At noon on Monday, December 8, 1975, John Woods, a TV journalist from Adelaide fired from his Channel Nine job for taking part in a gay rights march, spoke into the microphone in the basement of the student union building at the University of Queensland.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are listening to 4ZZ-FM in Brisbane, bringing you stereo FM rock on a frequency of 105.7 megahertz,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n
\u201c4ZZ-FM is Brisbane\u2019s first new radio station in over 30 years, and first ever stereo FM station \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile some people may not enjoy some of the material we put to air we certainly don\u2019t deny them the right to switch us off. To attempt to impose limitations or restrictions on public broadcasting is to seriously threaten a fundamental liberty, that of free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then played a song intended as a statement: Won\u2019t Get Fooled Again by British mod rockers The Who.<\/p>\n
![\"Volunteers,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/610308be02b4e561fe7c060b53c339a1ef727259a44401887e96b01fc0aaef7c.jpeg\")
Volunteers, announcer Helen Hambling (second left) and station engineer Ross Dannecker (centre) getting ready for a 4ZZ-FM (4ZZZ) test broadcast, 1975.Greg Perry\/State Library of Queensland<\/p>\n
The birth of community radio in Queensland did not happen in a slow news week. That same day, journalist Roger East was murdered in Dili \u2013 East Timor having been invaded by Indonesia the day before. Australia was heading into a snap election one week later, following the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government in November.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the premature ousting of Labor was just one in a series of unfortunate events that almost stopped 4ZZZ in its tracks.<\/p>\n
Just prior to the government\u2019s sacking, the Labor minister Moss Cass had approved 12 licences for community radio stations, including one for a scrappy bunch of radicals, feminists and music fans in the University of Queensland\u2019s student union.<\/p>\n
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4ZZZ\u2019s future was thrown into jeopardy following the Whitlam Dismissal in 1975.Michael Howard<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen [Malcolm] Fraser was put in as the interim prime minister, there was no guarantee that those licences would ever get signed off on,\u201d says Heather Anderson, author of new book-length history of 4ZZZ, People Powered Radio.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the acting Postmaster-General in Fraser\u2019s caretaker government, Peter Nixon, reluctantly decided it was a fait accompli. \u201cThe ink was still wet on the licence when they went to air,\u201d Anderson says.<\/p>\n
Queensland\u2019s first community radio station began the way it would continue for the next 50 years: amid the fires of dissent and oppression.<\/p>\n
In July 1971, hundreds of peaceful protesters against the tour of the South African Springboks rugby team were attacked, pursued and beaten by about 500 police in Wickham Terrace, given carte blanche by premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The student union hosted a fiery public meeting the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were angry as all hell because of the bashings,\u201d recalls Jim Beatson.<\/p>\n
Beatson was studying for an honours degree in Australian history, on the history of communism in Queensland, and as a member of the Labor Party had been active in the Brisbane radical movement of the 1960s.<\/p>\n
Local media were indifferent to the bashings or had actively taken the side of the police. An alternative voice was desperately needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd John Stanwell out of the blue said: \u2018Why don\u2019t we set up draft resister radio?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Stanwell, a law student who would later spearhead the station\u2019s fundraising through \u2018Joint Effort\u2019 gigs, explains: \u201cIn Melbourne and Sydney at the university campuses, the Draft Resisters Union, which was the public face of the anti-conscription movement, ran a sort of protest pirate radio, and got huge media coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beatson, who had experience of pirate radio having spent two years in London, consulted an academic and learned that pirate broadcasts are easily triangulated and shut down. He realised the only way to go was to obtain a legal and permanent radio licence.<\/p>\n
The beauty of this approach was the fact radio licences came under federal jurisdiction \u2013 free from the hectoring of Joh\u2019s goons, unlike left-wing publishing ventures such as the newspaper Beatson worked on, The Brisbane Line, which lasted three issues in 1968.<\/p>\n
![\"Trish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/c1d6771e615b59abcf6c94e0e8ba62d59f78996d37b81a1e10de061f7a0a8c94.jpeg\")
Trish NiIvor and Jim Beatson reading for the 4ZZ-FM (4ZZZ) test broadcast at the 1975 University of Queensland Orientation Week.Greg Perry\/State Library of Queensland<\/p>\n
After Whitlam\u2019s election in 1972, Beatson, editor of the student union paper Semper Floreat, Alan Knight, and engineering student Ross Dannecker formed the University of Queensland Media Committee to lobby the federal government for an FM licence. Beatson made trips to Canberra and Sydney, attending a conference in 1974.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these Trotskyites from Sydney and Maoists from Melbourne were there, and they stood up and started talking about how minorities weren\u2019t having access to the media,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
Inspired by the UQ Media Committee\u2019s music expert, Stuart Matchett, Beatson stood up and told them: never mind minorities \u2013 majorities weren\u2019t being served by the current system. \u201cWe wanted FM radio because the biggest-selling music in Australia was LPs like Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, not [singles], which dominated commercial radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone said it was the speech of the day, and we went from being a collection of unknowns to being thought of as the smartest people campaigning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t just lobbying for Triple Z to get a licence,\u201d Anderson notes. \u201cThey were lobbying for the federal government to establish a community radio sector.\u201d (There are now around 450 community radio services across the country.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t just lobbying for Triple Zed to get a licence, they were lobbying to establish a community radio sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heather Anderson<\/p>\n
Following the conference Beatson met with Jane Blaxland at the government Media Department about their licence application.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she says, \u2018Jim, the problem for your group is nobody in Sydney or Melbourne\u2019s ever heard of you. You need people writing letters, like at least one a day,\u2019\u201d Beatson says.<\/p>\n
A team of seven volunteers was rallied \u2013 including Helen Hambling, who would become one of the station\u2019s first full-time announcers, and future Four Corners producer Marian Wilkinson \u2013 to contact community organisations to write letters of support to the PMG and to Whitlam\u2019s Minister for the Media, Moss Cass.<\/p>\n
In Anderson\u2019s book, Wilkinson recalls \u201cspending hours and hours and hours and hours on Triple Z work to get the station started … It was full on. It consumed our lives\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the unsung heroes,\u201d Beatson says, \u201cthis group of feminists that literally rang every church, every sports group, saying \u2018if we get a licence, you\u2019ll get a spot on the station.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cJane Blaxland rang me up and said, \u2018Jim, your campaign\u2019s been unbelievably successful, we are getting at least six letters a day coming in.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6307a8f4842b8f5c649af1de21e3e49a60cc7283736a3ebe2d6196224efce900.jpeg\")
John Stanwell at 4ZZZ in 1975. Stanwell was the first Finance and Promotions Coordinator at the station.Daryl Jones\/Radical Times Archive<\/p>\n
If they needed further encouragement, Beatson was invited to join the Media Department\u2019s Working Party on Public Broadcasting and flown to Sydney to work on policy for two months. The white, chauffeur-driven government Mercedes-Benz that picked him up from his parents\u2019 house in Pinjarra Hills much amused his mother.<\/p>\n
Aware that a crisis was looming for Whitlam, Cass fast-tracked cabinet approval for 12 experimental FM licences, one of them for 4ZZ through the University of Queensland Student Union. Beatson, always ahead of the game, had already ordered the transmitter.<\/p>\n
The station was due to begin broadcasting on December 1, 1975. Organisers from the Workers Industrial Union instructed volunteers on how to lay bricks, and the studio was built entirely by volunteers, led by architecture student Kevin Hayes.<\/p>\n
But after the dismissal, things got hairy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI rang up the agent in Sydney and said, \u2018Where\u2019s our transmitter and antenna? We need it ASAP.\u2019 And he said, \u2018I\u2019ll get back to you.\u2019 And two days later he rang back and said, \u2018It\u2019s been lost on the wharf in New York. They\u2019re searching for it now.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018[The transmitter\u2019s] been lost on the wharf in New York. They\u2019re searching for it now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Beatson<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon what happened was \u2013 and I\u2019ve got no proof of this \u2013 Malcolm Fraser rang ASIO, ASIO rang the CIA, and organised for the transmitter and the antenna to get lost. Because it didn\u2019t arrive for another six months.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s an unreasonable theory,\u201d says Anderson, with a laugh. \u201cThere were definite connections with the CIA and what was happening in Australia… It probably didn\u2019t matter, because ultimately, Triple Z only ended up with a low-power licence to begin with, so they wouldn\u2019t have been able to use that transmitter [at first]. But it did cause major concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then a new problem loomed. Beatson received a call from one of his friends from the working party, advising that Special Branch files on 4ZZ\u2019s leading figures were currently sitting on the new minister\u2019s desk. Because protesting was effectively illegal in Queensland, anyone arrested at a protest had a record. Beatson himself estimated he had been arrested 16 times over his opposition to the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
Related Article \u201cAnd then we were told that Fred Green, the head of the PMG\u2019s department, was flying up to see whether we were suitable people to hold a licence.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so I said, \u2018we need a cleanskin.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The only member of their inner circle who had never been arrested was the engineer, Ross Dannecker. Beatson and Stanwell were hastily sacked by the student union and Dannecker appointed station co-ordinator. When Green arrived he met with Dannecker and some female volunteers, conservatively dressed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t entirely sure that it would work, but we knew the formal titles were pretty well irrelevant to the huge team we created,\u201d Stanwell says.<\/p>\n The ruse did work. \u201cHe went back to Melbourne and said to the minister, \u2018they got rid of all the radicals. The station coordinator, he\u2019s apolitical,\u2019\u201d Beatson says.<\/p>\n The station went to air on December 8 on a home-made low-power transmitter. The next year, all radio call signs were required to have three letters, and the station officially became 4ZZZ.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible achievement that they were even able to start, to secure the licence,\u201d says the subscriber-funded station\u2019s outgoing manager, Jack McDonnell, who volunteered with 4ZZZ for seven years before taking the reins two years ago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been McDonnell\u2019s task to organise the 50th anniversary celebrations, which he regards \u201ca massive honour\u201d. A special all-day broadcast will take place on December 8.<\/p>\n The station\u2019s annual Hot 100 countdown \u2013 a tradition older than Triple J\u2019s by 13 years \u2013 will take place on December 7 instead of January 1 to mark the anniversary.<\/p>\n With more than 3500 current subscribers, Triple Z\u2019s future looks bright, McDonnell says, despite the \u201calgorithm-based music environment\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the station will continue to grow over the next 50 years, connecting and broadcasting the voices of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Anderson says that the story of 4ZZZ is one of resilience. \u201cWhenever there\u2019s been times of crisis, that\u2019s when the broader community has stepped up. There was never an option that Triple Z was going to cease to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Beatson would leave the station shortly after it started, returning briefly in 1980 and again in 1993, when he negotiated with the former Communist Party of Australia to purchase the Barry Parade Building that is the station\u2019s permanent home.<\/p>\n Related Article Now 80 and retired to the Gympie region, he believes the glory days of Triple Z were the early 1980s under Andy Nehl, now the Head of Griffith Journalism School, when it broke stories such as the Boggo Road Gaol Riots.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Triple Z project was led by people with big ambitions, with a professional outlook on how things worked in the grown-up world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Marian Wilkinson would become deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, executive producer of Four Corners and one of Australia\u2019s most distinguished journalists. John Woods, the station\u2019s first voice, worked extensively in radio, opened a restaurant in Ballina, and died in 2001.<\/p>\n John Stanwell, who now lives in Melbourne, would go on to be a rock promoter, to work at La Boite theatre, and at the Australia Council.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was the individual that said at a meeting, \u2018we should start a radio station\u2019, it was not very thought through,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, the actual idea, it turned out, had legs.\u201d<\/p>\n Heather Anderson\u2019s book People Powered Radio: Fifty Years of Australian Community Radio Station 4ZZZ (Palgrave Macmillan) is available direct from the station<\/a>, retailers and the publisher<\/a>. Andrew Stafford\u2019s classic book Pig City (UQP), which recounts the origins of 4ZZZ, is still in print.<\/p>\n![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/9b7c731f92274ae1fd91ba82023b2f211b32098ebc08a30f3ad14eb822535026.jpeg\")
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