Yesterday, Tasmania got turned off and back on again — with islanders plunged into a communications blackout which had wide-ranging effects.
At 11am, civil works in a Melbourne suburb caused "massive damage" to one of Telstra's two cables connecting Tasmania to the mainland, while their second cable was cut by roadworks on the Tasmanian end at about 1pm.
Some responded with disbelief.
For some, it simply meant having a nap because they couldn't log on for work.
For Sue Bastone, it meant her house settlement couldn't proceed.
The Kingborough resident said they were originally supposed to settle the purchase of their house on Monday, but it was delayed until Tuesday.
"On Monday afternoon, with a moving van full of furniture, we were told that we couldn't enter the property.
"So the person we bought the home from allowed us to store our things in the stable overnight, which I was a bit agitated about because it's not completely secure but I thought it's only going to be one night."
At about 1:45 on Tuesday afternoon, right after the second cable cut, they were told the settlement would not proceed that day either.
Ms Bastone said she was frantically trying to reach contractors booked to deliver a new bed and other furniture to the house on Wednesday but could not reach any of them on their landlines.
"Aurora Energy can't get in to read the metre, the plumber can't get in, the electrician can't get in … we've had to put people off all day, so it's been a very drawn-out saga," Ms Bastone said.
They are hoping to settle on Wednesday afternoon.
Airports clogged
At Hobart International Airport, both inbound and outbound flights were delayed as check-in services failed and airlines had to revert to manual boarding processes.
One interstate visitor described waiting hours for her return flight to Brisbane, where she hoped her home had not been affected by flooding.
"You've got people in Brisbane who are going to pick you up and you can't call them to tell them what's going on … hopefully, we get home to all the rain and the house is not underwater," she said.
"My house is quite high, thank god."
A visitor from Melbourne said she felt "stuck" at Hobart airport after having waited for three and a half hours.
"We don't know whether we're going to stay here or what's going to happen now," she said.
'I'm really hungry'
Local resident Corey Lonergan said he was out in the CBD when he realised he couldn't use EFTPOS.
"I can't pay for food, I can't buy anything, every time I try something with EFTPOS it doesn't work, it's really annoying — everything's on my phone. I'm really hungry and I'm trying to get some food."
However, Mr Lonergan said he was not letting the hunger make him "hangry".
"It makes me feel like this is going to last a bit of time and we just need to be a bit patient."
Daniel Robson of Goulds Natural Medicine in Hobart said their business's ability to trade had been impacted by the outage, with sporadic EFTPOS.
Mr Robson said they had been relying mostly on cash transactions but there had been a noticeable drop in customers coming into the store.
He said if it went on for much longer, the business would be further hit.
"It would definitely affect us, there's a lot of aspects of our business that would be quite difficult because we do rely on having access to running our online store presence, our phones are all impacted so it would be quite difficult."
Local resident Isaac Deng told the ABC he drove into Hobart CBD to find out if something was wrong with his phone, but when he arrived, the Vodafone store was closing due to the outage.
"They said something's wrong with the network," he said.
"We need the internet for everything — we use it to communicate, to work, everything."
On Facebook, Wren Moore vented about the outage.
"I still can't believe Tasmania is so reliant on an undersea cable for both power (hydropower is something we produce in this state) and telecommunications.
On Instagram, Kel Fae wrote: "I will sadly be missing out on my uncle's funeral unless it's fixed in the next 15 mins."
Being 'locked out' of digital services isn't new for some
In the Hobart suburb of Bridgewater, about one-third of homes were not online in 2019.
The Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCoSS) said the outage highlighted the challenges thousands of Tasmanians face every day.
"The way much of our society operates, be it applying for jobs, remote working and learning arrangements or managing our personal finances, works on the assumption we all have the access, skills and ability to get online," TasCoSS chief executive Adrienne Picone said.
Ms Picone called for the introduction of a telecommunications concession for Tasmanians on low incomes, to help them access mobile and broadband services, saying cost was a "significant barrier" in the digital divide.
'Catastrophic' outage sparks call for more connections
Andrew Connor, of consumer group Digital Tasmania, also used the outage to call for the government to establish another cable connection.
Although he described the cable double-whammy as an "unfortunate confluence of events," he said the impact of losing connectivity for even 12 hours would be "catastrophic".
Although mobile providers were offering emergency call capabilities when other voice calls were unavailable, Digital Tasmania pointed to the fact many home and business landlines were unable to call triple-0.
Government services, such as the coronavirus call centre, were also uncontactable.
"We had high rain falling in some areas of the state and without access to rainfall and river level data, it was lucky that the rain didn't increase dramatically, or there could have been a torrent of water coming towards a town and nobody would have known."
Sue Bastone, for one, said the experience has moved her from being ambivalent about the idea of another cable to supporting it "100 per cent".
