Soon, other stations were established in New Guinea at Aitape, Madang and Morobe on the north and eastern coasts of the mainland and at Manus, Kavieng, Kieta and Woodlark Islands. The operators and equipment were provided by AWA.
Another station was opened on King island in Bass Strait in 1916 to replace that operated by Australian radio pioneer, Father Shaw.
In 1922, when AWA took control of the Coastal Radio Service, 27 stations were operating. AWA then divided the coastal radio stations into two distinct groups, both being part of the overall radio service.
The first group included the stations of mainland Australia and those at Port Moresby and Samarai in Papua; the second group comprised the seven stations located in the Territory of New Guinea. This second group became known as the Island Radio Service, and staff worked under a separate agreement to those working in mainland stations.
The main function of the Island Radio Service was to communicate with shipping, but it also provided public telegram services between isolated communities in the Territory and acted as a communication link with Australia.
The station at Bita Paka co-ordinated the operations of outlying stations and was the main link to Australia - communicating directly to Cooktown and later Townsville. By 1928, Rabaul had direct links with Sydney and with the Gilbert and Ellis Islands, the Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz Islands. Port Moresby had a similar function in Papua.
The island Radio Service assisted local administrators of the Territories of Papua and New Guinea in the difficult task of controlling these remote and primitive regions.
Several new stations opened in New Guinea in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many due to the gold boom and the influx of oil explorers. The stations at Bulolo, Salamoa and Wau were established to service the goldfields at Edie Creek, and Marienburg station was built to service oil explorers on the Sepik River.
In 1939, the Royal Australian Navy assumed control of the coastal radio stations, including the 10 stations of the island Radio Service network. Aitape, Morobe and Marienburg stations had closed but others remained at Rabaul, Kavieng, Kieta, Manus, Wewak, Madang, Lac, Salamoa, Wau and Bulolo.
Although many of the regular services handled by the coastal radio stations ceased after the outbreak of World War II, the stations assumed military functions, including co-ordinating the Navy's Coast Watching Scheme for the region. Similar functions were also carried out by the stations in Papua.
In the latter part of 1940 and 1941, Australia began preparing for the possible outbreak of war in the Pacific. Troops were dispatched to Port Moresby in Papua and to Rabaul, but the native population and settlers, including the radio operators, could only be spared a minimal defence force.
On 9 December 1941, Australia declared war on Japan and, early in 1942, the first wave of Japanese attacks hit Papua and New Guinea. One by one the coastal radio stations went off the air; only Port Moresby operated for the duration of the war. Many radio operators worked until the very last minute, abandoning their radio sets when the enemy was literally on the doorstep.
Later, some operators recounted remarkable stories of daring and difficult escapes, many of which are included in Lawrence Durrant's book 'The Seawatcbers'.
Several stations were re-established after WWII. Some, notably Port Moresby and Rabaul, remained in their war-time locations for a number of years; as OTC embarked on its process of renewal and restoration, those stations that were re-opened were re-housed and re-equipped. The links below (and on the left) trace the history of the stations in the Island Radio Service until they were acquired by OTC in 1947. After OTC took control of the coastal stations, a distinction was no longer drawn between mainland stations and those in outlying regions.
