There used to be one phone box out of a group or four, outside Prince Alfred Hospital that was "fixed" enabling long distance calls to be connected at local call rate - The Queue of Nurses wanting to ring their folks at home in their country towns of origin was incredible -
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Possum; AKA:- Ali El-Aziz Mohamed Gundawiathan
Sent from my imperial66 typewriter using carrier pigeon, message sticks and smoke signals.
There used to be one phone box out of a group or four, outside Prince Alfred Hospital that was "fixed" enabling long distance calls to be connected at local call rate - The Queue of Nurses wanting to ring their folks at home in their country towns of origin was incredible -
Came across one in Blackall in Central Queensland that did the same this. Used it for several days. Never reported it
We used have the public "Red" phones that you put coins in scattered all about the factory where I worked. The connection for many of them was just on the wall behind the phone. The workers (mostly immigrants) figured out just taking a phone from an office (which was barred from making other than local calls) and plugging it into the "Red" phone socket they could make unlimited interstate and international calls without any charge. It took quite a while for Telstra to realise that the money in the phone was way, way less than the value of the calls made.
In the late 70s we lived in Karratha and to stay in touch with the family back home in Newcastle we would have to take $20 or $30 in 20c coins down to the local phone box. We were lucky to get 20 minutes before our coins ran out and that was a lot of money back in those days. This time last year to make a call between Oman and Australia they charged both the caller and the recever $3.80/min no wonder everyone used programs such as facebook messenger to make cheap video calls - just needed to have access to the internet and some data.
I worked for a company in mid-70s that had staff in Macquarie Island. Calls had to be pre-arranged and it cost a small fortune. Now I think its satellite and cheap as chips.
