Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

Graham Moon from the Nambour Museum sitting at a manual exchange

FORMED by a group of businessmen in 1907 to promote and develop the town, the Nambour Progress Association was a driving force behind the arrival of the telephone. With a reliance on the rail service for mail and the use of morse code for telegraph transmissions, one can only imagine the delight of townspeople at the thought of conversing with each other over a telephone line.

Locals wanted it located near the railway station in the centre of town but railway officials would not release land to the Postmaster-General. Shire Chairman J.T Lowe’s old residence in lower Currie Street was offered as interim rental accommodation and this allowed Nambour to become established as a trunk line telephone office on 5 February 1908.

Finally, on 1st July 1910 the new purpose built Post Office building in upper Currie Street was officially opened along with the long-awaited manual telephone exchange.

This Swedish Ericsson wall telephone became the Australian standard in 1901.

According to the editor of The Nambour Chronicle, the new exchange opened with 25 subscribers. He also commented that, “It is early to judge, but we may say that we have made a number of calls already, and with full

satisfaction in each case. We are beginning to wonder how we could have done without this modern convenience for so long.” (02/10/1910).

The manual telephone service remained in Nambour until 24 May 1969 when an automatic service was finally introduced.

Australians have always been quick to embrace new technologies and in many rural and remote areas, in particular, party lines were established to increase the availability of telephone service to ever more homes. As the name implies, the party line provided no privacy of conversation as two or more subscribers shared the same common line back to the exchange.

Another feature of party lines was the rather basic form of line construction. The aerial lines were erected on timber poles and/or suitable trees and the responsibility for erecting and maintaining the line rested with the individual parties where the line traversed their own property and the collective group where the line was common to all parties.

Generally, the party lines serviced farming communities and families but one particular party line provides an interesting insight into the importance placed on the telephone service after its arrival in Nambour.

In 1933, telephone service “Nambour 58” served an astonishing eight parties. They shared the same line which ran from the Nambour telephone exchange via Diddillibah to Maroochydore. The overall length of the line was long compared with other party line construction in the Nambour area and this would have exacerbated the usual signaling, privacy concerns and management issues associated with party lines.

All this makes you smile when you walk along Currie Street one hundred years later and note people walking and talking interstate and overseas on their mobiles and iPhones. If you have any old telephone memorabilia, the Nambour Museum would be interested in receiving contributions. Contact Graham Moon Tel: 544 13121.