Charles Maclurcan, Australian radio pioneer
I don’t know if anyone really knows this, but the tower logo for FOTW Audio Productions is not the Eiffel Tower, as a few French friends have thought, but the radio tower on top of the AWA Building near Wynyard Station in Sydney (where I live). This tower was an instrumental part of the Amalgamated Wireless Australasia company, the tallest early building in Sydney; and in 1927, this emblematic tower was used by AWA to communicate with ships en route to Australia from the United Kingdom.
However, five years earlier, there was someone else who was broadcasting about half-a-kilometre away from the rooftop of the hotel that his parents owned — and he is considered to be one of the earliest pioneers of radio broadcasting in Australia, a country that was on the receiving end of Marconi test transmissions back in 1918.
But you won’t need me to tell you about him; there is already an evocative radio documentary that looks at the life and legacy of Charles Maclurcan that you can listen to through soundcloud, made by Northside radio producer Jane Arakawa for the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. Here is some extra background information to the documentary.