Dorrigo, NSW · Discussion draft
A daily check-in for older people in Dorrigo who live alone.
When someone on the plateau falls, or quietly becomes unwell, the question is how long it takes before anyone knows. This page sets out who is missed today, a simple design for noticing, and what a day with it would look like.
The gap
The services designed for isolation reach people the system already knows. Volunteer visiting is generally tied to receiving aged care. Funded alarms need an aged care assessment. The people most likely to be found late are the ones with neither.
Each row below follows one kind of resident through a fortnight, and each square is one day. A filled square is a day on which someone outside the house would reliably find out they were up and about: a visit, a support worker, a check-in. An empty square is not a bad day. It is a day on which, if something went wrong, nobody would know until someone happened to call.
The fortnights are illustrative, not data about real people. The waiting figure is from the Support at Home data report.
Where funding does reach someone, it buys a pendant alarm monitored by a distant call centre. A pendant has to be worn and pressed, which is exactly what fails when someone collapses. And the call centre still needs a local person to go to the door. No program pays for that person, for anyone.
The design
A small sensor notes when the door opens, and checks in every few hours to say it is working.
Low-power radio carries those two signals to one community aerial on the plateau.
Has an ordinary day happened, judged against a fortnight of that person's own routine?
The resident first, then a contact they chose, then a keyholder, then a local coordinator.
Silence can mean three things: a person who is not moving, a sensor with a flat battery, or a network that is down. Only the first should ever reach a person's phone. The software never calls 000 itself; a named local coordinator decides.
Try it
Margaret is an invented resident, 84, who lives alone on the edge of town. She usually opens the fridge before half past nine. Here are two of her days side by side: one where nothing is needed, and one where something goes wrong.
Day one · No intervention
Margaret is in and out of the kitchen from seven. At the 11:00 check the system sees an ordinary morning and does nothing. On most days, this is all it ever does.
Day two · An incident
Margaret falls at about 7:30. At 11:00 the system sees no activity but a working sensor, and starts asking: Margaret, then Pat, then Jenny, who finds her. The coordinator takes over.
Green ticks are fridge openings. Blue diamonds are messages and calls, amber are visits and the coordinator, and red marks the fall itself. The shaded band is when Margaret usually first opens the fridge. Below, you can replay either day minute by minute, or try four other situations.
Privacy
Someone will call this surveillance of older people, and they will be partly right. The useful questions are how little it can see, who decides, and who it answers to.
If the scheme ever stops, every participant is told. Believing someone is watching when the equipment went quiet a month ago is worse than never joining.
Cost
| Aerial, gateway, mounting, surge protection, backup power | $1,300 |
| Seventeen sensors, including spares | $800 |
| Installation materials, batteries, a second site | $800 |
| One-off build | $2,900 |
| Running cost: data, text messages, batteries | $250 / yr |
From 1 July 2026 a NSW road ambulance costs a $948 call-out plus $8.56 for every kilometre of the round trip. One emergency run from Dorrigo to Coffs Harbour and back comes to roughly $2,000. That is a comparison of size, not a promised saving.
All figures are estimates to be re-quoted before purchase. The real ongoing cost is not equipment. It is about three hours a week of coordination: someone who holds the roster, follows up, and notices when a battery dies.
The pilot
Each step has to work before the next one starts.
Prove the radio link and the daily rule in a single home before anyone else is involved.
Walk the township street by street, so nobody is enrolled where coverage is weak.
An insured auspicing body, a coordinator and a named backup, and an expert review of consent.
Residents who live alone and want it, invited through trusted places like the pharmacy counter.
Continue, redesign or stop, against tests agreed in advance.
This pilot cannot show that lives are saved, and does not try. It tests whether people accept it, how fast a genuine quiet day is noticed, and how often alarms are false.
A sensor on a fridge door is a poor substitute for a neighbour who notices the curtains haven't opened. It is offered because noticing should not depend on somebody happening to walk past.