine does take up a lot of Mr Ramadge’s time. Fortunately that’s something he’s got plenty of.
“I’m retired and I’ve become a bit obsessed with it.”
To send a postcard to Ukraine, visit: https://postcardstothefront.com.au/
