Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin

Difficult to read street numbers on Denmark’s houses are wasting valuable time, particularly in nighttime emergencies, for St John Ambulance crews.

The Denmark St John Ambulance sub centre is calling for householders to check that their street number is visible from across the street and for it to be a dark, preferably a black number, on a light background.

This should be on the kerbside and not on the house, or along the entrance driveway, or covered by overhanging trees and bushes.

Denmark sub centre chair Marion Macdougall asks residents to get numbers, a minimum of 10-12cm high with a black number and light background.

They are available with a reflective background at hardware stores.

These should be affixed to the letterbox or the fence near the road.

If lettering had faded it could easily be freshened up with black marker.

“Visibility counts because, for example, if you’ve got a grey number on light-grey background, it disappears very easily,” Mrs Macdougall said.

When checking their numbers from across the street, householders should keep in mind the readability if they didn’t know what their number was.

Visible numbering was also important when street numbers were not sequential.

Most commonly, this occurred when a corner house faced into one street but had an address in another.

Mrs Macdougall said some householders went to a lot of effort placing big mosaic signs, up to 30-40cm high, in several colours but often these were difficult to read at night.

She likened them to reading a colour blindness test plate (Ishihara test), in this instance the number becoming invisible because the colours couldn’t be distinguished in the dark.

St John Ambulance officers would always attend calls at any time of the day or night but finding a location quickly was vital.

L-R: Grey number on grey background compared with black on light background; numbers are best facing the street; from a distance this number is not visible; street numbers overgrown with plants can waste valuable time. Photos: Patricia Gill.

“We have to be able to see where you are,” Mrs Macdougall said.

Callers could arrange for someone to meet at a specified point if their driveway were too steep or had overhanging branches.

“It would be really helpful to know these things before we started down the driveway,” Mrs Macdougall said.

“Sometimes we have to put somebody out at the roadside and get them to walk in and see.

“If we are going to an urgent call, we don’t want to have to waste time searching for a place we actually passed because we couldn’t see the number.”

The City of Busselton issued free kerbside numbering.

The Shire of Denmark might consider this in future.

Kerbside numbering was ideal because it was regular and highly visible.

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 26 October 2023.