Radioinfo received a suggestion that we should set up a virtual birthday card for the CBAA and community radio in Australia, who are celebrating their 50th anniversary. What a great idea!

So many of us started in community radio and many have stayed or returned. You can share your stories, photos, memories and congratulations via the comments section on this article and Facebook, or an email to [email protected]. We’ll add them to this article.

From Wayne Clouten, Principal/Director of BPR, Broadcast Programming and Research:

My community radio interest started in the early 90’s, where I would peep through the curtains of the Casey Radio – 97.7FM studios at Fountain Gate Shopping centre to see what was happening. I found it fascinating.

I was too shy (perhaps too young at the time) to volunteer, so I started my own treehouse radio station with my neighbours. Fast forward to 2004, I had the confidence to approch SYN and JOY 94.9 about training courses, it was JOY who got back to me.

I worked at JOY for 11 years in production, sales and on-air. I’ve now been working in BD at Vision Australia Radio for 6 years. I feel truly blessed to have spent nearly 20 years employed and involved in community radio, a sector that is passionate about giving a voice to those who may not otherwise be heard, a platform for change, for inclusion and one which has always celebrated and promoted diversity, even before it was cool.

From Carole Miller OAM:

Happy birthday community radio!

I flew up to Darwin in October 1980 to build the top end’s first FM station, 8CAR FM. I invited the Chief Minister Paul Everingham and University Chancellor Nan Giese to open Top FM on June 5, 1981. Yes we had to change the name and persuaded the Tribunal that TOP FM was preferable, and that it stood for Tertiary Oriented Programming, no of course it had nothing to do with the Top End.

People to thank for that epic adventure were the ‘boys’ under Jim Finch, working at what was then called Telecom, managed by Keith Page. They put up our massive aerial at what became Charles Darwin University; Des Decean for flying up (the cheapest way on the milk run) just after an operation to help with our transmitter, studio, etc. Gary Gibson our first tech, Peter Turnbull who let us use his theatre for our first studios; Pat Harding, Dave Christiansen, Mike Friganiotis and a lot of great volunteers.

I flew back to save it from the well-meaning in 1990, helped set up the territory network (Top FM, Gove FM, Katherine FM, Jabiru, Adelaide River and 8CCC Tennant Creek and Alice) and established and ran 8TAB racing radio to help pay for it all, as Mr Radio, John Laws, did every morning on Top FM. Even got elected to the CBAA Board.

Flew up to celebrate its 40th birthday back in 2021, which reminded me how much I love Darwin, so here I am back here again, for ever. Thank you Territorians for such a great way to spend one of my four decades in wonderful radio. 

Jen Seyderhelm, writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.

I called up North FM in Hornsby NSW which had its studios in a house across from the RSL when I was 19 or 20. I was doing an Arts degree that really wasn’t my calling when I rang, and was told I could come down, help out, be paired with a mentor and at some point, perhaps, get on air myself. My mentor was a young man called Paul Murray who couldn’t have been more supportive and was clearly headed for bigger things. I did get a breakfast show, and another where I would play three hours of music with a set theme, like a flower in the title or a colour.

Two decades later I moved back to Sydney and got a part time job working for the Macquarie Radio Network. I looked up North FM, as I had coincidentally ended up living back in the same suburb I’d grown up in, to find it had moved and been renamed Triple H. Again I was warmly welcomed and did a similar themed music show on a Sunday morning. My children were young and those hours in that studio were amongst my happiest each week. Time for me, doing what I loved most, trivia and music on the radio.

Later I would create countdowns like the Greatest No 1 Hits of all Time for Highland FM in Bowral, recorded the annual Christmas radio play with Tempo Theatre at 1RPH and became the inaugural director of ArtSound FM in the ACT. My Perform Australia students used the latter studios with me earlier this year to record radio plays, audio books and podcasts. I owe a debt of gratitude for the joy community radio has and continues to give me.

Jen Seyderhelm in a fire truck at Fire Aid for Highland FM in Bowral in January 2020

Share your stories, photos, memories and congratulations via the comments section on this article and Facebook, or an email to [email protected].