Australia's radio services history started in the early 1900's, prompted by several important events: the discovery and commercialisation of wireless telegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi in 1896, the advent of the First World War and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
My personal involvement started in 1982, when I became one of the last people on earth to be trained as a telegraphist by the Australian Overseas Telecommunications Commission (AOTC). I watched over the next couple of decades as the industry moved its emphasis from morse code's 15 words a minute to satellite technologies, capable of transferring many gigabytes of information per second. On January 31st 1999, the last Morse transmission from an Australian coast station was broadcast at 2359UTC, bringing to an end a significant chapter of Australia's telecommunicatons history.
Early in my career I was presented with a small booklet on the history of wireless telegraphy in Australia produced by the OTC. The original has since been lost, but not before I copied most of its contents into HTML (most, but not all - I'm afraid some island coast radio stations have been omitted). Since producing this booklet the OTC was merged with Australia's local telecommunications monopoly (then known as Telecom), and the satellite division subsequently carved off to form a partnership with Dutch teleco KPN. I'm guessing that the copyright for the original is a moot point, so it's with some pride that I present it here now. I hope it gives you some small enjoyment and a little taste of how life must have been 'way back then' for a few odd characters (oh, nearly a whole generation ago).
