This series consists of celluloid and glass plate photographic negatives, produced and maintained by the Historical Section of Australia Post until its closure in 1988 and later by the Records Management Section.  
The negatives are black and white images of post office buildings and staff, of vehicles and other pieces of equipment, and of urban and rural scenes. Many of the negatives were copied from pictures made available to the Section by members of the public. Others were produced from the N Series and Lavender Series photographs held by the Section.
 
The negatives are in 35mm strips, 10 x 12cm individual exposures or on 21.5 x 16.5cm glass plates. They are held in sleeves or envelopes marked with the identifying 'HN' number.
 
The series is numbered sequentially, identical items sometimes occur under different numbers. A number of items have been mislaid from the collection prior to transfer to Australian Archives. Australia Post have retained a reference print of each item in the series.


This series contains audiovisual formats. As audiovisual formats are either redundant or susceptible to deterioration, some items in this series have been copied to ensure their preservation. Preservation copying involves the creation of preservation, duplicating and reference copies. 

These copies can be found in the following series:

Preservation copies: C5473, Photographic preservation masters of A4076 Photographic negatives, Single number with HN (Historical, New South Wales) prefix.

Duplicating copies: C5474, Photographic duplicating copies of A4076 Photographic negatives, Single number with HN (Historical, New South Wales) prefix.

Reference copies: C5475, Photographic reference copies of A4076 Photographic negatives, Single number with HN (Historical, New South Wales) prefix.