Working as a night operator at Woy Woy

When I transferred to Woy Woy post office in 1966, I was trained as a night telephone operator at the Woy Woy Telephone Exchange, located at Blackwall Rd, Woy Woy, and next door to the old post office.

There were 40 or so telephonists during the day and two male telephonists who alternated on the midnight to dawn shift.

The job was to connect phone calls through the night and to sort and collate trunk line calls.

A warning call came from Sydney every hour to ensure you were awake.

If you failed to answer, the call out would then trigger off an alarm.

One night the inevitable happened, I fell asleep and the alarm went off very loudly like a fire alarm bell.

The police constable appeared in a matter of minutes, wanting to know what was wrong.

I explained that I had fallen asleep and this sent off the alarm.

"Where's the key," he asked.

"The postmaster has it," I explained.

So he smashed the glass and turned the alarm off.

The postmaster Bill Collins was not impressed.

"You'll have to pay for that," he said.

The police, the night watchman and the security men would often call in through the night to have a cup of coffee and swap stories.

Henry Wong, a Umina restaurateur, would call in after closing also.

He wore a black apron around his waist, which carried his night's takings and also a little pistol for which he had a license.

It was very tiny like the ones you used to see carried in women's purses in the Hollywood thrillers.

Well Henry was telling a story about his experiences in China during Japanese occupation.

He got very excited and started waving his pistol around in a very agitated manner.

The police and the security men all dived under the table while I was to frozen with fear to move.

A voice under the table said: "Put the pistol down, Henry."

Henry looked around mystified and reluctantly put the pistol back in his apron.

Another night a gentleman rang up the exchange saying he had murdered his wife.

The police went to the man's address and the security man went off on his own to investigate.

He went to the wife's place and there she was, large as life watching the late movie on television.

Would you believe the film was, Murder My Sweet, starring Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.

Whether the man had a nightmare or had too much demon rum, who can tell, but it all ended well.

Apart from some eerie misty nights and things that go bump in the night, these two incidents were the most exciting things to happen during my stay as a night telephone operator.

Very soon the automatic telephone exchange was built in MacMasters Rd, Woy, Woy, and eventually the old manual exchange was demolished.

Keith Whitfield, August 6