“I believe it will take a death before something is done.”
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That is the grim prediction of Scotts Creek resident Heather Bullen in regards to a lack of internet and phone coverage in rural areas.
Ms Bullen and her family, who live on Couch’s Road, combated the St Patrick’s Day fires with limited access to technology.
The family was able to escape injury and not lose their home, but Ms Bullen said things needed to change.
“This area between Scotts Creek, Cobden and Simpson is like a Bermuda Triangle, it’s almost impossible to get any coverage,” she said.
“In this day and age, that just shouldn’t be the case, we should all have access to basic services which phone and internet coverage are.”
Ms Bullen is with Optus while her two sons that live at home are with Telstra.
The family’s internet connection is driven by satellite while the home phone is linked to an exchange two kilometres down the road.
All services have limited impact due to the remote location of the family home.
“I can’t get service on my phone at all,” Ms Bullen said.
“The boys are with Telstra and they can get a little bit of coverage if they climb on top of the machinery shed roof and point the phone the right way. The internet is patchy at best and if the exchange overheats, which it did on Sunday, then our landline goes down.”
Like many caught in the line of fire over last weekend, the Bullen family has a story to tell. The fire got to within 500 metres of the home.
“Earlier in the night we had heard there was something going on in Terang,” Ms Bullen said.
“Because we had no phone or internet coverage we didn’t really know what was happening but about 10.45pm we decided to take a cautious approach and we put our fire plan in place.
“The first official word we had about the fire came at 11.15pm when we got an automated message through our landline. By the time that had come the fire was roaring over the ridge and heading towards us.
“We went to our neighbour’s dairy and stayed there until 5.30am before we were able to go back and thankfully find our home still intact. It was a tough night, at about 3.30am the fire was coming straight us and we all said our goodbyes, we thought that was it. But luckily the wind changed just in time and we lived to tell the story.”