Hooold...
Dusting off the needle…
Hooold...
Dusting off the needle…
Punk, post-punk and anarchy on the Brisbane dial.
Student activists on the University of Queensland union's media committee spotted an opening in the Whitlam government's plan to expand radio, and got an FM licence out of it weeks before Whitlam was dismissed. 4ZZ-FM went to air on 8 December 1975 — Brisbane's first FM station and Australia's first community one — into a state run by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, which gave it something to push against from day one. The brief was a radical alternative to the mainstream, and backing Australian music.
In December 1988 a Young Nationals-led student union raided the station before dawn, cut its funding and threw it off campus; volunteers reconnected the transmitter and kept it on air. Fifty years on it broadcasts from Barry Parade in Fortitude Valley, still mostly punk, post-punk and shoegaze, with Workers Power, Eco Radio, Tranzmission and Megaherzzz all holding weekly slots.
Still annoying the government.
