Peter Carey poses with stamps showing himself and more of his ilk

In the US, they put cartoon characters and movie stars on the postage stamps. Sigh. In Australia, they put writers on their stamps! As this story from the Sydney Morning Herald reports,

As one of those increasingly rare letter writers who eschews email, David Malouf still queues in the post office and thinks carefully about which stamp to put on his envelope.

Now he can choose a 55-cent stamp with his face on it, though he says modesty will stop him.

Malouf is one of six novelists featured on the latest Australian Legends set of stamps, which Australia Post releases today.

He is joined by Peter Carey, Bryce Courtenay, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough and Tim Winton – a group of Australia’s most prolific, most popular, most awarded and mostly grey-haired authors.

”Stamps aren’t what they used to be,” joked Courtenay, who was born in South Africa. ”It was the king’s head on stamps when I was young. Now they just put old shitbags on them.”