Chapter 2:

The Sinister Feeling That Devoured Us

Anyone who has ever used a telephone knows the chilling echo of a voice that seems to come from nowhere: “The number you are calling is disconnected.” It’s more than an inconvenience—it’s a ghostly whisper from the void. In the shadowy underworld of telecommunications, these messages are known as RVAs—Recorded Voice Announcements. But for me, they became the siren song of ruin.

Among the disturbing pile of FOI documents I unearthed in 1994 was a bone-chilling internal email from Telstra, dated 26th September 1993 and labelled A03544. It revealed a quiet panic within their ranks—a need to “have a very basic review of all our RVA messages and how they are applied.” The author’s warning was ominous: “I am sure when we start to scratch around, we will find a host of network circumstances where inappropriate RVAs are going to line.” This wasn’t just negligence—it was a confession. A glimpse into a deeper, darker truth: Telstra knew its system was broken, and it let it fester.

Another damning document, C00757, emerged from the archives like a cursed relic. It admitted that the RVA message—“The number you have called is not connected or has been changed…”—was misleading thousands. It didn’t just confuse callers; it condemned businesses to oblivion. For a fledgling venture like ours, dependent on every ring of the phone, it was a death sentence. And when we sought answers, Telstra met us with icy indifference, as if our suffering was just collateral damage in their corporate game.

By mid-1989, our finances lay in ruins. The bookings we had dreamed of were nothing but mirages. We sold our shares for a pittance—$1.60 each for four thousand. A decade later, they would soar to $8.20. A cruel twist of fate. Our savings from the Melbourne home—$140,000—covered only half the cost of the camp. The rest became a mortgage, a chain around our necks. I had believed we were set for life. Instead, we were bleeding out, selling our lifeblood just to stay afloat.

Our marriage began to fracture under the weight of this invisible war. My self-worth crumbled like ash in the wind. And then, as if summoned by the darkness itself, Faye fell and broke her leg. The hospital visits became a relentless march into despair. Her pain was a mirror of mine—slow, unrelenting, and cruel. The leg refused to heal. It felt as though the universe had turned against us.

We clung to hope, making fleeting trips to Melbourne. Faye sought comfort in familiar faces. I used the time to market the camp in Caulfield and Huntingdale, but the dread gnawed at me. Something was wrong. Something was watching.

One evening, I tried to check the camp’s answering machine remotely. What I heard chilled me to the bone: “The number you are calling is not connected or has been changed…” That voice—so calm, so final—was the sound of our business being erased. I didn’t tell Faye. She didn’t need another shadow in her mind.

Outside Geelong, as we drove home, Faye asked if I’d checked for messages. I lied. At the following phone box, I tried again. The line was engaged. My heart raced. Someone must be leaving a message. But when we returned, all we found was a stale recording from friends in Melbourne—a hollow echo of better days. Why had the line been engaged? Had we lost calls? Had desperate clients been met with silence?

Faye’s hospital visits became her escape. Her spirit frayed, unravelling with each passing day. The weight of financial ruin and her slow recovery crushed us. On 26 October 1989, our marriage succumbed to the darkness.

I turned to Scotch, locking myself in one of the cabins, seeking refuge in its numbing embrace. Faye, terrified, called the police. They stormed in like invaders, shattering my sanctuary. As I faced them, a memory from 1967 surged forth—my clash with the Red Guards during China’s Cultural Revolution. I had escaped aboard the MV Hopepeak, fleeing tyranny. But now, in my fractured mind, the uniforms of my rescuers blurred with the faces of tormentors.

Days later, in a sterile hospital room, doctors assured me I wasn’t losing my mind. But their cold reassurances only deepened my paranoia. I returned to the camp with Margaret, my mate’s wife—a flicker of warmth in the gathering storm.

But this was no recovery. It was the beginning of a descent. A descent into shadows where hope flickered and despair thrived. The silence had become a predator. And we were its prey.

Surveillance State

Telstra’s surveillance capabilities weren’t theoretical. They were industrial-grade, embedded in the very infrastructure we relied on to communicate. Their Security Operations Centres, operating 24/7, were equipped with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Threat Intelligence Integration tools designed to detect and catalogue anomalies. But what happens when the anomaly is a whistleblower? When the threat is not external, but internal—someone like me, exposing truths the system would rather forget?

I had spoken with the Prime Minister twice—once in April 1993, again in April 1994. I raised concerns about Australia’s wheat exports to China, and how that grain was being funnelled to North Vietnam, feeding the very forces that had killed and maimed our soldiers. These weren’t idle conversations. They were politically explosive. And I have every reason to believe they were intercepted.

Telstra’s infrastructure monitoring systems, designed to manage critical assets such as oil refineries, traffic networks, and water plants, also offered remote access, event logging, and alarm management across its vast network. These tools, while marketed for operational efficiency, could easily be repurposed for surveillance—especially when the target was a claimant challenging Telstra’s integrity.

The question isn’t whether Telstra could monitor us. It’s who inside Telstra had the government clearance to filter and interpret that data. Who decided what was evidence, and what was discarded? Who catalogued our conversations, our faxes, our pleas for justice—not to protect us, but to protect the corporation?

This wasn’t just surveillance. It was strategic intelligence gathering, designed to anticipate our moves, undermine our credibility, and control the narrative. The arbitrator, already compromised by deceit, operated in tandem with a system that saw truth as a liability.

And yet, the surveillance failed in one critical respect: it didn’t silence us. It didn’t erase the documents, the corrupted fax logs, the technical reports that proved Telstra’s faults. It didn’t stop the creation of absentjustice.com, or the open letters that now circulate beyond their reach.

We were watched. We were catalogued. But we were not erased.

 

Chapter 3:

Echoes in the Void

Margaret and I pulled into the camp, only to be met by a scene that felt like a calculated act of sabotage. The air was thick with neglect. Doors hung open like gaping mouths, packages of meat lay abandoned on benches, their frost melting into pools of decay. The deep freeze—once a vital lifeline—was gone, vanished without a trace. It was as if ghosts had ransacked the place, each corner revealing another cruel twist in a growing nightmare.

Faye had fled the night before, swept away by the whispers of well-meaning “do-gooders” and welfare workers who insisted she seek refuge in a so-called “safe house.” But safety was a lie. What remained was chaos—raw, unfiltered, and merciless. Food was left on the benches once frozen, now thawed, and blood was now dripping from the benches onto the floor. Surely the do-gooders would not have done this? Had somebody from further afield, an opportunist, decided they needed a fridge and freezer. All my food stores had gone; we were clearly wiped out.

According to my diary, seventy students from Monivae Catholic College were due to arrive in just two days. Five days. Four nights. Seventy mouths to feed. The weight of that responsibility pressed down like a vice. Without Margaret’s unwavering presence, I would have crumbled into dust.

We focused on cleaning and shopping, but the tasks felt insurmountable. My heart was a hollow drum, echoing the loss of a twenty-year marriage. The shopping list loomed like a cruel joke—what could I possibly prepare for seventy hungry souls? Time was slipping through my fingers. It was already Sunday evening. The Monivae group would arrive the next day. Their first meal: dinner. And I was drowning.

Then, as if summoned by the same malevolent force that haunted our phone lines, the hot water system collapsed. Cold showers became the norm. Staff grumbled. The camp groaned under the weight of dysfunction. Yet Monivae College returned, year after year, their loyalty a fragile thread holding us above the abyss.

But even loyalty couldn’t mask the growing tension. Margaret watched me with wary eyes. She saw the cracks forming. Her decision to summon Brother Greg—a teacher from Monivae—wasn’t kindness. It was triage. I had begun mumbling in my sleep, incoherent fragments of past traumas bleeding into the present. The darkness was seeping in.

We sat together in the dim light, the three of us. Brother Greg gripped my hands. Margaret clutched my arms. I was anchored, barely. We spoke of China, of the Red Guards, of the MV Hopepeak. Of Faye. Of the unravelling. Margaret endured it all like a soldier, her presence both a comfort and a reminder of the war I was losing.

Religion crept in like a shadow pretending to be light. Women from the church surrounded me, their smiles too polished, their comfort too rehearsed. Their intentions may have been pure, but their presence felt like a veil—thin protection against a storm that had already breached the walls. Faye’s absence gnawed at me. I longed for connection, for intimacy, for something real. But all I found was silence.

And that silence was not benign.

The phone problems persisted, growing more grotesque with each passing day. In mid-November 1989, Chris from the church mentioned she had tried to call. The line rang endlessly, then fell into a void. I had already filed complaint after complaint with Telstra, each one a scream into the abyss. The fault logs became a twisted diary of despair.

One day, Chris tried the kiosk phone. Nothing. Just dead air. I tore through the connection box, convinced a loose wire was the culprit. But everything was intact. The deadline loomed, mocking me like a spectre.

Then came the gold coin-operated phone in the dining room. Untouched. Untainted. Or so I thought. I fed it coins, clinging to hope. A dial tone. Relief. But then—“The number you have called is not connected or has been changed.” The voice was mechanical, but it dripped with malice. My coins were gone. Swallowed by the machine. Swallowed by the lie.
I tried again. This time, the message changed: “The line is engaged.” But I knew it wasn’t. I was alone. The phone was silent. The machine was lying. The universe was conspiring.

Freedom of Information received from Telstra told a different story from the one the government was telling us. 

Corruption by Design

Corruption isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s engineered into the very structure of a process—quiet, procedural, and devastating. The COT arbitrations weren’t sabotaged by accident. They were corrupted by design.

From the outset, Telstra’s internal faults were known. Technical reports confirmed line failures, fax corruption, and call dropouts. Yet the arbitration rules were crafted to exclude critical evidence. The arbitrator, handpicked and protected, operated within a framework that rewarded omission and punished transparency.

Government departments, legal advisors, and Telstra executives formed a closed loop of influence. The corruption wasn’t just in the outcome—it was in the architecture. And every claimant who entered the process was walking into a trap.

In the months that followed, I descended into madness. I devised bizarre testing routines, rituals to expose the malevolence behind the phone lines. But the answers never came. Only more silence. More deception.

Was Telstra incompetent—or complicit? Was there a force beyond them, feeding on my unravelling? The questions clawed at me. The weight of it all pressed down, suffocating. I stood at the edge, trembling, staring into the void.

And the void stared back.

 

Chapter 4:

The Debt That Bled Me Dry

With Faye gone, the illusion of partnership shattered, and I found myself clawing through the remnants of a life that had once felt secure. No longer part of a working husband-and-wife team, I was forced to dig deep into my near-empty financial reserves just to keep the camp alive. The absence of her unpaid labour became a financial wound—what the cold world of finance calls a consequential resultant loss. But this was no sterile accounting term. It was a bleeding artery.

Now, I had to pay Faye a yearly dividend on her investment in the business—an investment she no longer supported with sweat or sacrifice. And I had to find the money to pay staff, or risk watching the entire operation collapse into ruin.

As 1990 crept in, the future grew darker. The phone faults continued, relentless and cruel. How many customers had tried to reach me, only to be met with silence or lies? In this remote corner of Victoria, the phone was the only lifeline to the outside world. And that lifeline was fraying.

The legal vultures began to circle. I had failed to meet the original financial agreement with Faye, and her solicitor—ruthless and unyielding—demanded more. My first payment came due, and I couldn’t raise the funds to refinance. I was drowning in legal costs, unable to breathe, let alone find extra for Faye. I thought the outlook couldn’t get bleaker.
I was wrong.

To claw back some semblance of solvency, I sold the twenty-two-seater school bus I had once used to ferry guests—an emblem of hope and hospitality—and replaced it with a small utility vehicle. A downgrade. A surrender.

Through mutual friends, I met Karen—a divorcee from Warrnambool, a hundred kilometres away. The ute allowed me to see her a couple of times a week, and the relationship grew serious. When Karen learned that Faye’s solicitor was preparing to wind up my business, forcing a sale because I couldn’t make the payments, she did something extraordinary. She put her house up as security for a loan. It gave me two years of breathing space—but at what cost?

Around the same time, I contacted Telstra’s fault centre in Hamilton once more, desperate for answers. The usual run-around ensued, a cruel ritual I knew too well. But this time, a glimmer of hope emerged: a new exchange was to be installed at Cape Bridgewater. It would, they claimed, solve the problems that had plagued me for years.

Four years later, through a Freedom of Information request, I obtained a three-page handwritten file note dated 15 August 1991. It documented my discussions with Telstra about the faults. The date didn’t match my own records—I knew by early 1991 that the new exchange was coming, and I had told Karen as much. I had clung to that promise like a lifeline.

The file note was damning. It acknowledged the issue as “…a continuing problem,” and recorded that I was “…losing a lot of business.” It even admitted that the age of the existing exchange was likely the cause, and that the new installation would resolve it. Telstra promised to try to get my phones working correctly before then.

But promises from Telstra were like whispers in the wind—heard, but never held.
From August 1991 through May 1992, the complaints continued. The recorded voice announcements—the same chilling messages that had haunted me for years—persisted. They echoed through the lines like curses, driving away customers, eroding trust, and feeding the darkness that had taken root in my life.

The camp stood, battered but breathing, while I fought battles on every front—legal, financial, emotional, and technological. Each day felt like a step deeper into the abyss. And the phone, that cursed device, remained my tormentor.

The cover-up began before the arbitration even started. Telstra withheld documents, misrepresented fault data, and manipulated technical logs. When I requested full disclosure, I was met with redactions, delays, and denials.

Almost exactly two years later, on the fateful day of 21 April 1994, I reluctantly signed a government-backed arbitration agreement. It’s crucial to highlight that this wasn’t merely procedural; it was a desperate attempt to reveal the dark underbelly of my situation. From the very start, I was systematically denied access to the documents necessary to substantiate my claims against Telstra and the government. This wasn’t just a figment of my imagination—I was experiencing real faults, accompanied by concerning comments from a potential client who mysteriously couldn’t reach me by phone.

Fast forward two years, and what do I find? The very arbitrator charged with rectifying my grievances turned a blind eye, refusing to investigate. At the same time, his own technical consultants acknowledged my ongoing complaints about these faults as late as April 1995. Yet, in stark contrast, the arbitrator’s award grotesquely claimed these problems had been resolved by July 1984. Known faults, ignored. Evidence, brushed aside. When I voiced alarming findings about corrupted fax logs and unsettling surveillance issues, their response was deafening silence. It’s a chilling testament to a system that prefers to obfuscate the truth rather than confront its own failings.

This wasn’t incompetence. It was culture—a culture of concealment, where truth was inconvenient and accountability was optional. The cover-up extended beyond Telstra—into government departments, legal chambers, and media silence.

 

Chapter 5:

The Collapse Beneath the Surface

My relationship with Karen began to unravel, thread by thread, as we fought against the relentless tide dragging our business into the abyss. The camp, once a symbol of hope, had become a haunted vessel, listing in the storm of financial ruin. After months of struggle, Karen sold her home, scraping together just over $80,000. But the shadows were already waiting. $65,000 vanished instantly—devoured by legal fees and the lingering debts owed to Faye. What remained was barely enough to keep the lights on, let alone salvage our crumbling dreams.

It took another long, bitter year to resolve with Faye, but by then, the damage had metastasised. Karen’s name became the only stable imprint on the business title—a fragile anchor in a sea of chaos.

Each day brought fresh decay. Bookings trickled in like dying breaths. The camp itself began to rot—peeling paint, broken fixtures, and a silence that screamed neglect. Passersby averted their gaze, repelled by the sad, bedraggled shell of what once promised joy. With no guests, there was no income. With no income, there was no maintenance. And with no maintenance, there was no hope. We were trapped in a vicious cycle of deterioration, each turn tightening the noose.

On the rare occasion when a school or club booked a stay, we were left scrambling—utterly cash-strapped, unable to afford even basic food supplies. The operational side of the business cast a grim shadow over us, amplifying our fears and feeding the tension. Karen’s frustration boiled over, echoing the same battles I once fought with Faye. “It’s been twelve months since I moved here, and nothing has improved. The phone issues are still unresolved!” she cried, her voice cracking like thunder.
Her fury poured out like a storm that had been building for months. And who could blame her?

Despite the turmoil, I clung to the last flickers of purpose. I sponsored underprivileged groups to stay at the camp, organising food donations through the compassion of commercial outlets. These children came without cost—but how could any act of goodwill pierce the looming darkness of my failure?

Karen and I tried to promote “get-away” holidays for singles over forty, but our efforts were met with silence. Tepid responses. Dwindling enthusiasm. It was as if the world had turned its back—or worse, couldn’t reach us at all. The phone lines, our lifeline, remained cursed.

Every day grew heavier. We were drowning in chaos and disappointment, the treachery of broken dreams clinging to us like a malignant fog, draining what little hope remained.

In May 1992, I organised a charity week for children from Ballarat and the Southwest, coordinated by Sister Maureen Burke—the unwavering heart of the project. But even this noble effort was poisoned by the same insidious force. Communication was a nightmare. Sister Burke struggled to reach me, her calls swallowed by the void. Desperate to finalise plans, she drove three and a half hours, navigating the fading hopes of what this week could mean for those children.

That same day, as Sister Burke arrived, Karen answered a call from a furious man demanding information about the singles weekends. His rage was venomous. He couldn’t understand why we advertised a business that never answered the phone. Karen took the full brunt of his fury—and broke.

She burst into tears. It was the final straw. I tried to defuse the moment with a joke, but the tension was too thick, too raw. Karen, a seasoned horsewoman who rode cross-country and played polo, wasn’t someone to cross lightly. And she proved it. Her punch nearly flattened me—my legs buckled, and my ego shattered.

Right then, Sister Burke stepped into the office. I retreated, knowing absence was the better part of valour. The two women remained behind, and later, Sister Burke advised me that Karen should leave Cape Bridgewater. It would be best for both of us, she said. She would arrange counselling for Karen back in Warrnambool.

Here we go again, I thought. Another fracture. Another loss.

The charity camp went ahead in April 1992, with thirty-five children for five nights. It was a rare success. While she was there, I asked Sister Burke to describe the phone faults she experienced during that dreadful week. She spoke of calls ringing out endlessly or connecting to dead lines—no sound, no life. And this happened for an entire week.

Later, I sent her an early draft of this book. Her reply was chilling:

“Only I know from personal experience that your story is true, I would find it difficult to believe.”

Twelve months later, in March 1993, Sister Karen Donnellon from Loreto College tried to arrange an annual camp. She later wrote:

“During a one-week period in March of this year I attempted to contact Mr Alan Smith at Bridgewater Camp. Each time I dialled I was met with a line that was blank. Even after several re-dials there was no response. I then began to vary the times of calling but it made no difference.”

A year had passed. A new exchange had been installed. And still, the phone system remained a festering wound.
Back in May 1992, we couldn’t have known that the stress would stretch on, strangling us for years. Karen was hospitalised—crushed by the weight of worry and the fear of losing her investment. She believed I had lied to her when I promised the phone problems would be resolved. I had thought Telstra. I had trusted their words.

I would never make that mistake again.

After her release, Karen settled in a rented house in Portland. Without her help at the camp, my school promotional tours collapsed. I continued to lodge complaints with Telstra, but the faults seemed to grow worse, not better. The old exchange had been demolished. The new one is installed. And yet, from August 1991 through May 1992, the same cursed recorded voice announcements persisted.

I began to question everything. Why had I come to Cape Bridgewater? Why had this move become a slow-motion disaster? Everyone assumes a working phone is a given. But this faulty system had ruined three lives—mine, Faye’s, and Karen’s—and cast a long, cruel shadow over my children’s future.

I didn’t choose this path. I was a cook, a community builder, a man who believed in fairness. But when I saw the injustice inflicted on fellow claimants—when I experienced it myself—I knew I couldn’t stay silent.

Becoming a whistleblower meant isolation. It meant being labelled, discredited, and dismissed. It meant watching friends suffer, watching evidence vanish, and watching institutions protect themselves at all costs.

But it also meant clarity. I knew what I stood for. I knew the truth mattered. And I knew that silence was complicity. The burden was heavy—but it was mine to carry.