Telstra payphone granted heritage status

Image credit: Telstra

A Telstra payphone on the NSW south coast has earned heritage listing “on social and historical grounds” for the role it played in connecting the area to the outside world during a major bushfire.

The payphone, at 195 Princes Highway, outside Narooma Plaza, remained working when power, mobile and internet access was out during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.

It enabled the community to place about 1000 calls over a two-month period, Telstra said.

The nomination for heritage listing was led by Dr Naomi Parry Duncan, a professional historian who was in Narooma on New Year's Day 2020.

"Heritage isn't only grand buildings and monuments. Sometimes it's an ordinary object that a community turned to on its worst day,” Dr Parry Duncan said in a blog post run by Telstra.

The nomination was supported by the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

“This public telephone is representative of the cultural significance of public telephones, on social and historical grounds,” the Trust said in a heritage-listing statement.

A plaque has been affixed to the payphone to commemorate the listing.