Remember huddling in a phone box making a call – it’s a experience most of the current generation of kids won’t get to experience –unless they want to get on the hotline to Santa.
For the fifth year in a row Telstra will hold their popular Free Calls to Santa via payphones across Australia.
From 13 November right through to Christmas Eve, Aussies can once again dial # HOHOHO (# 464646) for free from any of Telstra’s 14,000+ public phones nationwide to chat directly to the North Pole and share their Christmas wishes.
Since launching in 2021, Free Calls to Santa has become a modern Aussie holiday ritual, with more than 1.5 million calls placed to Santa HQ (and counting) – and nearly 100,000 kids already dialling Santa’s Out Of Office since last Christmas, eagerly awaiting the hotline’s return.
Over the past five years, call data from the 100 most called from payphones reveal some uniquely Aussie Christmas trends:
• Outback wishlist: one of the most remote calls into Santa’s workshop has come from Anmatjere (Pmara Jutjunta), a small First Nations community in the heart of the NT.
• Coastal calls: around 60 per cent are near beaches and waterfront locations.
• Country cheer: the rest mostly ring in from regional towns and tourist hot spots.
Meanwhile, the most festive public phones in each state have been announced, racking up the most amount of calls:
• NSW: Mosman – The Esplanade
• VIC: Melbourne – Bourke Street Mall
• QLD: Seventeen Seventy – Captain Cook Drive
• SA: Hahndorf – Mount Barker Road
• WA: Coogee – Cockburn Road
• TAS: South Hobart – Washington Street
• NT: Tennant Creek – Tinkarli Town Camp
• ACT: Garran – Garran Place
