I spent fifteen years commuting to Melbourne offices, and when I finally moved to Ballarat, the thing that nearly broke me wasn’t missing the food or the social scene. It was the internet dropping out mid-sentence during a client call.

If you’re working remotely from anywhere between Bendigo and Horsham, you’ve had the same experience. That awful frozen-screen silence where everyone on the Zoom call can see your pixelated face stuck in an unflattering expression. It’s humbling.

But after three years of remote work from Ballarat, with regular stints in Bendigo and coffee shops in Ararat, I’ve figured out a setup that works. Not perfectly—but well enough that dropped calls are rare.

Pick Tools That Handle Patchy Connections

The single biggest improvement I made wasn’t upgrading my internet plan. It was switching to apps that don’t fall apart when the connection dips.

Notion over Google Docs. Notion works offline and syncs when your connection comes back. Google Docs technically has offline mode, but in my experience it’s fiddly and unreliable.

Slack over Microsoft Teams for messaging. Teams wants to do everything—video, calls, files, chat—and it chews through bandwidth just sitting in the background. Slack’s lighter. It sends your messages when it can and doesn’t throw a fit when the connection wobbles.

Obsidian for notes. Everything’s stored locally as plain text files. Your internet could disappear for a week and you’d still have every note you’ve ever written. I know people in the Wimmera who swear by it for exactly this reason.

If you’re a developer, VS Code with local files rather than cloud-based IDEs. I’ve talked to people in Stawell trying to code in browser-based editors and wondering why everything feels sluggish. Work locally, push when you can.

Your Mobile Hotspot Is Your Second Connection

Don’t think of your phone’s hotspot as an emergency backup. Think of it as your second line.

Keep your laptop on NBN for general work. But when you’ve got an important video call coming up, switch to your mobile hotspot five minutes before. NBN fixed wireless and satellite connections tend to have variable latency—fine for browsing, painful for real-time video. A solid 4G signal often gives you a more consistent connection for calls.

I keep a Telstra prepaid SIM specifically for this. Twenty bucks a month for 40GB of data, and I only use it for video calls. If you’re out near Horsham or further west where Telstra’s stronger than Optus, this is worth every cent.

Pro tip: if you’ve got an older phone lying around, set it up as a dedicated hotspot plugged into power on your desk. No fumbling with your main phone when a call starts in two minutes.

Video Call Survival Guide

Turn your camera off when you’re not speaking. I know everyone says cameras on for engagement. But if you’re on a team call with eight people and your connection is struggling, camera-off is better than everyone watching you freeze and buffer.

Use a headset. Audio takes almost no bandwidth compared to video. Even if the video drops, people can still hear you clearly. My $60 Jabra has been worth ten times that.

Close everything else before important calls. Slack, browser tabs, Dropbox, OneDrive—anything that might sync a large file at the worst moment. On my old connection in Stawell, I once had a Windows update start downloading mid-presentation. Never again.

Save the phone dial-in number. Most Zoom and Teams meetings have one. If your internet dies completely, you can join by phone in thirty seconds.

Embrace Async Work

Here’s the mindset shift that really helped me: stop trying to work as if you’re on a CBD fibre connection. You’re not. And that’s fine.

Write detailed messages instead of jumping on quick calls. Record Loom videos to explain things instead of screen-sharing live. Send documents with written comments rather than talking through them in real time.

This isn’t just a workaround—it’s genuinely better for deep work. I get more done in Ballarat than I ever did in a Melbourne open-plan office. Business Victoria has decent resources on remote work practices if you’re making the case to your employer that regional Vic is viable.

The Boring Stuff That Matters

Get a UPS (uninterruptible power supply). Power flickers are more common out here than in the city. A basic UPS keeps your modem and laptop running through short outages. Mine cost $180 and has saved me at least a dozen times.

Know your NBN technology type. Fixed wireless, FTTP, FTTN, satellite—they all have different weak points. Check your address on the NBN website.

Test your speeds at different times of day. Run speed tests at 9am, noon, and 7pm over a few days. Schedule important calls during your good windows.

It’s Getting Better

I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture. Regional Victoria’s connectivity has improved significantly. Fixed wireless upgrades are rolling out, 5G is expanding, and Starlink has been a genuine option for poorly served areas.

The gap between Melbourne internet and regional internet is closing. It’s just not closed yet. In the meantime, the right tools and a few smart habits make the difference between remote work that’s frustrating and remote work that’s genuinely great.

I’ll take a slightly dodgy connection and a view of the Grampians over a perfect gigabit connection in a Docklands apartment any day of the week.