Beep beep

Everyone’s favourite sound – the text message alert!

Unfortunately its not mine so have had to become trained in understanding how important it is for other people. Travelling on my own in a far off place especially in Western Australia  has its advantages of solitude and isolation but it has the disadvantage that others can get anxious about your location.

Again, unfortunately, the mobile coverage in WA is pretty poor with Telstra, Australia’s largest mobile operator with the widest coverage only committing to providing coverage to 99% of the population. This sounds quite impressive but when it gets to the nitty gritty, not many people live in these remote communities meaning no mobile signal.

Mobile phones don’t have the same society influence as the UK due to this reason and doesn’t create any real market for the mobile operators to expand into smaller areas which means communication to loved ones is severely limited to the larger towns. I’ve got used to the ‘Beep beep’ now but in groups of about 10 when messages are received en masse when a signal is received. Progress is communicated back on the arrival or departure from major towns with a basic ETA in case of any problems.

Just as I’ve had to get used to burst messages, the family back home have had to get used to putting phones on silent as invariably I’m updating at between 3-4am UK time…the joys of time differences :)