INTRODUCTION

a story of despair and heartache

Chapter 1 — No Fault Found

Have you ever opened a phone bill and felt

A sickening lurch,

convinced
of an error? Has a friend insisted they called, even though you were beside the phone all day?
Or has someone commented on your supposed phone use, while potential clients complain you never answer, though the phone hasn't rung in days?

If so, you can begin to understand the nightmare I endured for almost a decade. Even now, years later, I'm still fighting for a fair resolution.

The story began innocently in late 1987, when my wife, Faye, and I bought a small accommodation business overlooking Cape Bridgewater, near Portland on Victoria's rugged southwest coast. Called Seal Cove, it was a former school camp with a spectacular ocean view. We envisioned transforming it into a haven for social clubs, families, and schools—a place where laughter echoed across the cliffs and the phone rang with eager inquiries.

We didn't know the business depended on a telephone system fit for a museum. The exchange servicing Cape Bridgewater, installed over thirty years earlier, was designed for a sleepy, "low-call-rate" district. It had only eight lines and was unstaffed. It was never meant for a growing population, let alone a tourism business.

Blissfully ignorant, we sold our Melbourne home, I took early retirement to raise capital, and we threw ourselves into what we believed would be a bright new chapter.

I wasn't naïve about business. I'd worked since fifteen, first as a steward on English passenger-cargo ships. In 1963, I jumped ship in Melbourne and worked in some of the city's finest hotel kitchens. Two years later, at twenty, I joined the Australian Merchant Navy and spent a decade cooking on cargo ships worldwide. By 1975, I'd returned to land, married Faye, and built a career as a freelance caterer and tug-boat cook while studying hotel and motel management. I'd even rescued a failing hotel/motel.

By 1987, at forty-four, I knew I could transform a simple school camp into a thriving, multifaceted business.

So, I hit the road, visiting almost 150 schools and shires to promote Seal Cove. In February 1988, we printed and distributed 2,000 colour brochures. Then we waited for the phone to ring.

It didn't.

Not even a modest one-per-cent response. Nothing.

By April, the truth became undeniable. People wondered why we never answered the phone. Some suggested we get an answering machine, unaware we already had one. We even bought a new one, suspecting a faulty machine, but the complaints persisted. Callers reported long periods of silence, calls dropping mid-conversation, and faxes disappearing without a trace.

Between April 1988 and January 1989, Telstra logged nine complaints from me, in addition to several letters. Each call to 1100 was met with the same empty promise: "We'll check the line."
On the rare occasions a technician appeared, the diagnosis was always: "No fault found."

Meanwhile, the faults continued—unabated, unexplained, and devastating.

A story of despair and heartache:

Eventually, we discovered the previous owner had experienced the same problems. In 1988, as I began gathering evidence for what would become a long and bitter fight, I used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents. One of them—Telstra Confidential: Difficult Network Faults — PCM Multiplex Report, section 5.5—revealed that Telstra had known about the Cape Bridgewater faults as early as 1987.

Our neighbour Harry understood. His daughter in Colac often complained about not being able to get through. Fred Fairthorn, a local figure and former owner of the Tom the Cheap grocery chain, had suffered similar issues for years. "What can you expect from Telstra when we're in the bush?" he lamented.

I expected better. We'd certainly been promised better.

We encouraged people to write instead of calling, but the telephone was too ingrained in people's habits. They wanted immediate answers. As bookings dwindled, I began to question everything—my research, my judgment, even the wisdom of asking Faye to sell our family home so I could pursue my dream of running my own business.

It wasn't fun—not even close. I lived in constant frustration, pacing the office like an angry Basil Fawlty, waiting for a phone that refused to ring.

We toured South Australia to promote our camp concept in the Wimmera region, but generated little interest. Was the phone to blame? And how could we know for sure? The uncertainty only added to the stress.

Sometimes the cause of our phone problems was glaringly obvious. Once, on a shopping trip to Portland, 20 kilometres away, I realised I'd left the meat order list at home. I used a public phone to call, only to hear a recorded message: "The number you have called is not connected." I tried again, with the same result. Telstra's fault centre said it would investigate, so I continued shopping, leaving the meat order until last. Finally, when I called the camp again, the line was engaged. I bought what I could remember, hoping for the best, but I wasn't surprised to learn upon returning home that the phone hadn't rung once while I was gone.

Anyone who uses a telephone has, at some point, encountered a recorded voice announcement

(RVA). One of Telstra's standard messages stated: "The number you have called is not connected or has been changed. Please check the number before calling again. You have not been charged for this call."

This incorrect message was frequently received by people trying to call our camp. While Telstra never acknowledged the issue publicly, I later discovered a revealing internal memo among a multitude of FOI documents I received in 1994. The memo explained that "this message tends to give the caller the impression that the business they are calling has ceased trading, and they should try another trader."

Another Telstra document referred to the need for

"a basic review of our RVA messages and their application...I'm sure that upon closer inspection, we'll find many network situations where inappropriate RVAs are triggered."

a story of despair and heartache

Apparently, the "not connected" RVA was activated whenever the lines in or out of Cape Bridgewater were congested, which was often, given the limited number of lines.

This was a major problem for our newly established business. Despite internal acknowledgement of these serious faults, Telstra never admitted fault in those early years. My persistent complaints led to me being treated as a nuisance caller. This was rural Australia, and I was seemingly expected to accept poor phone service—though no one at Telstra would admit it was poor. Technicians and linemen consistently reported, "No fault found."

The frustration was immense, compounded by uncertainty. Were our problems simply the result of poor rural service and congestion on too few lines feeding an antiquated exchange? As the only accommodation business in Cape Bridgewater at the time, we relied on the phone more than most. But if there was a specific fault, why couldn't they find it?

The business was failing, and we were too. By mid-1989, we were selling shares just to cover operating costs. Only 15 months after taking over, we were liquidating assets rather than paying down the mortgage. I felt like a complete failure, and neither of us could offer the other any comfort.

I decided to launch another marketing push in the city, throwing everything I had into it. We both went. Perhaps it was masochistic, but I used the camp's remote access to check for messages, eager to respond quickly. But all I heard was a recording: 'The number you are calling is not connected or has been changed. Please check the number before calling again. You have not been charged for this call.' On the drive home, just outside Geelong, we stopped at a phone box, and I tried again. This time, the line was engaged. Maybe someone was finally leaving a message, I thought, ever the optimist.

But there were no messages on the answering machine. And there was no point in wondering why I'd gotten an engaged signal. How many calls had we missed while we were gone? How many potential clients had given up after being told the phone was disconnected? Anger and frustration bubbled just below the surface.

Near the end of October 1989, my twenty-year marriage ended. Already taking medication for stress, that afternoon, I added a generous amount of Scotch and retreated to a cabin. Understandably concerned, Faye called the local police, who broke down the cabin door to "save" me. They took me to the hospital, and I remain grateful to the doctors who confirmed I wasn't losing my mind and sent me home the next day. My friends Margaret and Jack from Melbourne arranged for Margaret to come stay with me and "bail me out." Little did we know, the real chaos was just beginning.

A story of despair and heartache:

Margaret and I returned to the camp to find a disaster. Faye had left the night before, acting on advice that she needed to be in a "safe house." Doors were unlocked, meat from the freezer was thawing on the counters, and various items had mysteriously disappeared. And according to the camp diary, 70 students from Monivae Catholic College in Hamilton were due to arrive in 2 days for a 5-day stay. Without Margaret's help, I would have been ruined.

Mourning the end of my marriage, the very thought of shopping felt insurmountable. How would I feed seventy students plus staff? By the time I'd figured out the order, it was Sunday evening, and the Monivae group was due to arrive the next day. Then, to make matters worse, the hot water service broke down!

The staff were not happy about cold showers, to say the least. Even so, for the next five years, Monivae College returned two or even three times a year. Their support throughout that awful period helped me keep the business afloat.

I'm also grateful for Margaret's support. She carried so much that first week. Aware that I was barely holding on, she suggested Brother Greg, one of the Monivae teachers, come to the house to talk. It was an inspired suggestion, and we—Margaret, too—talked well into the night, working through many things, from early childhood experiences to the end of my twenty-year marriage.

In the weeks that followed, my phone problems continued unabated. I began keeping a log of phone faults in an exercise book, recording all complaints, along with names, contact details, and notes on the effects of the failed calls on both the business and me.

One day, the phone extension in the kiosk was dead. The coin-operated phone in the dining room, which was on a separate line, had a normal dial tone, so I dialled my office number, only to hear the dreaded:

"The number you have called is not connected or has been changed. Please check the number before calling again. Please check the number before calling again. You have not been charged for this call."

In fact, I was charged for the call because the phone didn't return my coins! Five minutes later, I tried again. This time, the office phone appeared engaged (it wasn't), and the gold phone spat out my coins.

I used this testing routine frequently over the next few months and reported every fault to Telstra. The situation was beginning to wear me down. Why was this still happening after so many complaints? Could Telstra really be this incompetent, or was something more sinister at play? Had I become too much of a nuisance? But that was ridiculous. Under the circumstances, I had behaved impeccably—politely, even—when in fact I sometimes had violent fantasies.

A story of despair and heartache

Now that I was no longer one half of a working husband-and-wife team, I started in 1990 digging into my pitifully low financial reserves to pay staff, or risk losing everything. I was suffering what is commonly known in the world of finance as a 'consequential resultant loss'—Faye was no longer contributing her unpaid labour, and I now had to pay her a yearly dividend on her financial investment in the business.

The future looked bleak. Telstra had made no effective attempt to fix the persistent phone issues; their constant "No fault found" response was infuriating. I worried incessantly about the customers I was losing because of unreliable phone access. Legal troubles were also mounting. I had fallen behind on my payments to Faye, and her solicitor was aggressively demanding funds. Struggling to cover my own legal expenses, I certainly couldn't afford any additional burdens. Overdue school fees added to the pressure. To reduce some of the debt, I sold the 22-seater school bus, which had been used to transport customers, and replaced it with a small utility vehicle.

Amidst these challenges, a positive development emerged: I met Karen, a woman from Warrnambool. Our relationship deepened quickly, and when she learned that I was on the verge of closing my business due to a lack of funds to pay Faye, she mortgaged her house to secure a loan, giving me a two-year reprieve. Karen believed in me and in the Camp's potential. She wanted to become a partner. This was early in 1991.

With the promise of a new exchange being installed at Cape Bridgewater later that year to resolve the congested line issues, things finally seemed to be improving. It was now a matter of waiting. Karen moved in, and together we channelled our renewed energy into revitalising the business.

In August, I received welcome confirmation from someone within Telstra that my phone problems were indeed real. The relief of finally having the faults acknowledged was immense. I asked for my new ally's name, but in my excitement, I barely noticed his reluctance to give it; he only said he worked at the fault centre in Hamilton. No names.

Telstra's internal file note reflected this acknowledgement:

Alan Smith called on 15 August 1991 regarding service 267 267. Callers were receiving an engaged signal when the line was not

in use. This was an ongoing problem that resulted in significant business losses.

I told him that according to the fault history, the issue appeared to stem from the exchange, and the upcoming RCM exchange on 21 August should resolve it. However, I also said that I would confirm this with the

technicians. Additionally, I mentioned that we would examine the service immediately to try and restore proper functionality until the cutover.

A story of despair and heartache:

Finally, someone at Telstra offered a glimmer of hope. When Karen sold her house, she used some of the proceeds to pay my legal fees and my debt to Faye. After settling with Faye, Karen's name was officially added to the business title. We eagerly anticipated the installation of the new exchange, counting down the days.

However, the triumph of the new exchange in late August 1991 was short-lived and made absolutely no difference. The telephone problems persisted, now compounded by the crushing disappointment that the issue remained unresolved. More people reported hearing recorded voice announcements, and I continued to complain to Telstra about faults that seemed to be worsening. I asked the technicians if the new exchange didn't fix the problems, what could be causing them. Their response was unbelievable: "No fault found." They simply refused to address my question. I was frustrated by the lack of contact with the one person who had previously acknowledged the faults. (I didn't see his file note confirming this until 1995.)

New bookings remained scarce. The camp needed painting and upgrades. Its run-down and uninviting appearance deterred potential customers. Even after securing a booking, cash flow remained a constant struggle, making it difficult to afford groceries. We always managed, but the stress was immense. Karen began to fear her investment was being wasted, and the pressure reached a breaking point while we were organising a charity camp for underprivileged children.

Despite the business's precarious financial state, I had always sponsored stays for underprivileged groups at the camp. It didn't actually cost me much; the food was donated by various businesses, so my only expense was a small amount for electricity and gas.

In May 1992, we hosted a charity week for children from Ballarat and South West Victoria, organised primarily by Sister Maureen Burke IBVM, Principal of Loreto College in Ballarat. Coordinating food, transportation, and the children's special needs required extensive phone communication, and Sister Burke struggled immensely to get through. Calls either rang unanswered or resulted in dead ends. After a week of fruitless attempts, she drove the 3½ hours to finalise the arrangements in person.

As Karen arrived at the camp, she received an angry phone call from a man demanding information about a singles weekend we were organising. The caller, quite abusive, was furious that we advertised the business but rarely answered the phone. Already at her limit, Karen burst into tears, and nothing I said could console her. When Sister Burke entered the office, I decided to leave, figuring my absence would help. Later, Sister Burke emerged and suggested that Karen leave Cape Bridgewater. I felt numb, as if history was repeating itself.

a story of despair and heartache

However, this situation differed from what had happened with Faye. Karen and I talked at length, and while we would separate, I assured her that she would not suffer financially because of her generosity. I promised to do whatever it took to buy her out, a resolution that relieved us both. Karen rented a house in Portland, and we remained good friends. However, without her daily help at the camp, which had allowed me to travel, I had to discontinue my promotional tours.

Later, I sent Sister Burke an early draft of this book. She replied, "Only I know from personal experience that your story is true. I would find it difficult to believe."