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Ray Baldacchino used to volunteer as a bus driver bringing patients to Mt Druitt hospital for dialysis. Then COVID hit and all volunteering stopped. Not to miss an opportunity, when volunteering restarted in 2022, the volunteer manager instead asked Ray to join the palliative care volunteering team.

It was during his initial palliative care volunteer training that Ray first heard about wind phones. It was in the section covering grief and bereavement and something about the idea really struck a chord with him.

A wind phone is a disconnected, non-working telephone set up in a quiet space where people can have one-way conversations with deceased loved ones. Itaru Sasaki created the very first wind phone, or Kaze no Denwa, in his own private garden in Ōtsuchi, Japan in 2010 to help him cope with losing his cousin to cancer.

A year later, after the devastating Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Sasaki opened the booth to the public to help grieving community members. Since then, more than 30 000 people have visited there, and a global wind phone movement grew.

Inspired by the idea, Ray got to work building his very own wind phone from scratch. With a background in sheet metal work and other types of construction he had the skills to get it done in only a couple of months. The result? A beautiful full size phone booth style wind phone nestled under the shade of a frangipani tree in his backyard. August 5 marks it’s 3-year anniversary.

Like Sasaki’s original, this wind phone is not open to the public. It is however available to his fellow volunteers. Ray knows that many volunteers are drawn to palliative care because they have their own experiences of grief and the nature of the role may leave some looking for an outlet to vent their feelings. A wind phone is the perfect place to do so.

Not wanting to stop at only one, Ray has another two wind phones in the works. One will be stationed outside Mt Druitt Palliative Care Unit near the fishpond and barbeque area. Once installed it will be a great resource for patients, families, carers, volunteers, and staff. He has already started pulling materials together for the third which will be in the iconic bright red British telephone box style.

Under construction – Ray’s wind phone destined for the Mt Druitt Palliative Care Unit

Thanks Ray, you’re a legend.

You can read more about wind phones in our recent news posts here and here or read The Phone Box at the Edge of the World book written by Laura Imai Messina. If movies are more your speed you might like to watch Voices in the Wind (2020) which features the original wind phone. This Japanese film is available to watch in full for free on YouTube here. Don’t forget to turn on captions to get the subtitles in English and have a box of tissues nearby.

Main photo: Ray Baldacchino next to his backyard wind phone.