Queenscliff is located
on the Bellarine Peninsula in southern Victoria, drectly opposite to the island
of Tasmania across Bass Strait. The area
was originally inhabited by Aborigines belonging to the
Wauthorong Tribe. The first European settler was an escaped
English convict named
William Buckley who lived in a cave with the local Aborigines between the years
1803 and 1835.
Under
the European migrants during the early colonial era, Queenscliff became a fishing village, though soon
afterwards it emerged as an important cargo port, servicing steamships trading
in Port Philip Bay and the city of Melbourne.
These days though, Queenscliff is simply a small seaside town of about
1500 residents with a commercial centre of historic shop fronts and buildings
on Hesse Street. They also sport a
tourist attraction made up of ten miles of restored railway track with a
collection of heritage railway carriages from around Australia.
Interestingly,
Queenscliff has featured in not one, but two, very early wireless experiments
way back more than 100 years ago. This
small seaside town was the location for a very early experimental wireless
station that gave a message of welcome to a visiting royal family aboard a Royal
Navy vessel, and it was the location for the first wireless communication
between the Australian mainland and islandic Tasmania.
In
April 1901, Mr. Henry Walter Jenvey, Chief Electrical Engineer with the PMG
Department in the newly confederated state of Victoria, conducted a series of
test transmissions between two suburban locations in the city of
Melbourne. Mr. Jenvey designed and
constructed his own wireless equipment for transmission and reception, and these
units were installed at Red Bluff St. Kilda and Point Cook, a distance of 20
miles across the waters of Port Phillip Bay.
According to newspaper reports in Australia and New Zealand at the time,
these preliminary wireless transmission tests were successful.
Comes the next month, (May 1901) and Jenvey
set up his wireless equipment near the Black Lighthouse at Queenscliff on the
western side of the entrance to Port
Phillip Bay. There was no wind to fly a
kite, so initially, the antenna wire was attached to a balloon. However that was not successful either, so
the antenna wire was then attached to a nearby flagpole.
Thus
it was that communication was made in Morse Code with the two royal escort
ships, HMS St. George and HMS Juno, on Sunday May 5, 1901. Jenvey sent a message of welcome to the
incoming visitors from His Excellency John
Adrian Louis Hope, the newly appointed Governor-General of Australia.
This
message of greeting was sent in Morse Code to the wireless operators on board
the two escort vessels, St. George and Juno some 17 miles distant. According to newspaper reports at the time,
this message was then telegraphed by semaphore flags to the royal family aboard
the Royal Yacht HMS Ophir. As the Duke
and Duchess of York, the royal couple visited Australia to participate in
ceremonies to honor the federation of the separated colonies into the
Commonwealth of Australia. Nine years
later, this royal couple became King George 5 and Queen Mary, at the death of
the previous king, Edward 7.
The
second occasion when Queenscliff participated in a historic wireless event took
place five years later. On that second
occasion, the Marconi Company in England sent its personnel to establish two
wireless stations, one at the now historic Queenscliff and the other at East
Devonport in northern Tasmania. The PMG
Dept issued a special license for these two temporary demonstration
stations.
The
twin temporary stations were constructed at a cost of £5,000 each, and each had three small
buildings. There was a small one roomed corrugated iron cabin at
each location, within which the Marconi wireless equipment was installed. Another smaller building housed a 2 kW power
generator, and a third contained ancilliary equipment. The antenna was strung between two masts 162
feet high and 210 feet apart.
A
special train carried many government officials from Melbourne to Queenscliff
for this grand occasion, including the current Governor-General, the Right Honorable
Henry Stafford Northcote. In addition,
other local and national dignitaries came in by boat and ferry.
Among
the many participants in the official programming at Queenscliff were 200
school children who served as a mass choir; and some 300 official guests were
provided with a special luncheon. Over
the other side of Bass Strait at East Devonport, 2,000 people witnessed this
historic wireless event, and they participated in the official ceremonies of
the day with as much gusto as was demonstrated at Queenscliff in Victoria.
Several
official messages were transmitted in Morse Code from the Queenscliff station
to the Devonport station and these were written down and then conveyed by
bicycle and ferry to the local post office for landline transmission to the
state capital Hobart. The Tasmanian
governor, Sir Gerald Strickland responded with felicitous greetings to the
large and dignified group gathered at Queenscliff.
At
the end of the grandeur and fanfare of the day, the crowds disappeared and
returned to their homes, satisfied with the important historicity of this major
wireless event, the first
long distance wireless message across water in the Southern
Hemisphere. However, the two new
wireless stations remaijned in service, carrying government and commercial
communications between the island state of Tasmania and the Australian continental
mainland.
The
Marconi company endeavored to sell the two stations to the Commonwealth
government, but without success. This
reluctance on the part of the federal government was due mainly to fears about
the growing worldwide monopoly that the Marconi company was demonstrating. However, after three months of continued
service, the two stations were closed and the equipment was removed.
The
temporary wireless station at Queenscliff in Victoria was located on the
Cricket Ground between Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale, and today there is a
stone cairn, a monument, honoring this historic wireless station. The monument is located on the inland edge of
the Cricket Ground.
The
Tasmanian counterpart in honoring the Marconi station at East Devonport is not
a stone monument installed at the actual site on the northeastern side of the
Mersey River Estuary at Bass Strait.
Instead, commemorative radio events have been staged at the Devonport
Maritime Museum, which is located across the river, on the northwestern side of
the Mersey Estuary at Bass Strait.