Nat Locke: the tale of a squat toilet, my errant iPhone, at least one bare hand and a lot of Dettol wipes

Look, I’m as attached to my phone as anyone else, but I tell you what, if I drop it down a crevice between a bunch of giant boulders, I am not going in after it. And that’s where one particular gen-Zer and I differ.

You see, a young 20-something was having a delightful day in the Hunter Valley recently when her phone slipped through her fingers and fell down a 3m crevice. This rather daring young lady decided that she wasn’t just going to surrender her phone to the rock spirits, and instead tried to retrieve it.

And that’s when she fell in headfirst, and remained wedged for several hours. Wait no, SEVEN hours. She spent seven hours stuck upside down between a bunch of very large rocks. All that rescuers could see were her bare little tootsies, which also begs the question: why was she bushwalking barefoot?

Oh, but also, why would she endanger herself so dramatically to retrieve something than can be rather easily replaced?

After the seven-hour rescue mission freed her, which included winching a 500kg boulder away, it was noted that the phone could not be retrieved. So she spent seven hours upside down between two rocks FOR NOTHING.

Still, I can sort of see where she’s coming from. Our phones are our life. No one can remember anyone’s phone numbers anymore, and we don’t have a Teledex, so if we lose our phone, we just have to start a new life with new friends and family. And sure, everything’s in the cloud, but how the hell do we get it down from there?

A few years ago, I was heading to Melbourne for a university reunion. In my haste to get off the plane and head to meet some friends for dinner on the first night of the weekend, I left my phone on the plane. That meant I couldn’t message my friends who were waiting for me.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, I had no way of contacting my Airbnb host to let me into the apartment where I was supposed to be staying. I had no way of calling an Uber. It’s safe to say I was screwed. After much frantic dashing around Tullamarine airport, I eventually located someone who could retrieve it for me. But I am forever scarred by the experience. That’s why I now write down any pertinent phone numbers before I travel so I at least have a manual back up if this sort of situation occurs again.

Just kidding. As if I would be that sensible! No. Instead, I just obsessively check that I haven’t left my phone in the seat pocket. I’ll check that it’s not in the seat pocket while I’m holding it in my hand. That’s how paranoid I am.

It’s interesting that our instincts are to save our phones, regardless of how much danger it puts us in, which is a sure sign that evolution is at play. We idiots are going to die out much faster. I’m not about to dive headlong into a crevice, but I did once retrieve my phone from a rather disgusting predicament.

You see, I had been cycling in Cambodia and decided to change out of the cycling shorts I was wearing under my cargo pants. I know, I’m a real fashionista. What I forgot at this moment was that I had popped my phone into one of the many handy pockets on my cargo pants and as I removed them, my phone was catapulted into the nearby squat toilet.

If it was a buzzer-beating three point shot in a basketball game, it would have been mighty impressive, because there was nothing but net, and by that I mean, it didn’t even hit the sides. There was just a mild splash followed by an anguished howl (that was me).

Now, you might think that a grown, civilised woman might pause for a moment before plunging her hand into a Cambodian squat toilet, but I can assure you that instinct kicks in remarkably quickly when iPhones are involved. I leapt across the room, which wasn’t that easy considering I had a pair of cargo pants around one of my ankles, and flicked that phone out of there faster than you can say “E. coli”. Luckily, there was no shortage of rice to cover it in to soak up the moisture. There was no shortage of Dettol wipes to wipe away the filth either. That phone saw me through the rest of my Cambodian adventure before it died (probably of cholera).

But my favourite story of retrieval of a lost phone was when someone dropped it over the side of a boat and a beluga whale dived down and returned it. We don’t deserve animals. Unfortunately, it’s not likely a beluga whale is going to dive into a Cambodian squat toilet, or a 3m rock crevice, so be careful out there.