A feature by Teagan Pritchard and Aimee Yavuzer
This is not a death notice.
The phone booth belongs to no one and all of us at the same time. There’s no single, most iconic payphone in the Illawarra, but there’s something hidden between every set of perspex panes that makes them a humble bearer of our secrets. Our most private conversations are often in the most public of spaces. They’re under our noses, right before our eyes, on the next street over. They’re on the tip of your tongue.
The Illawarra Mercury first reported on the telephone in 1880 – 13 years before the rollout of public phones in Sydney’s own Martin Place. From their first report of ‘The Telephone In Brisbane’ to weekly reports about which Illawarra suburbs the Post Master General (PMG) was planning on providing telephone services to, the Mercury has maintained a tight coverage of their rapidly growing communications partner.
Jennifer Walsh is a testament to this relationship. She has been working for Australia Post for nearly 40 years.
In her training, Ms Walsh learned to type, send telegrams and manage phone calls between offices that accepted telephone calls – including Illawarra’s own Wollongong Post Office. Since then, there’s no surprise finding a telephone box beside a post office or perhaps a postal box by a payphone.
Payphones see us everyday as we walk on by. You probably passed one on your way through Wollongong Central last weekend, and again, driving past the news agency on Park Road in Woonona. But, in all likelihood, you would have only noticed it if your phone died.
The public phone booth is where Clark Kent transforms into Superman, where Trinity escaped Agent Smith, and where your mum and dad sheltered from the rain when they were kids.
But nowadays, we don’t see them u
ntil we need them. And they’re there for a reason – they’re a public good.
Don’t let the outdated coin and card slots fool you. Since 2021, Telstra phone booths have been free of charge. For no cost at all, you can prank-call a friend, phone an old crush if you’re feeling brave, ring mum, or — in a worst-case scenario — call emergency services.
Earlier this year, Telstra called on Australians to share their most memorable experiences with Telstra public phones in a special effort to recognise iconic Australian ‘payphones’ as heritage sites. Telephones in Melbourne’s Brunswick West, remote town Doomadgee and even on Narooma’s Princess Highway – the infamous hub that made over 1000 phone calls in a two-month period across ‘Black Summer’ – were nominated by the public as Australia’s most vital lifelines.
Like the mess in your room you ignore until you forget what ‘clean’ looks like, or the peas in the freezer you keep ‘just in case’, payphones are just there. And as we know them today, phone booths are more ‘phone’ than they are ‘booth’. Telstra has dropped the door in place of an open-concept design that maintains privacy using sound-absorbing screens, allows for quick access into and out of booths, and enhancing accessibility for users with disabilities. 
Since the decision to make their services free, Telstra payphones have recorded over 11 million phone calls made from around Australia per year. Out of these, over 300,000 were made to Triple Zero and crisis lines like Lifeline, Kids Helpline and 1800Respect.
Australia is no stranger to natural disasters. Beyond the dense bushland that divides Illawarra’s stretching coastline from its suburban south-west Sydney is a second ‘rescue phone’ just like Narooma’s ‘Disaster Responder’. As it sits next to its old-time friend, a fire-hydrant-red postal box, the rescue box peers through the local cafe, Southie Coffee House, like an old friend. In a visit to the site, we spoke to the owners, and although sometimes they forget it’s there, at other times, they hand the phone over to their kids to show them just what life is like on the other end of the line.
We think it’s relatively safe to say that today’s youth will have similar stories to pass onto their own children. In our lifetime, however, there’s one more thing we think is worth ticking off. Arguably, every upgrade made to payphones since they arrived on Australian shores raises a key question: do we continue to call Telstra’s payphones, payphones if we aren’t paying for our calls anymore?