Take a look at some of the south-west's most creative mailboxes

From gifts to custom orders and hand-made projects, The Standard's chosen a range of fun and quirky letter boxes and spoken with six residents to learn more about their weird, wacky and wonderful choices.

For Curdievale's Donna Bellis, her choice of letterbox came down to practicality.

"We started the farm stay seven years ago and we had a lot of guests getting lost," she said.

"A friend of ours said to us 'I'll build you a mailbox and they (people coming to the farm stay) won't get lost' and it worked.

"I'd give them photo directions because they'd end up at our house or the neighbours'.

"It's made a big difference.

"I ended up having to meet people down at Port Campbell sometimes."

As for the design, she said it wasn't exactly her choice.

"We didn't exactly choose it, he said I could make you a Lego man or something that will stand out, and I just asked him to make it a farmer looking with a pitchfork in his hand," she said.

"He did a great job. I think he's made them out of old gas bottles."

But down the road, fellow neighbour Judy Delaney said it was definitely her choice when it came to her letterbox - a minion from the film franchise Minions.

"I'm a minion nut, I absolutely love the minions," she said.

"They're just adorable and funny and they just make me laugh.

"My son got it made for me two years ago.

"The husband has made sure you wouldn't be able to pull him out even with a tractor, he's put safeguards in place you can't even cut it with an angle grinder.

"We do have people pull up and have photos taken with him."

She said it even had a name.

"We call him Stanley because he has a hammer, a proper screwdriver, and the pencil has Stanley on it, that's why we call him that," she said.

"He has real tools.

"He's just so well made, we love him."

Meanwhile, in Cudgee, martial artist Ted Argyle chose to also create his according to his passion.

"I'm a martial artist by trade, that's my job, so my letterbox is a reflection of that," he said.

"I'm big into recycling and re-using stuff, I had all the materials sitting at my work during COVID so I thought about what I could use it for and thought I'd just make a mailbox out of it.

"The base is a computer, I've used a pellet to frame it, an old uniform of mine and an old fencing mask.

"I get comments all the time, some dogs start barking at it when the walk by because they think it's a person.

"Some friends of mine get a fright when they back out of my driveway because they think it's a person, it's pretty funny."

Adam Edge, from Laang, also chose a design close to his heart.

"It's a Series One Land Rover which I collect," he said.

"I've got a number of them.

"I got it made. A bloke in Colac was making up novelty mailboxes and advertising them on Facebook.

"I asked him whether he'd do a custom job and he agreed.

"I told him my hobbies, and we decided the Land Rover would work quite well.

"It was made and then I painted it all myself.

"It arrived with a bare undercoat so I sat down and after a while I figured out what I wanted to do and painted it green.

"It's been out there for six or so months and nobody's stolen it, which is nice."

Gorae West resident Heather Torney was also pleasantly surprised nobody had yet tried to nick her creation.

"It was a Christmas-come-birthday present for my husband, I ran out of ideas so I came up with this mailbox," she said.

"My husband at the time was a truck driver who carted logs.

"He worked down at the wharf a fair bit too, so I thought, 'lets do a truck, why not'.

"Ace Sheetmetal in Portland built it for me.

"They kept on saying to me someone would steal it, but three years later it's still here.

"We have people pull up and take photos of it because they think it's decent and I'm very happy with it, it's probably a bit bigger than I thought it would be."

Paul Schipper, from Killarney, also chose to go with the transport theme with his in-progress replica signal box mailbox.

"It's to go with our new train-themed accommodation," he said.

"I want to light it up as well and have some noise associated with the trains.

"We're aiming for the whole train theme, we've got a railway crossing sign ready to go - we want it to be a whole experience.

"It's one of those work-in-progress things.

"Everything is self-made.

"I don't want it to be perfect either.

"I've done the weatherboards a little wonky.

"I want to get that historic aspect to it.

"I want to install a staircase and I want to build a third level.

"I've just got to work out how the letters are going to get in there."