Where do you think the most isolated post office in the world would be? It is in a place where the human population is limited and you have mostly penguins for company. Britain’s southernmost public Post Office is located in Port Lockroy on the remote Goudier Island, part of the British Antarctic Territory and home to over a thousand penguins. It is commonly known as Penguin Post Office. Established on February 11, 1944 during Operation Tabarin, a secret wartime mission to secure territorial claims in Antarctica, Port Lockroy later transitioned into an atmospheric science research base and communication hub after the war ended in 1945. It remained operational until January 1962. In 1995, it was designated as a Historic Site and Monument.
Since November 1996, the site of the former research base has been run as a museum, welcoming up to 18,000 visitors each season. Given the presence of workers and tourists on the island, it’s unsurprising that there is also a Post Office. The Port Lockroy Post Office dispatches around 70,000 postcards annually to over 100 countries. Former Port Lockroy worker Sarah Auffret discussed the unique Post Office in an interview. She said, “As you approach the Penguin Post Office on a small island off the Antarctic Peninsula, you’re met by the calls of 600 pairs of nesting gentoo penguins. At the start of the season, you might have to climb a snow staircase, while later on, you’ll need to navigate guano-covered rocks to get to the building. It’s definitely not your typical trip to the Post Office!”
She further explained how the Post Office operates: “Sending a postcard costs one US dollar, regardless of the destination. The team manually franks the mail, handling over 1,000 postcards on busy days. The Stanley Post Office in the Falkland Islands sends the mail on the weekly Royal Air Force plane to the UK, where it then enters the regular postal system. A postcard from Port Lockroy to Cambridge typically takes no more than two weeks to arrive.
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