Australian Radio Pioneer (Northside Radio, Sydney)

By Jane Arakawa

Listen to 'Australian Radio Pioneer Wound Up the Cat and Put the
Clock Out'

How and where you access your favourite radio programs is changing
so rapidly that it can be challenging to keep up. It may be
reassuring to hear that it was only about 100 years ago that radio
was the new emerging technology, and an experimenter named Charles
Maclurcan spent much of his time educating the general public on
how to hear a radio broadcast signal.

My passion for radio and the immediate, intimate connection it
creates between us, lead me to discover more about this dedicated
Australian radio pioneer and how he faced his technical hurdles and
engaged his audience over various media.

I learnt that Charles Maclurcan erected aerial masts on top of the
first Wentworth Hotel located on Church Hill, Lang Street Sydney in
1911 and was communicating with incoming and outgoing ships. By
early 1922 he was broadcasting an entertaining and engaging radio
program each week with a program guide published in the weekly
newspapers of the time. He was issued Licence No.1 in December 1922
and continued his broadcasts and experiments until 1927 when he was
required to take over the management of the Wentworth Hotel until
its sale in 1950.

I discovered that some of Charles Maclurcan’s equipment was held by
the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and also on display at the Radio
Museum at Kurrajong, NSW. It was at Kurrajong that I first heard of
an ongoing discussion among radio historians regarding which
station can lay claim to holding Licence No 1 in Australia. Charles
Maclurcan returned to his love of radio in his retirement and his
passion and dedication resulted in the Australian Government
declaring upon his death in 1957 that his call sign 2CM was never
to be re-issued.

Feb 1923 Josie Melville at Strathfield copyright 1924 - Charles
Maclurcan talks to England copyright

You will hear how Charles Maclurcan engaged his listeners through
multi-media platforms of the time, why historians are debating who
holds Licence No.1, and how his grandsons have respectfully and
openly shared his story of radio with us.

I now consider Charles Maclurcan to be Australia’s first
multi-platform radio producer.

If you wish to discover more about Charles Dansie Maclurcan’s radio
programs, technical instructions, newspaper articles, long distance
records achieved and his place in Australia’s radio history, you
could start at the National Library of Australia (Trove), access
reference material at the NSW State Library and Powerhouse Museum,
read Ron Langhan’s book The First Twelve Months of Radio
Broadcasting in Australia 1923 -1924 or Australian Radio History
(5th Edition) compiled by Bruce Carty Phd and visit the Historical
Radio Society of Australia.

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