 |
| Maunganui (NZ Shipping) |
During World War 1, the Maunganui
served as a troop ship; and during World War 2, it served as a hospital
ship. This veritable liner was sold to
Greece in 1948, and then just nine years later, it was broken up for scrap in
Savonna, Italy.
The callsign VLG was allotted to the
Maunganui around the beginning of the First World War, and it was still in use
thereon into the early 1920s. However in
1924, this same callsign was then applied to a new wireless station that was
installed onto the small island of Mangaia in the Cook Islands.
The island called Mangaia, the most
southerly in the Cook Island archipelago in the South Pacific, was discovered
by the English Captain James Cook in 1777.
It is an almost circular island with a total area of around 20 square
miles. This island, with its central
volcanic plateau, is ringed with a 200 ft high circle of fossilized coral and
there is also a fresh water lake towards the south of the island.
The total population these days is
shown as less than 700; and their Polynesian language is very similar to the
Maori of New Zealand.
Quite near to the island of Mangaia
was another island known as Tuanaki.
Back in the early 1840s, this mystery island was shown on some maps of
the South Pacific, and it was located about one day of sailing, south from
Mangaia.
It is reported that an English
sailor visited Mangaia in 1842, and that he stayed on the island for almost a
week. The island was known and reported
by European administrators who were serving on other Pacific islands. Whalers
during that period also reported their visits to the island.
It was also reported historically
that there was occasional trade between the two islands, Mangaia and Tuanaki,
and that the languages of the two islands were almost identical. However, Christian missionaries who made
subsequent visits to the area were never able to relocate this mystery
island. There are some people living on
Mangaia, and on other islands in the Cook archipelago also, who claim ancestry
to Tuanaki, that at least one of their ancestors migrated from Tuanaki in
earlier years.
So what happened to the mystery
island known as Tuanaki? Did it really
exist, or was it simply a matter of mis-identification of Mangaia itself, or of
another island out there somewhere?
Geologists and historians consider that if the island did indeed exist a
couple of hundred years ago, then it simply disappeared beneath the waters of
the ocean in some unidentified cataclysmic event, maybe a seismic collapse with
an underwater landslide.
Going back to Mangaia itself, we
find that the local wireless station installed in 1924, VLG, was operated for
just a few years by local personnel who had an aptitude for practical
workmanship.
The next known usage of the callsign
VLG was for a new 10 kW shortwave transmitter that was installed at the
regional shortwave station located near Lyndhurst in Victoria, Australia. At the time, the building in use at Lyndhurst
was the second structure, dating from 1935.
The new transmitter at Lyndhurst was
originally intended for use as a replacement for the quite old and low powered
VLR, with just 2 kW at the time.
However, because of wartime exigencies, the new unit was taken into
service as an additional shortwave transmitter for both the ABC and Radio
Australia.
The new VLG was inaugurated on June
21, 1941 under the callsign VLR.
However, because of confusion due to the fact that there were now two
transmitters on the air under the same callsign, often simultaneously but with
different programming, the new transmitter was allotted a new callsign,
VLG. Thus the new 10 kW VLR3 on 11880
kHz became VLG5, and the new VLR4 on 15230 kHz became VLG6; and the date for
this change in callsign was August 24, (1941).
On
June 1, 1951, the numeric designator, the suffix number, was changed to
identify the MHz band. Thus for example,
VLG2 on 9540 kHz was redesignated as VLG9.
Then ten years later again, Radio Australia discontinued the usage of
callsigns and the callsign VLG, or just G, became a line callsign for the
program feed from the studios in Melbourne to a transmitter at Lyndhurst.
In
the late 1950s, a new building was constructed over the old, and then the old
was removed. Three new transmitters were
installed, one for each of the ABC program services VLR, VLG & VLH. These three transmitters, manufactured by RCA
in the United States, were originally intended for installation in battleships,
but after the end of the war, they were declared surplus.
In
1966, eight new transmitters at 10 kW each were installed progressively at
Lyndhurst, and any transmitter could be be activated for any of the broadcast
services. In this way a rolling daily
schedule was maintained with usually six transmitters on the air at anyone
time, on behalf of the ABC Home Services, Radio Australia, and the chonohertz
VNG time signals.
In 1970, the ABC dropped the usage
of VLG as a shortwave program relay of their mediumwave programming, thus
leaving VLG, or G, for sole use by Radio Australia.
The Lyndhurst radio station was
closed on June 12, 1987, and three of the youngest transmitters were removed
and re-installed at the mediumwave transmitter site for 4QN at coastal Brandon
in Queensland. When the shortwave
transmitters at Brandon were taken into service two years later in 1989, the
VLG program feed from Melbourne was fed into one of the transmitters for
coverage of New Guinea and the Pacific.
Many are the varieties of QSLs that
shortwave listeners received from VLG, the ABC Home Service and the Radio
Australia Overseas Service at Lyndhurst, and also from VLG at Brandon.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 363 via Adrian Peterson)