Tele communications have come a long way!

Wasn't around in those days but working in the industry for the past 15 years its a complete pain in the ass, first mobile phones then internet then paytv then cable modems and satilite services then came digital mobile phones and cdma and then comes along 3G networks with tv on your phone. Wish I'd become a electrician instead.

Hi Axle

I went to Wyndham in 1963 to work and we had the same system except that it only worked within the townsite. No connection even to Kununurra.Apart from town calls everything was done by telegrams.

And we also had 32v power in town. Normal appliances wouldn't work at all unless comverted.

John

Now that bring back memories......I grew up in a small town in NZ where we had the party line...378S was our number. My Grandparents (who were well known, and some of the pioneers of the area) had a fantastic and exclusive "Private Line - ( (Number 126).

To make a call.....wind the handle 3 times or so, and hope the lady (they were always ladies) were awake in town at the exchange. To make a TOLL call (Equal to our STD call)....you had to book it, and they would ring back when a line was free.

Dam it.......I have 4 e-mails, and 1 MMS from my son who is on a sleep over tonight...... and a message bank call........ALL ON MY MOBILE....!!!!!!!

Then I have some one who wants to be my freind on face book.......

ARH!!!!!!!! send me back to the bush.

Simon C

Ah Axle...yer showing yer age....hahahahaha

We had a party line for the farm. Two shorts and two longs if you wanted to ring from another farm. First have to lift receiver and ask "Line busy?"......or you could lift the receiver gently and 'listen in' ...LOL One old lady was a serial pest on te [party line so others got together and set her up. My Dad had to defend her in court but she got a 2000pound fine anyway. Big money for the 1950's!!!


We would ring a number and the operator would say "They're not home!"...lol Phone operators knew everything that happened in a small country town.

Today one has to switch the mobile off as your Telco sends unsolicited messages trying to flog you something :-)


Cheers

Hey, hey , settle down with the "old bird " bit...I operated one of those exchanges and I was a young lad of all 15 yrs...worked at night , 10pm to 8am one week then postie the next week...it was a great experience and a good job for a young person...cheers

Yes cut out "they were all girls" bit

I started in an Ericcson manual exchange in 1954 when I was 14 at Mosgiel in NZ

Later it went to a BMSB multiple board.

This was a type where on operator could answer everyone without moving from their seat

Whereas the Ericcsons you could only reach 100 at a time.

On a Sunday if we were on our own we had to run up and down the 5 boards answering them all.

God help us on a wet Sunday.

When all the cords were used we used to go down and pull them all out and start again

The locals knew woops the exchange is flat out and didnt ring back for a while.

Progressed from there to western Electric Toll boards in Christchurch and later in Dunedin

In 1980 they introduced cordless consoles which were slower than the old corded boards.

In 1989 all the work was centralised and all operators in the South Island except CHCH were made redundant.

Thats called progress.

Instead of an operator who could say Oh they're not home, you got operators who didnt even know where the place was you wanted to ring.

Also the Emergency service went to pot.

When it was localised the operators knew the area intimately, now they are 100's of k's away and know nothing.

In Dunedin we had a landslide where 70 houses slipped own a hill.

Panic
The police found out the contacts they had for services like helicopters were all out of date.

Luckily the operators knew the susbs well enough to be able to connect them to the right person.

So newer may be cheaper to run but isnt better sometimes.

My Mum's cousin was one of those phone operators when I was a kid.

Couldn't she gossip about who was saying what!

If you heard her voice on the phone you'd think you where talking to a cross between Jennifer Hawkins, Lara Bingle and Elle McPherson!

The truth was very different, she could have stared down a whole American battle group of Abrams Tanks and probably outweighed the lot of them!!

Geoff

My parents had a country Post Office at the general store they ran. In the PO was the manual exchange for the local district. All the family took turns at operating the exchange. I slept beside it a couple of nights a week for several years as a teenager.

Our greatest fear was upsetting the "Monitor" who was a PMG employee (To Telstra in those days) who would get on your back if you didn't do the right thing or chatted to the girls in her exchange too much.

I hated the thing, and especially the cattle buyers who would book "Particular person" calls early in the morning to the meat works. It meant hanging on to the meat works while they chased up the person, and then calling back the buyer when they came on line. Often had several calls waiting at the same time as well as putting through other calls.