In 1901, the Marconi Company approached the Australian Government with a proposal to connect Australia and New Zealand by wireless, but it was not until 1906 that the company was granted a temporary licence to conduct trials between Devonport in Tasmania and Queenscliff in Victoria.
The Postmaster General's Department was given full control of wireless communications in Australia under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, passed by the Australian Parliament in 1905.
Young Guglielmo Marconi, thinking hard
By 1909, the threat of war was increasing, and the Government decided to establish wireless telegraphic stations around Australia's coast as a means of gathering naval intelligence, and for the safety of life at sea.
Tenders were called to erect two high-powered stations in Sydney and Perth. The successful bidder was the newly formed Australasian Wireless Company.
The company's activities were further broadened when, in 1910, it was granted a licence to operate an experimental radio station at the back of the Bulletin offices in Sydney.
This station later moved to the Australia Hotel, which became Australia's first coastal radio station after the Australasian Wireless Company was granted a licence to handle public traffic to and from ships at sea. It closed in 1912 when the Pennant Hills radio station opened.
Radio Telephone Transmitter, 1910
Another licence was granted to Father Archibald Shaw, a priest and former telegraphist, to build an experimental wireless station in Randwick, Sydney. Later, Father Shaw began manufacturing wireless equipment from a site next to this station; he also gained a licence to operate a radio station on King Island in Bass Strait.
With a change in Government in 1910, the Prime Minister appointed a wireless expert - Graham. Balsillie - to speed up the construction of the wireless stations. Melbourne Radio was the first station completed, opening on 8 February 1912.
A series of legal disputes between the Australasian Wireless Company, Telefunken and the Marconi Company led to the formation of Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd. (AWA Ltd) in 1913.
Meanwhile, the construction of coastal radio stations continued with 19 stations being erected between 1912 and 1914.
In 1912 the Australian Government passed the Navigation Act which made it compulsory for all ships in Australian waters carrying more than 50 passengers to have wireless apparatus.
The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 led to nations around the world adopting a uniform code of marine safety standards and procedures - the SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) Convention of 1914. Some years earlier, SOS had been adopted as the standard distress signal.
During World War 1, the Department of the Navy took control of the stations;
this responsibility reverted to the Postmaster General's Department in
1920.
Throughout this period, Ernest Fisk, managing director of AWA, had been
expanding the company's commercial ventures.
In 1918, he conducted successful trials from his home in Wahroonga, Sydney,
in which the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, sent a message direct
from London to Australia.
The British Post Office then proposed building a chain of stations at
regular intervals across the world, but the Australian Government strongly
objected, fearing that Australia would be left isolated at the end of
the chain.
In 1920, AWA submitted its own plan for a direct Australia-Britain wireless link; this proposal was accepted by the Australian Government in 1922.
The agreement gave AWA exclusive rights to build and operate any stations necessary to establish direct wireless contact between Australia and England. AWA also took control of the existing radio stations.
Combined wireless and radio telephone set of the 1920s
After
it took over the Coastal Radio Service (CRS), AWA embarked on a program
of modernisation and split the Coastal Radio Service into two administrative
arms: The Coastal Radio Service, comprising the stations of mainland Australia,
Thursday Island, and Port Moresby and its outstations in Papua; and the
Island Radio Service, made up of the New Guinea stations and several remote
island stations around Australia's shores.
In England, Marconi was experimenting with shortwave technology; the first
shortwave message was received in Australia on 6 March 1924.
In 1925, AWA introduced a radio telephone service for ships at sea, but
the main form of communication still remained wireless telegraphy. On
8 April 1927, the
Australia-Britain beam wireless service opened, and AWA established a
new receiving station at La Perouse.
Most stations in the CRS were equipped with shortwave radio in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A direct service was opened between Fiji and Sydney Radio in 1928 and Sydney Radio became the radio hub of the Pacific.
By the mid-1930s several coastal radio stations were used as control centres for aeradio services.
The CRS played an important role in Australia's defence during World War II; its stations participated in the vital Coast Watching Scheme and provided links between naval ships and the Royal Australian Navy communication stations.
After the war ended, the CRS was purchased from AWA by the Australian Government, who administered the service until OTC took operational control on 1 February 1947.
