THE HISTORY OF SHORTWAVE RADIO IN AUSTRALIA

1942 - Dutch Stations in Australia

Home
Project Overview
1800s - Land Telegraphy
1874 - Guglielmo Marconi - a Tribute
1895 - Wireless Telegraphy
1901 - Wireless Telegraphy
1902 - Wireless Telegraphy in Australia
1904 - Australian Coastal Radio
1906 - Wireless Telephony
1912 - Melbourne Radio - VIM
1914 - Shortwave Wireless Telephony
1920s - Commercial Shortwave Telephony Development
1920s - Receivers
1920 - The huge RCA Longwave Station in New York
1920 - Wireless broadcasting in Australia
1920s - First shortwave stations in Victoria
1921 - Discovery of Shortwave Propagation
1921 - Koo Wee Rup (Victoria) Experimental Wireless Receiving Station
1923- Longwave Broadcasting in Australia
1923 - Evolution of Australian Domestic Radio
1924 - 3LO - Melbourne's Second Broadcaster
1924 - 3AR - Melbourne's first broadcaster
1924 - The Braybrook (Melbourne) Transmitting Site
1925 - First Shortwave Stations in Western Australia
1926 - First Shortwave Stations in New South Wales
1926 - RAAF Communications - Laverton (Vic)
1927 - Beam Wireless Worldwide
1927 - Beam Wireless from Australia
1928 - ABC Lyndhurst (Victoria)
1930 - AWA Receiving Station at La Perouse (Sydney)
1930 - AWA Radio Centre at Pennant Hills
1933 (to 1969) - Shortwave Radio Clubs in Australia
1936 - Ship Broadcaster - the MS Kanimbla
1939 - Belconnen Communications Station (Canberra)
1940 - RAAF Receiving Station at Werribee (Victoria)
1941 - RAAF Frognall (Melbourne)
1941 - ABC Brisbane
1942 - Army Wireless Chain - west of Melbourne
1942 - Dutch Stations in Australia
1943 - ABC Radio Australia - Shepparton (Victoria)
1943 - Army Shortwave HF Stations in Melbourne
1944 - ABC - Radio Australia - Looking Back
1945 - PMG Receiving Station - Highpark (Victoria)
1945 - Radio Australia - DXers Calling
1946 - Radio Australia - Communications Programs
1946 - VNG Time Signal Station
1948 - Radio Australia QSL Cards
1948 - ABC Sydney
1966 - ABC Cox Peninsula (Darwin)
1970 (to 2012) - Shortwave Radio Clubs in Australia
1975 - ABC Gnangara (Western Australia)
1975 - ABC Carnarvon (Western Australia)
1978 - Omega Navigation Station - Woodside (Victoria)
1985 - ABC Northern Territory
1989 - ABC Brandon (Queensland)
2003 - Private Shortwave Broadcasters
Timeline - Part One - 1839 to 1927
Timeline - Part Two - 1928 to 2012
SPECIAL - Licencing of Shortwave Broadcasters
SPECIAL - Radio Receivers for Shortwave
SPECIAL - Radio Monitoring as a Hobby
Epilogue
Bibliography, References and Resources
Links to the author's personal websites

dutchstation.jpg
2012 - remains of the Craigieburn facility

Background
In the mid 1900s, the Dutch government operated two radio stations in Australia.

Back in the year 1932, the Dutch authorities in what is now Indonesia set up a monitoring station in their embassy in Batavia (now Jakarta). This station was established by the Royal Netherlands Navy and its main purpose was to monitor various Japanese radio transmissions.

In March 1942, when Japanese forces extended their empire into Indonesia, the Dutch navy transferred their headquarters to the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and the radio monitoring facilities were transferred to Australia. The monitoring station, together with at least one transmitter, was established in very temporary accommodations at Batchelor in the Northern Territory, some 100 km south of Darwin. This radio station, hurriedly installed in tents and huts, communicated with the Dutch navy headquarters in Ceylon, with small behind-the-lines parties in Indonesia, and later with their main radio station 3000 km further south in Victoria.

Some four months after the Batchelor station was established, a radio transmitter station was built for the Dutch authorities by the PMG Department in Australia at an isolated country location out from Melbourne in Victoria. The actual location of this station was at 420 Craigieburn Road, Craigieburn, near Yuroke, an outer suburb on the northern edge of Melbourne.

The radio station consisted of a large open asbestos-concrete and masonite shed with a concrete floor, with a separate shed for sleeping quarters at one end. Over recent decades this was converted to the present house on the property. The present (2012) owners have lived in the house since the 1960s.

 A local resident whose farm house was quite close, and had a good view of the emplacement and remembers Dutch Indonesian men, mostly in a foreign uniform, manning the installation. He thought that the intelligence headquarters for the operation was in St Kilda, whence the men were driven out to work their shifts.

The station was manned day and night. Although a Sergeant sometimes came to buy eggs from his family's farm, they did not get to know the men well. In addition to the Dutch there were also two men with very little English, probably Malay Indonesians, who also purchased eggs from his family.

These men were engaged in manual outdoor tasks, such as breaking the stones to lay the driveway (probably the present one) and thinks that the State Electricity Commission built the electricity substation.

The concrete block walls of the substation were there during the war, as he remembers the two workers using the wall to shelter from the wind.

This station was remotely operated by teleprinter from Dutch offices at South Yarra in suburban Melbourne.

The purpose for this Dutch operated radio station in Australia was to provide communication with their naval headquarters in Ceylon and with the small temporary station at Batchelor. The station was staffed by Dutch and Indonesian personnel who had been evacuated from Indonesia.

The two Dutch radio stations in Australia, near Darwin and near Melbourne, were established for wartime telegraphy communications. They were never in use for program broadcasting, though the evidence would suggest that at times they carried teleprinter news information for publication in newspapers and for inclusion in radio news bulletins.

Closure
After WW2, i
t was then taken over by the Department of Civil Aviation, and since about the late 1960s it has been used for residential purposes ever since. On the land were three or four sets of radio aerials, each a diamond pattern of very high timber poles, about 25 metres tall, situated on the back paddocks, and connected by shorter poles to a radio station. Later a huge 30 metre steel radio mast was erected on the property, closer to the building.

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