Ardlethan father whose son was bitten by brown snake couldn't call triple-zero

A storm last Friday knocked out Telstra coverage for the 11^th time in 12 months, forcing some customers to purchase pre-paid Optus mobile phones or drive 15 minutes down the road to return missed calls.

Polly McDougall’s landline went down after heavy rains before Christmas, meaning she was uncontactable by mobile or home phone for a full week.

“There’s just enough coverage to get a text message every now and then telling you how many voicemail messages you have, then it cuts out again,” she said.

“My husband is a farmer and knows of one paddock where he can get reception, so he heads up there to make telephone calls.

“Telstra’s coming to fix the landline, but they were supposed to be here on Tuesday and didn’t show, probably because they couldn’t reach me on the mobile.”

The latest outage reminded Ardlethan father Mark Osborne of a harrowing plight last year, when his son Liam was bitten by a brown snake and he couldn’t find signal to call emergency services.

“I ran outside with the bandage while talking to the triple-zero operator on the cordless house phone but It dropped out of range just 50 metres short of reaching my son,” Mr Osborne said. 

“I was forced to run back into the house to continue the call, leaving my two sons alone outside, not knowing where the snake was.

“I decided to cease communication with my emergency operator; they wanted to keep me on the line until the ambulance arrived but I couldn't be in two places at once.

“I’m afraid it will take a death to get 4G coverage in our area and a phone tower that is actually reliable.”

Farmer and Rural Fire Service senior officer Andrew Hawthorne, who took to climbing his grain silo to check his voicemail this week, worries about the “fatal consequences” of being uncontactable the next time there’s a bad accident. 

The Daily Advertiser also reported Ardlethan resident Debbie Andrews was forced to borrow her sister’s Optus phone to arrange her son’s funeral six weeks ago, during another of the regular outages.

Telstra area general manager Chris Taylor said the Ardlethan antennas will be replaced in a bid to provide a more stable service.

“We have rectified the issue that was impacting Telstra mobile services and to provide further stability, we are preparing to replace the antennas at the local base station,” Mr Taylor said.

“We understand these interruptions have been frustrating and we apologise for the issues our customers have experienced.”