In the early days of Adelaide, the only way to get an urgent message to someone was to run, or ride a horse, and pass the message face-to-face.
Around 1850, if there was a fire, someone would run to the police barracks on North Tce, the duty inspector would send out an officer on horseback to find the constables walking the beat. He would then send them running back to the police barracks to collect the fire pump and either tow it by hand or hitch it to horses and gallop to the fire. Just imagine how long that would take.
As most of Adelaide’s buildings were made of wood and thatch, there wouldn’t be much of the structure left by the time they got water.
When the telegraph was introduced, a message could be sent to a post office using morse code and the message could be delivered by hand. Amazing!
A slight digression. When I started work at 5AD in 1959, and through the 1960s, we were still using morse code to communicate with the regional stations 5PI, 5MU and 5SE.
I got 10 shillings a week to know and use morse code.
Once the telephone came to Adelaide, only government offices and important businesses had the telephone connected.
You didn’t dial a number yourself, you contacted the “operator” in the telephone exchange by winding a little handle and she connected you.
Once people saw how convenient these phone things were, there was a demand.
Even the public wanted to use them, so public phones were introduced, and then phone boxes.
Throughout the city, little steel poles were erected with a box on top. They were police boxes, and suddenly police on the beat were in contact with the City Police Station.
Each officer had a key and they could be alerted or pass messages. It was a revolution.
Later, taxis caught on, and each taxi rank had a series of different coloured boxes to cover the various companies.
Taxis now didn’t have to go back to their depot to get a job.
Not many people could afford to have their own phone. I can remember we would walk about 25 houses away to Mrs Smith, who had a phone for an emergency, or we’d ride a bike around to Henderson’s grocer shop for the nearest phone box.
