By Rosemary Murphy and Alistair Bates
Almost 400 calls were made from the phone box outside Cobra Station in 2023. (ABC Pilbara: Alistair Bates)
Driving to Cobra Station, you may pass a handful of cars on a busy day.
It's cattle country in the heart of Western Australia's Gascoyne, more than 400 kilometres inland from Carnarvon, the nearest major town.
The landscape is vast and flies greatly outnumber residents and visitors.
But sitting, somewhat incongruously, at the station entrance is a working Telstra phone box.
And in contrast to the road, it still gets plenty of traffic, with data showing almost 400 calls were made in 2023 alone.
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| Jim Millar says having phone reception is crucial in the bush. (ABC Pilbara: Alistair Bates) |
Jim Millar, who lives at Cobra Station, said landlines provided the only reliable telephone coverage in the area.
"You can't get mobile [reception] and you can have all sorts of things happen out here," he said.
Those passing through are often heading to Mount Augustus, an enormous rock formation about 50km away.
Sometimes country hospitality comes into play.
"You get a lot of tourists up there and workers on the road; they come up and use mine if it's not working," Mr Millar said.
'You can keep the bloody phone box'
According to Mr Millar it was a bit of battle to keep the phone box.
"They tried to take it away," he said.
"We went down there, one of the women that worked here with me, went down and said, 'You're not taking this bloody phone box'."
"The guy gave up and went away, and came back [and said], 'You can keep the bloody phone box, it's not worth the battle'," Mr Millar laughed.
Not everything about the phone box has been welcome.
"They put this light in, and you'd see this bright orange light staring at you every night," Mr Millar said.
"So we went down and pulled the globe out."
Remote phone boxes
Another phone box that's slightly more eye catching than normal is found in an old refrigerator at Drysdale River Station, in WA's Kimberley region.
It is regularly visited by those travelling on the famed Gibb River Road, one of the country's most challenging four-wheel-drive tracks.
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| A public phone box inside a converted refrigerator at Drysdale River Station. (ABC News: Erin Parke) |
Owners of the station made the decision more than 30 years ago to put the phone in an old fridge to protect it from dust.
They have worn through a few fridges over the years, with refrigerator doors falling off due to excessive use.
Like a lighthouse
Further afield in Sydney, artist Megan Hales was a finalist in the 2024 Sir John Sulman Prize for her work Long Night featuring a phone box.
"I think they struck a chord with people, the phone boxes," she said.
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| Megan Hales' work Long Night features a phone box. (Supplied: Megan Hales) |
"The work, in this case to me, is a lighthouse to a moth.
"When I first started painting it I imagined that it was going to be full of insects that made their way to the light source at night.
"But given what a phone box means to a user it made more sense to just have the one insect to relate to as a person."
Where is Australia's busiest public phone?
Figures released from Telstra show 25.8 million calls were made between January and September in 2024 from phone boxes.
The most used phone box in Australia was on Roystonea Avenue in Palmerston City, followed by the one located on Bradshaw Terrace in Casuarina, both in the Northern Territory.
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| Telstra's Teresa Corbin says phone boxes continue to offer a crucial service. (Supplied: Teresa Corbin) |
The third was on Cleeve Close in the Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt.
Telstra chief customer advocate Teresa Corbin said there had been an increase in calls made from phone boxes.
"Over the last year we've seen a 10 per cent uptick in the amount of people that are using the free pay phones," she said.
First published at ABC News, January 18, 2025
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