64 Creewah Broadband

Creewah is a special place. Despite the fact it is a Mecca for landing space ships and a beacon for directing migrating birds on their travels, it is a complete black spot for mobile phones. Telstra and other telephone companies regularly ring in, using crackling land lines, offering free mobile phone handpieces if you sign up for this or that deal. Then you can use the mobile’s broadband links they say. ‘But it’s a black spot’. No it isn’t they reply patiently usually in an accent that is unusual, you are in Bibbenluke aren’t you? No it’s Creewah and that’s north of Bibbenluke; it’s a valley. After a half hour discussion when the chat eventually gets on to the weather in India or other foreign parts we agree that it is a black spot and that Telstra has no plans to circumvent the problem in the short term.

Not only are we in a black spot, our copper connections to the outside world frequently die. When we used the copper for emails some 20 years ago we could push speeds to 8 kbps on a good day. Now with all the clever technology it is up to 28.8 kbps. People on other planets like Sydney complain about 1000 Mbps. I haven’t checked out satellite communications but assume any waves here would be blocked by our local leprechauns. Maybe we could use pigeons or dragonflies or fairies to carry messages.

Back in the 1940s my elder brother Barry concocted an ultra fast communications system. It was a piece of wire connected between two 1920s Bakelite headphones. ‘Come in tree three, do you read me’. His tree was of course called tree one and was a tall one towering over mine. Tree two didn’t exist but by its absence made me and my tree a member of the lower ranks. What did you say Barry I shouted back. Use the radio, don’t just shout he shouted. I climbed down to go and do something more interesting.

He was really smart and knew I was dumb. He was so smart he made a crystal set in a matchbox. Other people could just squeeze their crystal sets into a large Swan Vestas box, but his was in a tiny Bryant and May with the cat’s hair tuner poking through the side. My Tate and Lyle’s treacle tin with lots of loose bits didn’t rank. There was nothing interesting on radio anyway, especially Luxembourg and other off-shore pirate stations that people raved about.

We had an endless supply of radio spares because Dad was a fanatical reader of Practical Radio and made lots of the projects. There were also bits left over from his dad who was a ship’s radio operator during the First World War. I always imagined him on a destroyer creaming at speed through the waves but mum reckoned it was a rowing boat. She wasn’t a fan. In her later years she had even demoted him below the rowing boat. She had had a stroke so had few words left. When asked what grandpa did during the war, she said ‘sick’.