Interesting that Australia today is celebrating 100 years of radio. The celebration, to some extent, flies in the face of history. The first radio licence was actually issued, in 1921, to an amateur broadcaster, Charles Maclurcan, who broadcast from the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, playing classical music.

The push towards radio licences had begun much earlier when Marconi’s company amalgamated with Telefunken to form Amalgamated Wireless Australia, known to many of us as AWA.