by John Wells
I was tuning my transistor mantel radio, an old Kriesler, a few days ago and I was suddenly aware that virtually none of the call-signs on the dial were still in existence. There has been a revolution in radio while I was not even looking, or listening. My brave little ‘trannie’ was living in a world gone by.
There was a time when you could tell where a broadcast was coming from by the call-sign. 3BO was in Bendigo. 3HA was in Hamilton. 3UL was in Warragul but the 3WA call-sign was taken by Wangaratta. 3UL was one of Gippsland’s two commercial radio stations, based in Warragul, and the other was 3TR, which started out as a Traralgon station but moved to Sale.
Radio has always attracted people to it, and many of the stations that are now slick and sophisticated started out in sheds and garages, with a few enthusiasts working to get out a signal and to keep on improving it. 3TR is a case in point.
3TR began in modest circumstances. The Trafalgar Radio Club opened the station as 3FB in 1929. It had 30 only watts of power. The first broadcast was on 27 May and it was transmitted from the Mechanics Hall. It was managed by Frank Berkery, assisted by volunteers fascinated by this new medium. It sounds primitive now but 3FB broadcast local artists, and records borrowed around the place. In September 1930 it became 3TR Trafalgar.
When it moved to Sale it maintained a ‘studio’ in Traralgon and it had landlines to Maffra and Sale, which I understand were to act as a relay for rebroadcast. In 1939 this was up to 1000 watts. This increase was linked to the new 3TR studio, opened by the Prime Minister, ‘Bob” Menzies. Even then, sometimes live programs would be broadcast directly from the transmitter building when there were technological programs at the studio. Radio broadcasting was still in a pioneering phase.
In 1939 the great bushfires that swept the state and so badly impacted through the Gippsland hills caused 3TR to stop all normal programming and take over fire-fighting communications for the area. In an echo, in 1952 all the ambulances in the district were equipped with radios to be able to hear 3TR when it broadcast emergency messages.
In 1965 3TR was bought by GLV10, part of the upstart television industry. GLV10 had its main (and only) studio in Traralgon.
3UL first went to air in 1937, named after the town from which it then broadcast, Warragul. It was set up by Vic Dinenny, who’d been operating 3YB as a mobile station, a few weeks here, a few weeks there. As the number of stations grew that was not worthwhile, so he got licences for two fixed stations, 3YB in Warrnambool and 3UL in Warragul.
3UL, with 3YB and 3SR (Shepparton) became part of Argus Broadcasting Services network. The Argus was a Melbourne daily newspaper but it closed in January 1957 and the three stations became a separate company, Associated Broadcasting Company. In 1982 it was bought by Regional Communications; In 1990 two ‘private shareholders’ bought it and then Ace Radio Broadcasters bought it in 1995.
Th 3UL call-sign died when the station was, ironically, moved to Traralgon and became 3GG. In 1999 it returned to Warragul, but as 3GG. There have been at least three changes of ownership since then.
Let me list the oldies, ignoring the ABC for a moment, and also leaving out the many community radio stations – and sticking to AM radio. What is all this FM business anyway? Can you get that on a normal radio? With valves that light up inside, including the trusty old 6V6GT?
My delightful old Kriesler dial has a ring of call-signs for every state and sometimes late at night it was possible to tune into one, but normally it was 3LO and 3UL that gave us a reliable, strong signal. The Victorian call-signs were first, the biggies, the six metropolitan stations, XY, AK, AW, DB, UZ, LO. Then there were the 17 country stations (in smaller characters on this dial), UL, WV, GI, BO, HK, LK, CS, YB, TR, SR, SH, BA, GL, CV, MA, WL and NE. That gives a total of 23 but now there are more than 120 radio stations broadcasting in the state. This radio is a transistor model built in 1969, so it is not really all that old, is it? Fifty three years is not such a long time.
The two-letter code tells you where they were, usually. UL was in Warragul, WV was in Horsham, and the WV stood for Western Victoria, It was an ABC station.
GI was in Gippsland (Sale, ABC), BO was in Bendigo, CS was in Colac, YB was in Warrnambool but it had been a mobile station for some time, until it happened to settle in Warrnambool, its owner also taking up the licence for 3UL. TR stood for Traralgon but the station moved to Sale, as laid out above. SR was Shepparton, BA was Ballarat, GL was Geelong, CV was Central Victoria (Maryborough and Bendigo), MA was Mildura, WM was in the Wimmera/Mallee (Horsham), but WV was there, too, so I might be missing something. 3WL was at Warrnambool for the ABC and NE was Northeast Victoria (Wangaratta). The dial has an LK and an HK, too, but I’ve no idea where they were based.
3WR opened in Wangaratta in 1924 but closed down in 1925, reopened in 1930 and moved to Shepparton in 1934. It changed its call-sign to the more appropriate 3SR.
Many of those old callsigns are gone now, replaced by a host of FM stations, community stations and so forth. BA and BA are gone. CV (Charlton) and DB are gone. AR, GL (Geelong) and HZ, LK MA – the list goes on. TR and MB (Birchip, would you believe), SR, XY, UL and TR, all gone.
Well, they are gone as AM (audio modulation) stations and some have morphed into FM (frequency modulation) stations so they survive albeit in a new set of clothes.
I’m going to my shed to turn the old Kriesler on. I’ll go to 3UL and see if I can get some of the adventures of Biggles, or When A Girl Marries, Blue Hills, perhaps Jungle Jim. Perhaps it will have some of the local news about birthdays and funerals and local football. The radio stations of the past was usually well integrated into their communities.