Quick, tell someone!

Now now ben, don't bite the hand that once fed you.
Both the fleurieu and payphones where once vital to your existence.
Besides, isn't that the trough?.. That's what I was always told... Barrel factory on it's day.

Good ol' days?..
Petrol & beer where cheap,
Grommets had respect,
& the mid had 4-6ft waves 6 days a week.
Good ol' days... There will never be another time like it!

thermalben wrote:

Ha! Can't remember ever using a payphone, not for surfing purposes anyway. And certainly not to tell anyone that I just got barreled!

Although I do recall racking up a large 0055 account in my early teens, calling the Ocean Graffix report five times a day. In fact I'd routinely call all of the 0055 surf reports around the country, 'just to see what the surf was doing'. That and the BOM coastal waters telephone line as it had ocean observations from Cape Willoughby.

Ah, the good ol' days, eh?

Ha Ha i use to do the same and ring the boating/coastal report.

We once discovered a local phone box was faulty, you didn't have to put any money in but could ring anywhere, was awesome while it lasted.

Used to do a similar thing as well, ringing berou of meteorology ocean hotline a few times a week for that, so much easier now.
Its a shame in a way that payphones are getting pulled out in most places, im sure in most places there are less than a tenth of the payphones around that used to exist.
They can be good for calling over seas friends and should still be around for safety reasons imo.(getting bashed or raped, rolled whatever, lost your phone etc.

Aren't telstra talking about turning em into wifi hotspots?

The good ol' days are still here. Goldphones! Free phonecalls worldwide if you know how. Check the next country pub you go into. Believe!

I heard that moth about phone booths being turned into wifi hotspots. Imagine all the random people loitering around them with devices in hand?

Back in the day I found out you could ring the Bureau of Meteorology on a Friday night and ask to speak to the Duty Forcaster. Some bored bureaucrat sitting in an office staring at screens would come onto the phone and I would ask them for detailed swell forcasts for the weekend claiming to be leading a diving expedition(they didn't like surfers).
One time the Duty Forcaster radioed through to a ship steaming through the Bight for me and came back with a report of a 4 to 5metre swell on the rise!
That was before the wave buoys, Internet and all that jazz we rely on these days....

phone booths are wifi hotspots here in unzud, havnt seen to many rock spiders lurking around them as yet.

Did you get onto that last time you where over shatner?

Can’t remember the last time I saw one on the street. Very good though for those less fortunate than most . No need for vandalism if there’s no money inside. Superman will be stoked if they start popping up .

Is that you in the photo, Ben?

It’d actually be pretty nice, in this day and age, if someone had to go and find a pay phone when they had the urge to tell everyone they’d found a quiet sandbank which is pumping. Better than having them immediately upload it to Insta in situ.

I reckon that's a great idea and could certainly help out disadvantaged people. Having said that, last time I was back home I was in an unfamiliar area looking for a payphone, took ages to find one.

I forsee a decrease in vandalism and a ten-fold increase in prank calls.

I was party to second hand phone booth vandalism once. Over the road from our rental was a phone booth that got vandalised by some petty thieves and the guts had been ripped out. Thought I'd be the good Samaritan and put it in my car with the intention of dropping it off at the local telephone exchange. Unfortunately we got hammered one night at the pub and driving back along the highway at about $140km/h decided to lob about 5kg of pure payphone guts at the green highway sign. It was a tag team effort. One leaning out the window while another held him. Scored a bullseye and the sign had a severe deformity for years after. I've since grown up somewhat but it was worth a laugh at the time!!

They were a bit of a pain in the arse if you had to make a lengthy long distance call , which by definition at the time could have been three suburbs away. $10 bucks in 20/10c coins were a bugger to carry and feeding them in one by one kept you pretty busy if you had to write stuff down while talking. All this while the ever growing queue in line waiting for you to hang the fark up are slowly becoming noticeably aggravated .
You were seriously better off with a trained pigeon.

Supa and Megzee remember the free phones around the Gatta...i think they used to drop a glue covered coin in the slot and lock it up....there be a queue 30 plus long outside the Phones
Free STD calls.
in the 90s they did this
https://news.hitb.org/content/hacking-payphones-telstra-style

@udo , I don’t recall that but do remember yelling down the earpiece or slamming the phone button really hard, sometimes worked sometimes didn’t .

I just saw some comments on facey about these free phones and someone commented that drug dealers would take advantage of this . Maybe it’s a police trap ! It is weird though that telsta is doing something for free when their customer service has had its fair share of criticism.

There’s always been free STDs in the Gatta lol

Behind the facade of altruism there will be some hard economic decision making…… ie it’s probably cheaper to make the calls free than to pay someone to collect the coins and repair vandalism caused to get said coins. (worked for the Big T for 31+ years)