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leechie · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Johannessburg

Salisbury Herald 11 May 1950
When Manica Road was the Centre of the City

Memories “Of Hello Girl”
In Early Salisbury
By Paddy Bradley

When the boat train leaves Cape Town bound for Rhodesia, there is always an atmosphere of excitement among the passengers who have come from Over Seas, for they are now embarking on the last stage of their journey.

The cold wind-swept platform of the station becomes an animated jumping off place into the unknown interior of “darkest Africa” and therefore invested with an aura of adventure.

Recently I was seeing a friend to Salisbury and giving her all the messages that an exile from the Colony sends at every available opportunity, when I noticed a group of good looking young women who were evidently on their way North. They were saying goodbye with great exuberance to those who were obviously shipboard acquaintances

***

My friend, who is an incorrigible newsgatherer, had somehow gleaned information about them.
“ They are on their way to Southern Rhodesia,” she said. “Hello Girls” they are. Going to the various telephone exchanges in the Colony. Come from all over England, I believe. Well, from the look of them, they should soon settle down there and certainly not want of company!”

I agreed and as I watched their excited faces, the years dropped away and I stood once again on the same dim-lit platform bound on the same Mission- to be a “Hello girl” in Rhodesia.
Thirty Years Ago!

***

A long time in the History and development of a young country. Long enough for there to be a world of difference in the Salisbury I found, to the modern city which awaited some of these who now chatted and laughed with their companions.
Salisbury in those earlier days was a small place with perhaps two or three double–storey buildings. The town straggled along Manica Road and round the corner, eventually thinning out to vacant plots half way up First Street.
***
Frogs croaked all night long in Kingsway and the rickshaw and bicycle were the most favoured forms of transport.
***

The Telephone Exchange, which stood on its present site was a single–storey wood and iron building which gave out onto a square yard, This yard became a quagmire in the rainy season; and at other times a dust bowl.

In the Exchange seven or eight of us girls sat before a switchboard of fairly ancient vintage, which was practically manual. That is except at odd times, such as during a violent thunderstorm, when it would become automatic on its own account and drop indicators and knock off headsets at random.

There were fewer than 800 local numbers and we knew most of them by heart. We knew, too, the private lives of most of the subscribers and they were fairly well acquainted with us as well.
***
We were more than just telephone operators. We were sources of general information, weather prophets, mother confessors, and sports commentators all in one.

We knew lots of things, which we never divulged. Errant husbands phoning from the club, “Sorry Dear, I’ve kept late at the office!” and wives ringing to say that they were staying late at their “sister’s”!

I was promoted to the outside board. This was trunks, and there I came up against ‘noisiest Africa.’ When the rains descended in earnest it seemed as if the Elements collected their full forces and concentrated them on the line which linked Bulawayo and Salisbury.

A few words might take half and hour to put through with the operator shrieking “ A for Apple.” “G for George” at the top of her voice, while stray passers – by peered around the door to see who was being murdered!

***

They were the good old days, however and I suppose that we telephone operators in our humble way, helped to found the service with its improvements and expansion that we know today.

There will be even greater developments in the years that lie ahead and these young women, whom I’ve last seen crowding the windows of the North bound train, will no doubt make their own contributions to those developments.

Let us hope that, in later years, they will be able to look back with same affection in their hearts as we, the Older generation of “ Hello girls,” have in ours!

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The Past does not equal the Future