Since Tracy Ward took over the South Lismore Post Office in May 2024, she has transformed the business into an eye-catching, creative operation, which is often caught in a traditional Australia Post world.

Tracy put her PHD studies on hold when she took over the post office. She wanted to inject her DNA into the business. Back in May 2024, she told the Lismore App this was “part of me helping to respond to and rebuild the community.”

They weren't just words for Tracy; she has certainly played her part in rebuilding the community and creating lots of talk around town, and not just in South Lismore. Remember Christmas last year?

After just over twelve months in a new business, Tracy is up for a national award after recently winning the NSW Licensed Post Office of the Year under strange circumstances.

"I went to the Australia Post National Conference the weekend prior, and it was a magnificent weekend. We had a great opportunity to learn, to connect with other licensed post offices and corporate throughout Australia. And we're sitting there at the dinner, and they started announcing the state winners of Corporate Post Office and Licensed Post Office throughout Australia. I was sitting next to another lady who's been a licensee for a long time, and I said, how do you know about this? How do I get on board with this? You know, maybe next year I've got something to compete with.

"The very next thing that came out of their mouth was South Lismore. So, we got the state title for Post Office of the Year," Tracy said with a beaming smile.

The bizarre part is that Tracy did not know she was in the running for the prestigious award.

"Your field engagement lead, which is, I guess, the corporate person that is responsible for assisting and overseeing the work that you're doing as a licensee, gets to nominate if they feel that you're meeting all the criteria and you're worthy of the nomination. And I guess I just got nominated, and a lot of it probably had to do with the campaigns that we've been running to raise that heart centre of the community and the uplift on the post office.

"We're doing big things at the post office at the moment. I'm revamping and I'm rebuilding internally. So we're going to see an exciting new big enterprise taking place over here, which should hopefully double our capacity to serve our community.

"You're going to see it unfolding over the next two months, and then it should be a fairly big, new, exciting adventure that everyone will see."

That is only one of Tracy's big ideas for 2025.

"In line with that idea of big things, I'm going to start doing an uplift on the outside of the post office as well. Obviously, for us, it would be exciting if we could raise her out of the flood, but that's a little bit out of my scope at the moment, because it's going to be a half-million-dollar endeavour, and that's money I don't have access to. That's in the future, and I think that will be based on whether we can attain some grants, which we're trying for."

Those grants may be within Tracy's grasp because the building is heritage-listed. It was built in the 1880s, and Tracy believes it is the oldest existing Lismore business inside of its original building.

"Of course, the post office here predates the banks by 18 years, so it's quite exciting. The original postmistress, Eddie Thompson, was a single war widow. I'm a war widow, but to still have a woman running the post office is nice, a bit nostalgic."

The next of Tracy's big ideas is for Lismore to be seen across the country.

"There's a number of elements to that project. But the first element I can let you in on is that there will be a new display that will come together in the next few weeks. It will be inside and outside, and hopefully, we'll be able to light her up at night again.

"But more importantly, what we're looking to do is send out messages of heart from Lismore across the country, and hopefully engage the rest of Australia to send that back to Lismore via postcards.

"So, we're having postcards made up that will reflect our post office, and not only our post office, but that beautiful heart symbol that Lismore has become renowned for in the last three years, post-2022. Rather than us being known as a flood victim, I'd rather Australia saw us as the great big HEART that we are. The way we pull together, our resilience and the love we have for ourselves, for our community and for our country."

Tracy's idea is for locals to send the postcard to anyone and everyone in Australia, whether you know them or not.

"You could choose to send it to friends, or you could choose to send it randomly to an address you find, and just send a gift of love. You could decide to send it to nursing homes down in Victoria. You could decide to send it to community programs over in Western Australia, or you could decide to send it to a disadvantaged person somewhere, or some centre that is facilitating and looking after those people.

"I mean, wouldn't it be incredible if Lismore started sending out postcards of love and expressions of kindness to people that were in palliative care units, to people that were in facilities that assisted with mental health problems, for children that were perhaps in state care. Why can't we start showing Australia who it is that we are?

With these lofty ideas, what is the ultimate goal for Tracy?

"I would absolutely love to see us as a little hub again, South Lismore back as that heart space of Lismore. I would love to see a big heart here. Okay, we've got the rail trail across the road, and somewhere here, I think we need to actually have our own big thing, like the big prawn, like the big orange, the big pineapple. I want to see the big heart here.

"And I want to start seeing tourism grow so that we can start rebuilding in a way that people see what resilience looks like, something to attain to."

While Tracy creates her next big idea, she will find out if she becomes Australia's leading Licensed Post Office in September, following on from her state win and the Australia Day Community Engagement Award this year.

As the Australian idiom says, Tracy Ward's blood is worth bottling.