The ever reliable PMG phone. ‘As easy as A and B’!
Dear reader we hit it off where we didn’t quite hit it in the first place, downstairs below the dusty dust bowl they call ‘Maralinga’. Surrounded by pommy nukes and lost in some place closely approximating the colloquial term ‘the bush’. Its an arbitrary construct at the best of times , but for those who are now versed in Aussie folklore it means anything outta the capitals and perceived as part of Barnaby’s bailiwick. Either way its code for insular and those in our community who still share a fondness for hanging, coal and old style, (more hanging) religion.. Our heroes are in a serious pickle, following Sophie in search of something deep-down and top secret, all pointing to Australia’s opportunity as a nuclear super power way back when…. And with luck to be rekindled under the august and unquestionable authority of ‘AUKUS’
Read on…
We were dumbfounded ..’Haha it’s still here, just as I left it’…
Not to be confused with the PNG Phone, (equally reliable)
The ancient PMG phone was still dyna-bolted to the wall. Sophie wiped away the dust and an old telephone receiver concealed behind an aperture was grasped. Sophie was about to make a phone call, old style. She wiped the coating of dust for the hand-piece, and tapped the cradle and the two plungers and we could hear the faint crackle of the live line. Incredibly after seventy odd years it was still active. WE could see the box, with the distinctive A and B buttons, and the phone, one of the old winder through to the operator types. It was a credit to the PMG that they could make a phone that was so robust, and like the Qualcast and the Sunbeam were still providing reliable service. ‘Australian made’ Benny Boy proudly proclaimed, Yes Benny, ‘but you’d better leave it to the experts this time as we’re old enough know how to use the thing. Shhhh. Sophie Commanded, I’m Trying to get this call through’!
Before the NBN not everyone was employed as an executive on Prime Ministerial salaries and bonuses. Underlings had to connect the wires and plugs by hand.
‘To whom’? we queried, ‘None of your business’!
‘Well Sophe, hate to tell you this, but you’ve gotta put money in the slot. You can’t expect it to just to ring through unless you’ve heard the ‘ping’ of the coin dropping into the slot.
What the’, Sophie lit another Sobrani, you could tell she had no idea what we were talking about.
We could tell that Sophie working earnestly for the public in every capacity and now as a celebrated Fair Work Commissioner had never used a payphone.
‘What you’ve gotta do Sophie is either drop a sixpence, or a shilling into the slot. If it’s 1950’s it wont use twenty cent pieces and chances are a dollar would just come out the other end.
And you had to spend more than a penny to get through
And besides, do you carry cash’?
Sophies parents being introduced to decimal currency in the 60’s
Knowing Sophie was a Fair Work Commissioner we knew she wouldn’t stoop to paying cash. That was why a Fair Work Commissioner had to be aloof from the day to day grind. We also knew that she wouldn’t know how much basic services, telephone, rent, electricity would cost. Part of being a Fair Work Commissioner is to be relieved of such petty concerns. In doing so that gave them the wisdom to determine just how much lower paid workers should be punished. That’s why she was paid over 400 k a year. The strain of having to make these arbitrary and bludgeoning decisions took a toll, “ just like bureaucrats in the aboriginal industry’ Ces opined; ‘they need the grotesque salaries, so as not to become affected by “ localism and aborginality, ‘ if that were to happen they’d loose all perspective and perhaps that would result in a loss of prestige and sales to Toyota Land Cruisers and investment properties. Yep, you’re right Ces, that would have a knock-on effect and probably cause the housing industry to collapse.
Yep, we call it the butterfly effect, or in deference to Australia’s dealing with the frogs, ‘the papillon effect’, but nuanced cos we don’t get subtlety in Australian politics, or foreign- ness per se’. It seemed ironic that Ces would use a term such as ‘Per-se’ which sounded pretty foreign, but he made the point sometimes only a foreign word could capture something that just could not be condensed into the colourful and nuanced vocabulary of “Australian English”.
Unless you were on the “Bush Telegraph”, which was free provided you didnt mind having your reputation tarnished by exaggration and hyperbole.
Sophie then asked us, ‘ok any of you got two bob’?
There was a catch, it was a pay phone, and incredibly after all those decades, still active.
Did any of us have a bob??
Who still carried cash?
We emptied out pockets, nothing….
This was our way out and all of a sudden we were rifling our pockets, underwear, shoe laces for a pre decimal florin.
Because communication in the bush is all about upholding ‘family values’.
Is it a duodecimal denouement, is this the end of their worth as currency, find out in the next denominational episode; ‘Three clowns in the fundament’, or ‘toss a coin and call me liar’, but fer fuck-sakes not a Ju- LIAR’!