At
the time, all 19 maritime wireless stations around continental Australia and on
neighboring islands had been completed and were on the air in Morse Code. All of these spark gap transmitters, with
callsigns in descending alphabetic order beginning with VIA and ending with
VIZ, were communicating with each other and with passing shipping on a regular
basis.
Less
than two weeks after the commencement of open hostilities on continental
Europe, the Australian government required that all experimental wireless
equipment had to be surrendered to the government authorities no later than
Thursday August 6 (1914). From that time
onwards, no unauthorized transmitting nor receiving of wireless signals was
permitted.
However,
there were a few licensed exceptions to this government mandate; and for
example, Charles Maclurcan in the Hotel Wentworth in Sydney was permitted to
continue his experimental transmissions with the use of his own equipment under
the callsign X2CM. He had been licensed
three years earlier with the experimental callsign XDM.
In
the same hotel location, Maclurcan had operated the temporary maritime
communication station AAA with the primitive studio equipment on the sixth
floor of the family hotel and the transmitter and two antenna masts on the
roof. The ultra-modern Hotel Wentworth
today, at the same location in Phillip Street, is in close walking distance to
the iconic Opera House and the equally famed Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Both
the army and the navy in Australia utilized wireless equipment for tactical and
training purposes during the war. For
example, the army operated two mobile transmitters at the Mitcham army
encampment in Adelaide South Australia under the consecutive callsigns WAA and
WAB.
The
island called Garden Island is located in Sydney Harbour just off the edge of
the shoreline quite close to the big Bridge and to the Opera House. In the days before European colonization,
Garden Island was part of the territory of the Aboriginal Eora tribe.
Ten
days after the arrival of the First Fleet from England in 1788, the island was
taken over for use as a kitchen garden to provide food for the new settlers,
hence the name. In fact, the oldest
graffiti in Australia may still be seen on Garden Island; ship steward
Frederick Meredith carved his initials in the soft sandstone, FM 1788.
Garden
Island is just a ¼ mile long and even less wide. In 1811 the ownership of the island was
transferred from the navy to the Governor’s Residence. However, no transfer papers were every
signed, and the navy reclaimed the island 55 years later. Historians tell us that the oldest lawn
tennis court in Australia was established on Garden Island in the year 1880,
and it is still in use to this day.
During
the early part of World War 2, a series of tunnels was dug into the island and
landfill was taken to join the island to the shoreline. Garden Island is no
longer an island, even though it still carries the name.
A
few days after the commencement of World War 1 in continental Europe on July
28, 1914, the well known Australian radio company AWA installed a wireless
station on the island as part of the navy base.
This station was installed in the record time of just 4 days, and it was
inaugurated for use with Morse Code transmissions under the callsign VKQ.
During
the Japanese attack on Sydney Harbour on the night of May 30, 1942, the midget
submarine M-24 fired a torpedo that struck the HMAS Kuttabul which exploded,
broke in two, and sank. The explosion
damaged the lighting system on Garden Island, and it also silenced the naval
radio station.
The
fate of the midget submarine M-24 was unknown for more than 60 years. However, it was relocated quite by chance in
November 2006 by a group of scuba divers some three miles off Bungan Head,
about 25 miles north of Sydney. The M-24
was sitting upright on the sea floor, 180 feet underwater, and it showed
several machine gun bullet holes; apparently slow flooding had brought this
vessel to a standstill.
The combined remains of two other
midget submarines, combined into one unit, are on display in the Heritage
Center Museum on Garden Island.
(AWR/wavescan/NWS 330)
