Almanac Radio: Believe it or not – Only in Canberra

April 21, 2026 by georgesmith Leave a Comment

Only in Canberra

In 1986 or thereabouts there were very few radio stations in Canberra, five on the AM band – two Meldrumesque top 40 stations 2CA and 2CC, two ABC stations 2CY and 2CN and the amazing community radio station 2XX, based on the University, which provided alternative music such as punk rock and reggae and lots and lots of feminism. On the new-fangled FM band there was only one station, ABC FM, dedicated to classical music.

Now in 1953 Josef Stalin offered a gift to the people of Warsaw in Poland. I will give you a monumental Palace of Culture. No thanks, said the Poles, we want a peace park or a reconstructed old town. Nevertheless, a wedding cake skyscraper was constructed in Warsaw similar to the ones in Moscow, to the lasting chagrin of the locals. At least a lot of Polish people were paid for its construction.

We had our own Palace of Culture in the Canberra district called the Queanbeyan Leagues Club, the biggest pokie palace in the area. The leagues club had more members than the entire population of Queanbeyan as it was situated just across the border in NSW where pokies were legal, a Moama of the north. This place was instrumental in turning rugby league from a niche sport based in Queanbeyan and Goulburn to a ratings juggernaut called the Canberra Raiders. More on this later.

Now Canberra certainly wasn’t Stalinist Russia, but it was the sort of place where if you wanted high schools, they gave you primary schools, if you wanted primary schools they gave you baby health centres, if you needed parking, they gave you parking cops, thanks John Haslem. In 1975 when a youth drop-in centre with coffee shop and much needed activities was proposed for Civic and was properly funded, a different community group hijacked the money and turned it into a youth refuge.

There were many and varied sporting organisations in Canberra, including the Australian Institute of Sport, the four football codes including the amazing Canberra Arrows soccer team, and the Canberra Cannons basketball team. There were tennis clubs, cricket clubs, golf clubs, swimming clubs you name it. Yes, Canberra was a very sporty city.

Now what happened was the powers that be in Canberra announced that two FM radio licences were available to community groups. These were prized in a community where choices in radio were limited, unlike Sydney where radio stations were many and varied. The folkies, the alternative types, the crafties and the lefties all vied for this golden opportunity.

In a very Canberra result the panel awarded the first licence to the Classical Music Society, in spite of the fact there was already a radio station, ABC FM, devoted entirely to classical music. The second licence was where it got a bit murky.

At the Australian National University there lurked the Sports Association, skilled over millennium with getting monies out of the Bolshies at the Students’ Association to fund their pet sporty projects. I can’t complain, I got a course of cheapo horse-riding lessons in upper Gungahlin from them. The Sports thought that an FM radio station would be ideal to broadcast their favourite sports to a large audience, and in doing so get more funding for their passions. They put in a submission for a Sporting Station, with a promise to play a range of popular music during down time. Somehow, even though they were deemed the weakest submission they got the second licence.

Now they had the prized radio licence, how were they going to pay for it? They could have gone cap in hand to Queanbeyan Leagues or the Viking Tavern for some coin in return for promoting the Canberra Raiders, but Mephistopheles was lurking around the corner.

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Remember Lyle Lanley the con man from the Simpsons, well, the TAB was looking for a new home to broadcast racing. They would pay for the station in return for broadcasting the races. No problem said the Sports, we can present our programs, broadcast the footy, and play our funky music when the races aren’t on. Only trouble was, as anyone who has listened to 2KY will tell you, there is always a race somewhere. At night, when the horsies were in bed there were harness racing and the greyhounds, there were race meets in rural South Australia being broadcast, they brought in Sunday racing from somewhere. Then in the morning you have dividend review. In the years I listened on and off to Canberra sports radio I heard not one note of music.

So, what if you wanted to hear some music? Good luck listening to the two top 40 stations – Billy, Elton, lots of commercials, repeat. Good luck listening to 2XX because the foreign language programs were on from 7pm to 10pm every weekday. And of course, 2CN (ABC) had wall to wall parliament in those days.

We tend to take radio for granted these days. There are plenty of community radio stations on the FM band in both Sydney and Canberra and radio’s importance has diminished with the internet and YouTube. But 40 years ago, who got what really mattered. The story of the two radio licences awarded without due diligence is a sad story of the sheer impotence of the local residents. The hijacking of a community radio station by gambling interests is most relevant today, with grave concerns about the number of gambling ads. Maybe the Devil rides horseback, or maybe he looks like this:

I don’t know what happened to Canberra Sports Radio and I don’t really care. I left Canberra after this, the big monuments to the Liberal Party, like New Parliament House, were finished, all the tradies moved on and everything got back to normal. If anyone knows more about this story or how the city changed over time, I would love to hear about it.