falls gradually down to the port. Nearby civic buildings include the courthouse and police station, and the council chambers directly opposite. Herbert Street is a wide boulevard with a landscaped median strip containing the Bowen War Memorial. The corner site is rectangular and is flanked by a two-storey red brickwork exchange on the north side fronting Powell Street. A concrete side driveway on the east side of the post office provides service delivery access and carparking to the rear of the site. Directly north of this is a two-storey Telstra building which has a large telecommunications tower at the rear. Built in 1936, Bowen Post Office presents a smooth rendered frontage to Herbert Street, which broadly follows the symmetrical fronted twin-entry post offices common in Queensland after the 1910s but translated in a cubic parapeted form. The frontage comprises two corner entry porches with parapets on both sides, and a central breakfront between them. Formerly this contained the telephone booths and public counter area and was lit by large a triple window below a higher parapet. The Art Deco styling is concentrated across the Herbert Street elevation, which is decorated with a stringcourse running across the central breakfront and a stepped-back moulding just below the parapet ridges. In the central bay, the linking course line jumps up over the ripple window and encloses it. Sculpted ornamentation of the flat fronted walls comes from a number of elements: two bosses; another course just below the parapet; stepping in the parapet itself; and a semicircular moulding, like the central acroterion finial on early Greek temples. The corner porches also include columns with stylised capitals and keystones over the openings and a moulded cornice which is highlighted by a cross and dart motif. The rear and side elevations of the building present as smooth stucco walls with moulded cornices and windows with raised cement surrounds and projecting sills. They are breakfronted with hipped roofs and gap-planked boxed eaves and recall the Georgian Revival design of Ayr Post Office completed in the same year and in the same general region. In plan form, the central retail shop is entered from either corner side porch. The west porch also accesses the post office box lobby, which has subsequently been installed within the west end of the former mailroom, involving the enlargement of an original window (in the north wall) to form a door opening. The