Ay, caramba! – loudspeaker glitch wakes Belmont

The peace of the small hours was shattered in Belmont last week by a series of phantom high-volume broadcasts that roused locals from their slumber.

Intermittently – from midnight until just after 4am on Wednesday 10 May – mysterious messages were heard by households across the suburb.

Some residents were still trying to work out the next morning if they had been dreaming. A few managed to discern some of the words, concluding the source was a school.

“All classes are cancelled this afternoon,” was the badly timed announcement, which was then repeated – in Spanish.

Belmont Primary School principal Bruce Cunningham, who was roused from his own bed to sort the problem out, has since apologised to the community for the inconvenience caused by the random messages.

“We had many emails and posts from families who had their sleep disturbed, some of whom were 500 metres away,” he said

An electrical fault, possibly triggered by heavy rainfall, may have set off the message, which was repeated on a loop.

“It came through our speaker system but was generated from a hard drive on the amp.”

The on-off message may have gone for 15 minutes then restarted on the hour, said Cunningham. “All of which is very strange.”

He received a phone call around 4.45am from a neighbour of the school and drove from his home to turn the amplifier off by 5am.

A technician, who had since looked at the gear, said the message had just been added to the school’s list of automated messages but did not know how. “We are in contact with the manufacturer.”

Cunningham said the school had no idea the cancellation message in two languages was in its system.