Singer treadle trauma (C8) is no big deal, reckons Merilyn McClung of Forestville: “Nothing flustered that generation. My grandmother, 103 years old at the time, was talking to me on her landline from the kitchen of her rural property when suddenly she said she’d call me back. When she did, she explained a snake had been looking at her from the top of her fridge and she had to deal with it. I didn’t dare ask how she dealt with it.”

“Ah yes, the old manual exchanges,” reminisces David Swain of Glenhaven. “When I was a boy, we were connected to the rest of the world via a manual exchange at Carroll, a small village between Tamworth and Gunnedah. It only operated nine to five, five days a week. My father told of a time when a family member in Tamworth was trying to reach us early. She coul

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