The Case of the Missing Masts Traditional Cache
Team Ladava: Well, it's time to say goodbye to this one as it has been destroyed, I suspect by someone jumping on it. Thankfully with the heads-up by WambatWarriors3 we were able to quickly check it and were thrilled to find the two TBs amongst the litter.
In the two and a half years of it's existence the passing traffic has grown enormously so it is time to go.
Our thanks to all Teams for their favourable comments on the significant history marked by the cache.
Cheers
Ian & Sandra
Team Ladava
The Case of the Missing Masts
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(regular)
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Welcome to the 21st. cache by Team Ladava continuing our historical tour of the Sunbury area.
The fields adjacent to GZ were, for many years, a forest of radio masts and ariels, mostly Rhombic on 100 ft. towers. There were a few dipoles for short haul work. A HF transmitter station needs to be remote from electrical and radio interference from urban areas. Diggers Rest was chosen as fitting this criteria. Its ‘sister’ receiver station was located at Rockbank for the same reason.
The initial HF transmitter facility was built by the American Military during WW2 and housed in the ‘iron’ building clearly visible from GZ at the time of publishing this cache,. In the 1970’s it served as a meeting hall and netball court for the local community.
(Reference the annotated Google Earth image attached in the gallery)
At some point during the war the Australian Army took over the facility and developed it as the major transmitter for their operations within Australia and Overseas. At that time the Australian Military Headquarters was situated in Melbourne before relocating to Canberra. The station was manned by either the 137 or 138 Sig. Sqn, 6 Signal Regiment with approximately 25 technicians and support staff on site maintaining the equipment. The signals transmitted by this station were relayed from the military operations centre in Albert Park.
A search of the net also reveals a story (unconfirmed by my human sources) that, shortly after the war, while establishing regular and scheduled international airline services, the Department of Civil Aviation co-opted the Army to provide a Marconi 3.5KW SWB-8 Transmitter at their Diggers Rest Transmitter Station to control the Honolulu circuit. Similarly, the Army provided a receiver at their Rockbank Receiver Station. Meanwhile, DCA technicians provided a small table in the Essendon Aeradio building, and installed a microphone, Morse key, speaker, headphones and press-to-talk key. There was no remote control for the receiver, and DCA had to ring the Army technicians to make any necessary adjustments. The circuit remained until 1946 and was the only overseas link for a time for the airlines.
Apparently, there was a certain romance about the HF era. Rows of large transmitters with brightly-glowing valves, paddocks of aerials and feeder cables and large (ex submarine) auxiliary diesel engines and generators to run the equipment in the event of a power failure.
The facility was decommissioned in the 1980s when the military progressed to satellite and other forms of communication
A further search of the net reveals that the current location of the masts and ariels is Kununurra in Western Australia where they are used by a religious organization to broadcast Christian and other programs in to the South Pacific and South East Asia. The engineering design brief called for the erection of 31 tall masts, in a circular configuration pattern, allowing for 30 directional/ slewable curtain antenna arrays
Acknowledgements.
Our special thanks to riblit (who was stationed here in the 1970s, and lived in the married quarters inside the gates) for the annotated Google Earth image attached in the gallery and some of the information above. Thanks John.
We are also in debt to a gentleman named Reg (a former C.O. of the facility) who I spoke to at the Royal Australian Corps of Signals Museum, for some other information contained in these notes.
If any other teams can add more information we will be happy to include it in the cache notes.
Enjoy
An additional note from the log by ian-and-penny -
'I remember a time where all three paddocks had antennas & masts of different sorts. Rhombics, Log Periodics, Curtain Arrays. . . The HF power radiated from here sent signals all around the world.
The station ran 24/7& I spent quite some time doing shift work in "the shack"
I remember a time when there was an electrician working in the roof - he needed a light so he was handed a lit fluoro tube, without any electrical connections!! The look on his face was priceless!'
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)