Karin Stark has long warned it was only a matter of time until a farmer died, unable to call triple zero. She never believed it would be her husband.
Jon Elder, was working on their farm just 25 minutes from Narromine in January when he was thrown from his all-terrain vehicle.
Jon Elder died in a farming accident after his wife was unable to get phone reception 50 metres from their home.
Their daughter, 10, saw the accident and was able to fetch her mother. Despite being just 50 metres from their home, Stark couldn’t get enough reception to call an ambulance.
With her husband fatally injured, but not knowing if he could still be saved, Stark was forced to leave her husband and run back to the house to get through to a triple zero operator.
Not being by his side, she could not act on instructions from the call taker and ultimately hung up, wanting to be with her husband in his final moments.
“I didn’t know that we couldn’t save him. I thought we would have been able to … they were asking if he was breathing and I wasn’t with him to check,” Stark said.
“It would have been helpful to be by his side and be told by emergency services to do this, check for this, so at least I would have known I’d done everything possible in those critical few minutes if his brain wasn’t getting oxygen, but I wasn’t able to be there with him.”
Ultimately, Stark doesn’t believe she could have saved her husband’s life. But the trauma of struggling to connect to triple zero made the worst day of her life even more stressful.
This isn’t the first time Stark has spoken about how poor mobile phone coverage in the regions is putting farmers and their staff at risk. Her mobile service is with Telstra, and she estimates she gets reception on only about 5 per cent of her property.
In March last year, one of her farmworkers was alone on the property when he was crushed by his ute, breaking his collarbones and injuring his chest.
Jon Elder died in a farming accident earlier this year.
With no phone reception, he was also unable to call. Luckily, he was able to get a text through to his wife in town, only to find no calls were going through to triple zero at all due to work on the network.
Eventually, his wife was able to get through and he survived.
In 2022, one of Stark’s neighbouring farmers fell from a height on one of his properties, 60 kilometres from Narromine.
The accident left him with eight fractured vertebrae, fractured ribs, a punctured lung, a fractured skull and broken nose, cheekbone and eye socket.
He was forced to drag himself to his ute and, adrenaline fuelled, was able to drive himself two kilometres to a group of workers to get help.
All because he couldn’t get phone service.
In a message to Telstra at the time, the farmer said on X, formerly Twitter, that he was faced with the terrible decision of either lying there in agony until he was eventually discovered, or drive himself.
“We should be able to go about our day knowing that if something goes wrong, we have the confidence that we can call for help,” he said at the time.
Back then, Stark told her neighbour it was only a matter of time before someone died. Now she hopes speaking out about her tragedy can inspire governments and telcos to improve regional networks.
NSW Farmers board member and Rural Fire Serve volunteer Alan Brown, of Wagga Wagga, said lack of mobile coverage was not just a pain for his farming work – but could be seriously dangerous when fighting fires.
“Farmers tend to be working on their own quite a lot and away from help, so mobile service is vital,” he said.
“I’m a group captain with the Rural Fire Service and we have lots of problems with fire, especially in the mountains and difficult country in difficult terrain where the phone just drops out constantly and it’s certainly a real problem for us when we’re trying to fight fires.”
Farmers have one of the highest fatality rates in the country with 23 farming related deaths in 2022, second only to road and rail drivers.
Farmers are also worried about what the looming switch-off of 3G services will mean for their existing coverage as Telstra prepares to switch off the network and move fully to 4G and 5G this year.
The federal government will be conducting an audit to map out black spots in the network, and has committed to $1.1 billion in funding to improve regional telecommunications, a spokesperson for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.
A spokesperson for Telstra said, given how “vast and sparsely populated” the country was, it was difficult to guarantee coverage to all areas through towers.
“Providing regional connectivity is not just a Telstra responsibility. It’s a challenge that must be shared between federal, state and local governments and with providers such as the nbn, us and other mobile carriers,” the spokesperson said.
“We continually investigate new opportunities to further expand our mobile coverage, including co-investment opportunities such as the federal government’s Mobile Black Spot Program and Regional Connectivity Program.
“Telstra will deliver a total of 341 projects in NSW as part of these programs with 34 of those projects located in the Parkes electorate area.”
A spokesperson for Optus extended their condolences to Stark’s family, and pointed to a collaboration with SpaceX coming later this year which aims to improve regional coverage.