The experiment that’s lasted 50 years
by Michael Morton-Evans
About the author
Morton-Evans OAM
Training originally with the aim of becoming a concert pianist, Michael soon discovered that there was a life outside the rehearsal room and worked as a journalist in London’s Fleet Street before joining BBC Television. After a stint as features Editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, Michael settled in Sydney where he worked for News Corp before joining the ABC and doing a morning radio programme with the legendary Caroline Jones for five years.
Michael has been with Fine Music for the past 15 years, was Secretary of the Music Broadcasting Society of NSW in 2011 and was a director of Fine Music Sydney and chairman of the board of directors from 2020 to 2022.
Michael presents Fine Music Drive every alternate Tuesday afternoon and is still active as a programmer of classical music for other programmes. He is an unashamed Romantic, at least when it comes to classical composers!
Michael
INTRODUCTION
A written history of an organisation such as the Music Broadcasting Society of NSW can never be absolutely complete especially when turned around in a few weeks and squashed into 40 or so pages. This collection explores many corners of 2MBS, including the archives cupboard and the author has interviewed countless volunteers. Unfortunately some people may have been missed –whether due to lack of time or opportunity. If you are one of these people then I hope our next history-publishing effort will capture you.
Michael (aka MME) has captured interesting facts and anecdotes from those around the station. Our memories might well have faded, but our enthusiasm for relating our experiences has not.
2MBS has weathered some tough times. I’m pleased to say that, due to careful management, this unique radio station is very stable. The reason for this stability is people. Our volunteers, with the support of a very small staff, have managed this facility well.
A number of people should be thanked for their part in this compilation: Mona Omar, Susan Ping Kee, Leona Geeves, Simon Moore, Peter Hislop, Sally James, Charles Barton, Elizabeth Barton … plus all those mentioned in the following pages and, of course, Michael Morton-Evans.
David James
Founder, Station Manager 1974
Current volunteer
December 15, 2024
There was a time when we didn’t think it would get off the ground,” says David James, the Music Broadcasting Society of NSW’s first station manager. And he had good reason to be apprehensive. In the 1970s the commercial radio stations ruled the airwaves on the AM bands and along comes this band of amateurs, headed by a bloke called Trevor Jarvie, pushing the government to allow them to start broadcasting on the hitherto unused FM frequencies. Jarvie’s argument was persuasive. Frequency modulation (FM) was technically superior to Amplitude Modulation (AM) and particularly suitable for the broadcasting of classical music, which was the MBS’s aim. Jarvie had an important supporter in that argument, Sir Robert Madgwick, the then chairman of the ABC. He argued the case before the Australian Broadcasting Control Board and was heavily opposed by the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB), who were keen on retaining their monopoly on the AM bands and didn’t like the idea of competition elsewhere. Despite all efforts to keep interlopers out, the FARB lost the battle and FM broadcasting was given the green light. A letter dated 27 September, 1974 was sent to Trevor Jarvie from the Minister for the Media, Doug McClelland, saying: “I have pleasure in formally inviting you to accept a licence to operate a frequency modulation broadcasting station in the VHF band on an experimental basis.” The first major battle was won and the 2MBS experiment began in earnest.
The founders of this experimental exercise were a motley bunch, but they had one thing in common, a strong desire to turn this experiment into reality. They all were volunteers to the cause and committed to the task. Driving the team, of course, was Trevor Jarvie, a man with a scholarly sense of humour, who could come up with an appropriate quotation from the King James Bible, Shakespeare or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer to suit almost any occasion. After completing his MSc in chemistry at Sydney University, he had left to begin a PhD at Monash University. In Melbourne he encountered the engineer with the Music Broadcasting Society of Victoria. His imagination quickly grasped the possibilities suggested by a society of this kind - a broadcasting station devoted to music, funded by subscription from the musicloving public. Imbued with an almost Messianic zeal, he abandoned chemistry and returned to Sydney to set up the Music Broadcasting Society of New South Wales.
Trevor was passionate in his belief that a community radio station of a completely new kind could be set up with almost no money and run by volunteers in a legislated scheme which did not then exist. But he would need help and the first people he would need help from was Telecom (now Telstra) and the Supervising Engineer of their Radio Section, Fred Hailstone, for it was he who would help or hinder the search for a suitable transmission site. Everyone was slightly afraid of Fred and wondered whether or not he would support the venture. As it turned out he did and when asked why replied: “Anybody can write a book or publish a newspaper without getting permission from anybody, but for the last 50 years nobody has been able to start a new radio station. All you can do is buy an existing licence with large amounts of money and lots of political clout. So I think it’s about time this happened and I hope it works. I’ll support it as much as I can.”
Needless to say not everyone was happy with this interloper on the airwaves. Journalist Peter Manning wrote in the Bulletin in June 1974: “The possibility of a community radio station heralds the biggest change in the radio industry since it began. The introduction of FM radio –nonetheless community-run – upsets the delicate balance of commercial radio.” Indeed it did, but as it turned out they would just have to live with it, and by 2024 the station had acquired over 630,000 listeners in the Sydney area, the Central Coast and out to the Southern Highlands.
Once the FM starting gates had opened 2MBS jumped ahead of the field with Jarvie in the lead. Another of the original jockeys, Charles Barton, pays this tribute to the man: “It is due to Trevor’s enthusiasm that some of us discovered or developed talents or abilities which we did not know we had.” One of the talents that Charles, then a science student, and later a chemistry teacher, discovered was that he was a very capable on air presenter, a position which he exercises to this day.
In the febrile atmosphere of those early days, a lot of people discovered that once inside the doors of 2MBS life could be quite different from what was originally imagined. For example, one of the original volunteers, Harold Downey, was amazed to find that a whole day could be spent trying to set up the radio station without anyone trying to find out where he fitted into the social/business hierarchy, and that the chat all day had been good-humoured, challenging, interesting, never boring and nobody once mentioned house renovations, kids, mortgages or relatives! 2MBS was definitely not, as another of the founding presenters Howard Cocks put it, “an adult minding centre like a lot of community organisations “
Early ‘movers and shakers’, l to r - Max Benyon, Michael Law, Grahame Wilson, Trevor Jarvie celebrating a beaurcratic win in a ‘borrowed’ commercial AM studio
First guide, Stereo FM Radio issued February 1975. Trevor Jarvie on the cover.
At this time the major problem was from where exactly 2MBS was going to broadcast. It even got to the stage where David James, the designated station manager, cruised Parramatta Road looking for a suitable caravan to buy for the purpose! Luckily it never came to that. A generous businessman, a Mr Shirley by name, came up with an offer of rooms in Alexander Street, Crows Nest.
As James remembers: “I was invited by Mr Shirley to inspect space available in the office building which had been negotiated by our then Secretary, Michael Law. The top floor was being used as magazine production for his company and level 1 had several vacant offices. They were clean and had ample natural light. The building had a lift and our offices would be close to the amenities. The most appropriate office for our “studio” was the one at the end of the corridor. It had a partitioned section previously inhabited, allegedly, by a brand executive for a major cereal company. Unfortunately no packets of Special K were left hanging around!
“The partitioning was “light” in sound insulation and I had visions of sticking egg cartons to the wall. This never eventuated. The size was adequate (for one presenter sitting sideways) and featured a nice sash window which opened on to the laneway below providing natural air-conditioning at the height of the Sydney summer. This partitioned room, measuring barely 3m x 2m, sat at the corner of a larger space which would serve as a gathering place for future presenters, programmers and pizza-eaters. We were offered an adjacent room to serve as a general office. This became Charles Noble’s (office manager, volunteer) domain and he ruled it well. The spaces we were offered weren’t entirely free. We had agreed to pay a “peppercorn” rent, and accordingly transferred the magnificent sum of $1 to Mr Shirley’s account.
“We soon outgrew these two offices so sought a further office (there goes another dollar!). 2MBS now occupied the entire end
of the corridor! The next challenge was a non-studio “tech” job. We needed to allow volunteers access to the office/studio without giving everyone a key. The answer was to install a doorbell from the street entrance to the office – a very long piece of wire, it was.
“The studio itself was eventually equipped with mostly nonbroadcast gear; much of it mine. There was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a mixer, a microphone stand and a microphone from my collection. The microphone, which we still have in the archives cupboard, was originally used in the post-production of the TV series “Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo”. The first item of "office" furniture we moved in was a donated 'fridge. I think it was a Kelvinator - a typical 1960s style 'fridge with very little freezer space, but space enough in the cooling section to adequately deal with wine, beer and leftover pizzas. The 'fridge became the stand for the transmitter. As far as I can remember they both ran from the same power-point in the office section next to the studio. The aerial cable was poked out the 'other' window and ran up the rear face of the building to an antenna on a pole attached to the building and extending above the roof-line. The transmitter was a lowpower "exciter" which would eventually serve to boost power to a main 400watt transmitter that Max Benyon and his team would build in a clandestine workshop in Surry Hills. This now silent low power transmitter occupies pride of place in a corner of the boardroom at Chandos Street.
“We lasted in Alexander Street just about two years. We were bursting at the seams so we sought to move premises, probably to Mr Shirley’s great relief!”
Our first home - the façade of 5-7 Alexander Street, Crows Nest 1974
The transmitter ‘exciter’ as demonstrated at the Australian Hi Fi Show now stands in the 2MBS Boardroom
As the clock chimed mid-day on Sunday, December 15th, 1974 and all church services had concluded, 2MBS went to air for the first time. The inaugural program that graced the airwaves was a harmonious blend of classical and instrumental music, setting the tone for the station’s future endeavours. The job of programming this initial broadcast fell to the 24-year-old Vincent Plush, a talented musician and composer who had spent 18 months working in scheduling at the ABC. Theoretically he and organist David Rumsey were to fulfil the task, but Rumsey went off on holiday on his yacht leaving Vincent to do the work. It was an inspired choice to begin the first broadcast with Australian composer John Antill’s 1957 Overture for a Momentous Occasion, which he wrote to celebrate the 10th birthday of the ABC’s Youth Concerts. Not surprisingly Vincent was keen on the works of Australian composers, but had the sense that the older folk within the MBS clan, as he put it, were hoping for more Bach and Brahms. It must have come as a great shock to them, and to older listeners, when Vincent programmed eight programmes of music by the avant-garde Italian composer, Luciano Berio. Berio was noted for his experimental work and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was heavily influenced by Igor Stravinsky and his experiments with serial and electronic techniques. The series culminated with a live to air interview with the man himself who was visiting Sydney, but, as Vincent recalls, it very nearly didn’t happen. “The very diligent MBS doorkeeper was reluctant to let Berio into the building. His name wasn’t ‘on the list!’”
Throughout the next eight weeks work continued at a feverish pace to get the station ready for its official opening on February 1st, 1975. But all the while the thorny question of money hung in the air. Subscribers seemed to be the only real solution, but they had to have something concrete to subscribe to and so concurrent with the February 1st official opening came the publication of the first Guide. But then the question was: How much would people be prepared to pay? There were three suggested annual subscriptions: $15, $20 and $25. A questionnaire was sent out to friends and family and 100 replies came back, 20 were for $15 and exactly 40 each for
the higher sums. After some argument the $25 was agreed upon and it wasn’t long before the subscription numbers began to grow to a quite sizeable number.
The radio station has always prided itself in being a station for music lovers run by music lovers. True, it has always been operated by volunteers, but in the early days it was the board, and the board alone, who called the tune. In time this became an issue which riled Trevor Jarvie, who was heard to say: “I don’t believe this organisation should be controlled by the board, it should be carried out by committees. That’s grass roots structure.” This somewhat revolutionary idea left some aghast, but in the end his radical notion was adopted and to this day the station is divided into a management committee, a presenters committee, a programming committee, and, more recently, a jazz committee. (This latter would have appalled Trevor who freely admitted that he hated jazz!) The board has oversight of the station, but the decisions are made at the grass roots.
So far, so good, but it takes money to run a radio station; in fact quite a lot of it. It soon became obvious that the organisation needed someone with a head for finance. There were lots of musical and technical people, but no-one with a financial background. That’s when Sydney stockbroker Philip Weate came on the scene. To begin with he would attend board meetings as a sort of unofficial treasurer and financial adviser. It wasn’t long before he was invited to take Professor Neil Runcie’s place as chair of the board, and his first edict as chair was that the station must seriously begin fund-raising. It was
The original building at 76 Chandos Street — a former film and TV production studio
the dream of everyone to buy a permanent home for 2MBS and when 76 Chandos Street in St Leonards came up for sale the Commonwealth Bank was persuaded to give the organisation a mortgage on very favourable terms. A brochure headlined Help put us in a home of our own was produced and sent out and the money poured in.
50 years on 2MBS is still in the same, but by now considerably modernised, building.
The other great difficulty, apart from raising money, was finding ways to promote the station and attract sponsors to advertise, both on air and in the monthly programme guide. There was strong competition for what money came in, either from the technical boffins or the musically minded. Both groups wanted permanent paid staff, but they would have to wait. Weate was a cautious chairman and when told that someone had a grand piano for sale and was offering it to 2MBS at below market price of $1500 he said the station could not afford it. Trevor Jarvie insisted that it was vital to have a piano in Studio C for concert performances and they should run an appeal for the money. Weate finally agreed and the $1500 was raised in just six weeks!
The first person to be paid to work for 2MBS was the first station manager, David James. James, an ex bank clerk, was at that time working for Channel 9 TV on a salary of $6,000 a year. Since the offer from 2MBS was the same he decided to take the job. A decision which obviously proved a happy one as James is still volunteering there to this day!
In the first few months of his tenure as station manager, James wrote a memo to himself, a sort of Duty Statement for the station manager. The list ran to 58 items, all the usual things you would expect to find, but then a few unusual ones. Item 18 read: “Make decisions that I wish other people would make.” Item 48 stated: “Be advised often and regularly on trivia which I don’t wish to know, but
if I didn’t know I’d be worse off.” For Item 55 he wrote: “Ensure that I never speak on air. I don’t like the sound of my own voice and wouldn’t inflict it upon others unless absolutely necessary.” Luckily for him, it never has been!
Alan Beven was the man brought in to assist James as assistant station manager and it was his idea that the station should broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. At that time this was quite a revolutionary idea. Broadcasts usually ended at midnight on television and to have a radio station that was still on air at 3am was something of a novelty. It further increased 2MBS’s popularity and stature.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing. By 1979 financial disaster was just around the corner. The station was $50,000 in the red and the board was talking about closing the station down. The expenses for technical work were soaring, but the trouble was that people without technical expertise couldn’t appreciate how much equipment cost, and that despite the fact that 2MBS technicians made quite a lot of the equipment themselves. The answer was an appeal, and then another, and another and each time the public responded generously. It has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the 2MBS history that whenever the station has been faced with a really major expenditure the subsequent appeal has always been met, and more often than not, exceeded.
Another of the problems the station was faced with was trying to determine exactly what it was that the listeners wanted to hear. The first programme guide was published in February 1975 and it opened Pandora’s box. David Rumsey,
2MBS:
Foundation chairman Prof. Neil Runcie
Programming pioneer, David Rumsey
the well-known organist and another of the pioneers, had set up the first issue of the magazine and made the unfortunate decision to go off on holiday. During his absence, Vincent Plush, then a 25-year-old composer, virtually rewrote it. Being a young man, he favoured contemporary and Australian music and that became the main thrust of the magazine. As one volunteer put it: “We were besieged by fury.” The subscribers wanted something they could relate to. They didn’t want to be jolted into 20th century music. Jarvie immediately took control and the next issue featured a long editorial, two-thirds of which quoted an unnamed listener’s letter. Part of it read: “Several of us who have already subscribed have become disillusioned with the programming of much of the material,” but added that the aims of the station were to be applauded. That prompted Jarvie to say that the aims could only be achieved with listeners’ support and money came in “in bucketloads”, according to one report. And money continued to come in until the ABC took up its FM licence and then it evened off to about 4000 subscribers.
So in those early days where did the music come from? Well, presenters were expected to bring their own records with them, this of course being a good seven or eight years before CDs became the preferred method of music storage. Bit by bit the station also began to acquire its own collection and before long it became apparent that a librarian would be needed to catalogue them and keep them in some sort of order. The man who put his hand up for the job was Jock Weir. He had absolutely no experience of libraries as he himself admitted, but took the job nonetheless.
“I was given a typist,” he recalled, “and we worked on a couple of cardboard boxes which served as desks, there being no tables. There was one little lot of shelves to store the records and I started a card system which may not have been very orthodox, but I understood it.”
One of the frequent visitors to this fledgling library, and a very welcome one indeed, was Walter Dullo. Dullo was a German musicologist and lawyer who had migrated to Australia, where he became best known as a chocolate maker. He also continued his musical activities here, and was a co-founder with Richard Goldner, of both Musica Viva Australia and 2MBS. He had amassed over his lifetime a vast collection of gramophone records, which he would constantly lend to the station, as well as putting together many programmes. He was, you might almost say, the lifeblood of 2MBS, that is until that fateful day, August 22nd 1978. Dullo had come into the station to deliver some records and was just leaving when a visitor came up the stairs. The lady was looking round the station with a view to becoming a volunteer. She was in the middle of being introduced to Dullo when he collapsed and died at her feet.
Another valuable volunteer was the irrepressible Eva Low. Eva answered a plea for more programmers, certain that she had strong musical ideas and thought she would be good at blending different pieces of music together. There was only one problem – she didn’t own a record player. The powers that be weren’t quite so sure, so rather than take herself off, Eva offered to do something else, anything else. So she was set to work reorganising the record filing system. “I was sent out the back to that hell hole of Siberia which was Studio C in the winter of 1976,” she told a friend. “I was stuck there for eight months, cataloguing all the gramophone records in lists on paper, numbered 1 to 1,250.” It wasn’t until she’d finished that Eva discovered to her horror that she’d made a fatal error. She’d written the details of each record on a slip of yellow paper with a black pen, thinking that the presenters would be able to duplicate the bits they needed to help present their programme. The problem was that the duplicating machine wouldn’t take the yellow paper and needed a special pen. But Eva’s organising abilities really came to the fore when she took over Guide delivery section. Ever since inception, the 2MBS monthly music guide had been delivered by hand to all subscribers by volunteers. Each month a group of volunteers would gather to wrap the 6,000 or so Guides and address
them, sorting them into batches for the volunteer deliverers. Eva ran the process with amazing calm and efficiency, though it is said that she could get very cross if she felt that someone was slacking!
Over the ensuing years the record collection grew, as did the huge collection of tapes, the results of numerous live outside broadcasts from the Opera House right through to studio recordings of inexperienced amateurs. In 1982 the recorded musical scene began to change with the introduction to the public of compact disks. Gradually 2MBS began its translation from vinyl to CDs and currently now has some 26,000 in its collection. But times move on and the librarians at 2MBS have now digitised the entire collection and these can now be loaded onto the computer and require only the touch of a computer key to play. Where we go from here nobody knows.
As the station grew in size and professionalism it became evident that haphazard programming had to be brought under some sort of control. In the early days almost everyone was a programmer who presented their own programmes. But as the hours of broadcast expanded the need for people who wanted to programme but not present also grew larger. Like just about everything else in this fledgling radio station, the whole business of programming opened another Pandora’s Box. The regular programmers had a proprietary attitude to their regular times and didn’t want to give them up. The three members of the Programme Policy Committee, Anton Crouch, Brian Shackel and Peter Jefferson, believed firmly that nobody had a right to any particular time, so they devised a scheme to “rest” people from set times. You might as well have suggested starting a bonfire in a library. Some sulked and never came back. The board was divided on the measure, but as Crouch succinctly put it: “I dreaded us becoming bland and expected. If people know they can always tune in to a certain programme at a particular time they soon don’t bother to tune in at all.”
Then there was the problem of the group of people who had taken over Monday evenings from eight until midnight, putting on unscheduled programmes which weren’t always very good. This was prime time, but they seemed entrenched. As luck would have it the group fell apart through internal squabbles so that bullet was dodged.
Another seemingly endless bone of contention lay between the classical aficionados and those who thought there wasn’t enough jazz on the station. It’s a discussion which began in 1976 and rears its head periodically even now.
The night of Tuesday, April 9th, 1985 will forever stand out in the memory of those working at 2MBS at that time. Shortly before midnight three masked men dressed in black Klu Klux Klan outfits, broke into the studio and took over the airwaves. During an eightminute broadcast one of them said “We’re going to destroy you,” before letting out a blood-curdling scream, while another of them said: ”We are here to give you a message. It’s the end of the world.” One of the two presenters on duty that night, Angelo Maltezos, tried to break into the studio with an axe handle but failed, however the men fled when told that the police were on their way.
What goes when and who goes where evolved into a group of “slotters” drawn from the Programming Committee and the Presenters Committee. The use of slotters began in 1978 when Gary Walker replaced Anton Crouch. Gone were the days when you could prepare an opera with an untidy length, from hereon programmes fitted either into 60, 90 or 120 minutes with Breakfast and Drive running for three hours each. Some months later he
Programme “slotters” Mick Withers and Phil Dorrian
was joined by Mick Withers, a chemist who ran the spectroscopy laboratory at the University of NSW Another rather tragic addition to the slotting team was Peter Parkes, a teacher at the Christian Brothers College, Sutherland, who was to become the sole programme slotter in 1979. He was pivotal in directing programme style during the 1970s and early 80s and prepared many hours of programmes every month. The tragedy was that on October 20th, 1981 he was murdered, stabbed to death by a male prostitute who days later also killed the Greek consul-general in what the press dubbed ‘The Kings Cross Murders.’ Parkes was a popular volunteer at 2MBS and for many weeks afterwards the atmosphere at 76 Chandos Street was very subdued.
The station’s first Director of Programmes was Phil Scott. “It was my first job out of University, wrangled for me by my mentor Peter Sculthorpe,” he says. “I was not the top student in my music class at Sydney Uni but I had a (deserved) reputation for knowing a wider range of music than any of the others.” Of course, we all know him better these days as the piano playing star of the annual Wharf Revues.
The station got its first female chairman, Vicki Brooke, in September 1979. “Yes, chairman. I insist on that word,” she said on taking the position. “It’s only offensive to those people who are obsessed with trivia.” Vicki started off processing subscriptions and worked her way through various positions until, at David James’s suggestion, she tried programming. Programming in those days usually meant presenting as well and the training was, to say the least, perfunctory. “Someone sat in with me for my first broadcast, but the next time I was the only person in the building. It was completely nerve-wracking.”
Poor Vicki certainly had her baptism of fire. There was no airconditioning in the building and on hot days the only way to keep the studio habitable was to have the window wide open. Unfortunately the window was directly above one of the turntables. One sweltering summer evening Vicki set a record to play and had cued up another under the open window when a storm suddenly broke out of the blue. Rain deluged through the open window straight on to the record. It was awash. Vicki ran out of the studio in a panic, luckily encountering another volunteer who ran into the ladies loo and grabbed a huge handful of paper towels. Happily the turntable and the cued record was mopped up by the time it was due to go to air.
Vicki was something of a social phenomenon as far as Trevor Jarvie was concerned. “He couldn’t see how an ordinary housewife [sic] with no radio or professional music background could become chairman of a music radio station,” he said. But Vicki’s tenure in the chair proved very successful, particularly at a time when the overall station morale was at a low point with financial disaster hovering just around the corner. She had been shocked to discover how few of the volunteers had any real interest in community broadcasting or wider technical policy and began lobbying for their advancement. She set about changing the ethos of the station, with a strong emphasis on it being self-sufficient and not reliant on grants. She held the chair successfully for five years, setting an example for future holders of the position.
One of her great moves was to invite Peter Carrodus to join 2MBS. Peter had for some years, a successful radio programme in Canberra. In those days Ben Chifley was prime minister and one of his frequent listeners. So much so that he used to ring Peter often with requests. Who would have ever guessed that one of the PM’s favourite songs was I’m a little petunia in an onion patch! In his spare time, Peter was involved with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, serving on its committee for 16 years, six of those as president.
In 1978 Peter felt he needed a change from Canberra and accepted an offer of an admin job with Macquarie Broadcasting in Sydney.
Peter Parkes
Vicki Brooke
He soon became bored being away from a radio station and this was when Vicki Brooke phoned to invite him in for an interview. It so happened that the following weekend there was to be a studio open day and Peter decided that he’d go incognito and get a feel of the place before attending the formal interview. Together with his wife Rosalind, the adopted daughter of the politician and High Court judge H.V. “Doc” Evatt, he joined other members of the public at the open day. History records that he hadn’t gone two steps inside the building when the indomitable Ann Ramsay (more of her later) had sold him some raffle tickets. He was then asked if he’d like to see how a radio station worked and was given a complete rundown on all the mechanics. Through all this he said nothing, but when he and Rosalind left, he turned to her and said “I really like the look of this place.” He knew he wanted the job.
Peter as station manager was a Godsend. The garbage wasn’t being collected, the station was in danger of having the electricity cut off and various little groups in the station were at war with other little groups. Peter had the ability to marshal the talent that lay within 2MBS and unite it, which he did successfully. Responsible for organising five hundred volunteers, he kept the station on air around the clock broadcasting fine classical music recordings, but including some jazz, which he regarded as the next most important form of music.
1985 however proved to be a sad year for Peter and his wife. Their third child, Rebekah, aged nineteen, died of a drug overdose. Her death affected the family deeply and Peter left 2MBS in April, settling on an eleven-acre farm at Mullumbimby. He was to die of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1994.
When founder Trevor Jarvie was a chemistry laboratory demonstrator at Sydney University back in 1965 he had, as one of his brighter students, Charles Barton, who went on to become a chemistry teacher himself. In 1973 Charles went back to Sydney Uni to do an arts degree and found Trevor again, this time as his English tutor. They had a shared love of music, but when Trevor left Sydney for Melbourne they lost touch until one day in late 1970 or early
1971, when Charles found himself in the ABC Concert Department in Elizabeth Street and on the counter was a pile of brochures heralding a new proposed music broadcasting society signed by none other than T.D. Jarvie. That’s got to be Trevor, Charles thought, and wrote off to the PO box. It was Trevor indeed and that’s how Charles got roped in to join the committee of the embryonic Music Broadcasting Society. In the months leading up to December 1974, and a couple of years beyond, Charles’s main contribution was to persuade people in the electronics industry to give them equipment.
In this way vital objects like antenna cabling, mixers and a portable tape recorder were sourced. Bit by bit the studio was being built and rebuilt and rebuilt again, on several occasions while some poor announcer was actually on air. A couple of times, Charles and his team of cohorts turned the studio around 90 degrees between 2am and 8am when the station was off air.
Music was presented via two gramophone turntables and associated pre-amplifiers, one of which would inevitably break down from time to time. If one broke down during transmission, a technician would sit repairing it while the announcer made do with the other. At one point a notice was placed on the offending pre-amplifier saying “When you lose right channel thump here.” An X marked the thumping spot!
One of the benefits of passion coupled with naivety is the urge to attempt things that, in hindsight, might not always be wise. In the early stages it became necessary at one point to set up a temporary studio in the corridor. Andrew Davies was set to present a two and a half hour programme and Charles’s job was to cue the record tracks. The trouble was they had only one pair of headphones between them and Andrew insisted that he must be the one wearing them. This left Charles to cue the tracks without being able to hear
Charles Barton
what he was cueing. His only assistance was a hastily rigged up oscilloscope so that he could see the start of the track!
It was, Charles admitted later, probably the silliest thing they’d ever attempted, though going to air in a known electricity blackout ran a close second. They fully expected that the blackout would miss them because the union always maintained power to the Royal North Shore Hospital and they were close enough not to be affected, or so they thought.
June 11th, 1981 was a dreary mid-Winter’s day and known electricity cuts had been announced throughout Sydney. Undeterred 2MBS soldiered on. Firstly, the start of the 7pm jazz programme was delayed when the presenter was held up getting to the studio due to there being no working traffic lights in Sydney. 30 minutes into the eventual start the cut struck. What to do? Within 10 minutes Charles Barton and his team had the station back on the air. Without electricity how was this possible? And that’s where passion comes to the fore. Given that the turntables wouldn’t work, live music had to be the answer. A jazz pianist who lived two streets away was quickly press-ganged into the studio; the leader of a choral group who had been practising in the building when the power went off proved to be a fine classical pianist. Thus came an impromptu concert of jazz piano, followed by vocal solos, duets and classical piano pieces until the power was restored more than two hours later. And all technically possible because Charles and his assistants managed to rig up batteries to operate a microphone and a sound mixer.
Asked about it later, Charles said: “We were all literally in the dark except for torches and a couple of fluorescent hand lamps that we managed to find. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge.
“Another memorable occasion in those early days was a live interview that Wesley Want was doing with the Australian composer, Ross Edwards. One of the pre-amplifiers needed replacing, and
though not required for the Edwards interview, would be needed for the following programme. As the pre-amps were located under the desk, during the broadcast Charles had to repair it while the interview proceeded. Ross was asked to put his feet up on the desk while Charles crawled about under his legs as silently as possible. That’s one interview I bet Ross never forgets.”
Few people these days will remember the Australian actor, Lloyd Lamble. At the age of 17, Lamble became a junior radio announcer for Melbourne commercial radio station 3DB – a post he described as ‘little more than an office boy’. Senior announcing jobs followed at 3KZ and 3AW and at this time he also did some dance-hall crooning. While he was still at 3AW, he began acting with the Lee Murray Radio Players and that established him as a radio actor. In lighter vein, he was straight man to funnyman Roy Rene (‘Mo’) and a compere and fall guy to Bob Dyer. In 1937 he opened a successful school of radio and theatre acting. In the early 50s he set sail for England, found success there as an actor and never came back to Australia again, dying in 2008 at the age of 94.
Lamble’s importance to this history is that when he left Australia, he left behind his son Tim, and Tim was to prove very important to our story. In 1976 he was working in the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New South Wales. He knew Philip Weate, the 2MBS chairman, who said to him one day: “You know about building, don’t you?” Tim replied that he wasn’t at all qualified as a builder, but undeterred Weate urged him to attend a meeting at Chandos Street the following week. At that meeting some architect’s plans were shown, but he left the meeting concerned that they really weren’t sufficient for a major building contract to be signed. When he voiced his concern he was challenged to come up with specific details as to why they were insufficient. In the end, after putting his case, he found himself landed with a team of volunteers so that he could do the entire project himself.
One Saturday afternoon he went along and started knocking down walls. Everyone there was horrified and on the following Monday when people saw the extent of the demolition there was great consternation. In due course everyone settled down and Saturday building sessions began to attract more volunteers, and Tim loved the fact that he soon became referred to as ‘the foreman.’ Luckily his work at the university was beginning to dry up due to lack of funding, so he was able to work pretty well full time on the job.
Asked what his biggest problem was at that time, Tim said it was adapting the idealism of the engineers and presenters to what was practically possible. “There’s always a dichotomy,” he said,” between engineers and production, this always causes disagreements.”
The official opening of the station was the culmination of 18 months of hard work, but on that day, sad to report, nobody gave him a single thank you. Happily, Tim stayed on and became a whizz at outside broadcasts and when Alan Beven resigned as Production Manager, Tim was persuaded to take the role – “somewhat against my will” he is reported as saying. And it has to be said that it wasn’t an altogether happy job. Tim objected to a list of tasks that was given to him which included “Be available to volunteers, attending the greater part of the time at Chandos Street” followed by “Ensure location and intentions when out are known to telephonists and the Station Manager.”
“They were always complaining that I was never there, nobody knew where I was. Telephonists came and went. I’d tell the one who was at the desk where I was going and she’d leave half an hour later, not telling the next one who came on duty. So I got this reputation for never being there.”
Sadly it all ended in tears. Tim saw the writing on the wall and resigned. He was summoned to attend a board meeting, but nobody asked him any questions and he was asked to wait outside where eventually the chairman came out and told him his resignation had been accepted. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so terribly alone, rejected, cast out,” he said later.
In 2005 Tim was to make his name by returning home on his small yacht Libelle after completing a two year round the-world trip.
While all the work was being done on the new building somewhere had to be found to set up the transmitter. A kind listener offered the top floor of a building in Surry Hills, but the only way to get the transmitter up there was to winch it up the outside of the building and in through a large window. Not in itself a huge problem, however, as it was being hauled up the rope broke and sent the transmitter in its box hurtling two storeys down where it crashed on the pavement. Luckily the Gods were on side and apart from the box being slightly damaged the transmitter was intact.
But this wasn’t the end of the Surry Hills story. The building was used by several other small businesses, the manager of one of which began to view the electronic freaks on the top floor with everincreasing suspicion. One afternoon, fortified by a long liquid lunch, he attacked the 2MBS crew verbally.
Anton Crouch
“I know what you’re doing. I’m reporting you to the Feds. I’ll have you all deported,” he shouted.
But what exactly are we meant to be doing, came the reply?
The indefatigable Max Benyon
“You’re broadcasting to the Fretilin forces. You’re passing on illegal messages. Spies, the lot of you!”
Fretilin, or the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, at that time was a resistance group seeking independence from Portugal, and went on later to seek independence from Indonesia.
From then on the tech crew always ensured that there was a copy of the 2MBS licence on hand in case they were visited by the constabulary.
The top of this building in Surry Hills was just one of 130 different sites that Max Benyon and his transmitter crew tested to find the prime spot for the station’s transmitter.
In March 1975 a meeting was called by David Rumsey and Phil Scott in the Lane Cove Scout Hall to seek prospective volunteers. Expecting a dozen or so people, to their amazement the hall was packed. As Director of Programmes, Scott’s main purpose was to try and attract more programmers to the station and he was surprised at the result. The prospective programmers were divided into musical interest groups. Suddenly all these people had an outlet for their frustrated musical ambitions, but the outcome was, at the beginning, somewhat shambolic. Nobody seemed to worry about the length of programmes, time never seemed to be a constraint, and when someone, like Anton Crouch, submitted a two and a half hour opera, everyone was delighted. It was filling up the day.
Anton was an early member of the Programme Policy Committee, a group which, as far as Anton could see, was more interested in programmes than in policy! He didn’t last long on the committee however because he was soon appointed to the Board, which meant having to resign from the committee.
One of his main responsibilities was programme compiling, a task made difficult because of the huge quantities of programmes that were now being submitted. Soon there was a backlog of up to three months’ worth. What to do?
At that stage afternoons were the most popular spots and they were soon all filled up. Anton suggested that they use some of the backlog to fill up the mornings. No, that wouldn’t work, he was told. Why? For one thing there were no listeners in the morning, and no available presenters. Anton decided to give it a go nonetheless and surprise, surprise it was a success. One interesting by-product of this experiment was that it brought in a different type of presenter, someone who wasn’t out at work during the day, like housewives with children at school. At the same time there was developing a whole raft of programmers who weren’t interested in presenting their own programmes, so in this way a whole new wave of presenters were born.
When Anton left the programme compiling job his place was taken by Gary Walker, whose title was changed to programme slotter, a title that remains to this day except that there are now three or four people doing the work! Faced with having to fill 24 hours a day, it wasn’t long before there was a shortage of programmes and regular programmes in regular time spots began to appear again. Gary’s arrival at 2MBS came about as a result of him going to buy a new radio set in May 1975. With the set came a free copy of the 2MBS guide and in it was an appeal for volunteers. Why not, he thought and popped into the studio where David James gave him an immediate audition and signed him up on the spot. It was a baptism of fire, for in those days presenters by and large trained themselves. Gary hadn’t been there very long when the scheduled jazz presenter failed to turn up. Gary was forced to do his best with the few gramophone records that were there!
It was Gary who began the popular weekly interview programme now called In Conversation, but was then titled Off the Record. Among his first guests were flautist James Galway, Swiss organist and record producer Marcel Cellier, and one of Cellier’s biggest finds, the Romanian Pan-pipe player, Gheorghe Zamfir. The programme later fell into abeyance before being started up again as In Conversation with Michael Morton-Evans in July 2012, who presented it for seven and a half years before handing over to Christopher Waterhouse,
now the Rector of St James Church in Sydney, and from him to the current presenter, Simon Moore.
Another volunteer who had a big impact on the station was Mick Withers, a chemist who ran the spectroscopy laboratory at the University of NSW and who had come to 2MBS in a most unexpected fashion. While on holiday with his wife in Singapore, he’d bought a transistor radio with an FM as well as an AM setting. Never expecting to use the FM setting on his return to Australia he was amazed to find that he could in fact pick up one radio station –2MBS! He came along to an Open Weekend and before he knew it, he’d volunteered.
In November 1983 he presented the board with a paper which began: “The very title will frighten some people!” Hard to believe now, but that title was A Computer for 2MBS. Mick told the board that the station would benefit greatly from owning one, especially for subscriber lists, word processing for the guide and library cataloguing. The very thought of it did indeed frighten the members of the board. It wasn’t until the following year that a committee was set up to consider the idea and for the time being the idea got quietly buried.
However, Mick’s other gift to 2MBS was Gwen Bennett. Starting as a guide deliverer for the station, Gwen went on, over time, to become a director, chair the board and only left when she took the job as music planner for what was to become ABC Classic FM as we know it today. During her two decades in classical music radio she had varying roles as producer, presenter, program planner and manager of ABC Classic FM. As well as 2MBS, she sat on the boards of the Australian Music Centre, Roger Woodward’s Sydney Spring Festival, Music Studies at the University of Sydney and chaired judging panels for APRA/AMC Awards. She is perhaps best known for the brilliant biography of Ken Tribe AC, entitled More than Music.
Gwen had started off life wanting to be a concert pianist. She sat practising for eight hours a day for years, having been sold on
classical music from the age of 10. Unlike other young people of the time she couldn’t stand pop music. She came to realise that she wasn’t going to make it, so went on to marry a concert pianist instead.
Over the years there have been some notable programme presenters at 2MBS whose mere longevity garnered them hundreds, if not thousands, of loyal listeners. Principal among these one would mention Ann Ramsay, who for a great many years presented the Sunday evening programme Evensong, now called Hosanna. How best to describe Ann? Let’s leave it to Leo Schofield, who, compiling his own New Year gong list in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 31st one year, had this to say: “I suppose I should include in my list Enn Remsey. Also known as Ann Ramsay, Enn is the prunes and prisms announcer on 2MBS FM’s afternoon classical music program. Enn receives the Order of the Oval Vowel for her beautifully produced tones. Besides playing “lovely music”, Enn illuminates most works with penetrating back announcements. Like: “That was the Viennah Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Bohm, who is of course dead…” I wouldn’t be without her or her station for quids.”
It should come as no surprise to learn that Ann once played Oscar Wilde’s imposing Lady Bracknell for the Pymble Players after which such minor inconveniences as suddenly finding yourself off air due to a transmitter breakdown of little consequence. Ann went on presenting into her 90th year. When asked why she did it, she replied: “Without 2MBS I’d be just another old lady staring out of the window.”
Another presenter in that vein, who almost made it to her 90th year, was Maureen Meers. There was a rumour around the radio station at one time that Maureen had a camp bed under her desk in the office. It must be so, people said, because she
Presenter, and raffle ticket sorter, Ann Ramsay
was always there, morning, noon and night. Over the years Maureen had her ever adept fingers in just about every pie. She served on the board, as chair of the presenters committee, on the programming committee, and for a time on the WHS committee. When things went wrong Maureen was always there to put them right. She had a famous saying: “This place is like an orchestra, except that there are no woodwinds and no brass, just a lot of fiddlers!” She was equally at home with classical as well as jazz music, and yes, she chaired the jazz committee for a while also. She is probably best remembered now however for her regular Saturday afternoon programme, In a sentimental mood, which was broadcast throughout Australia on the Community Broadcasting network.
Two of 2MBS’s most popular regular programmes for many years were Sounds Delightful presented by Ann Ramsay, and Early Evening Concert, which for 22 years had Brendan Walsh at the helm every Wednesday evening. In September 1985 a curious piece of research came into the hands of the 2MBS board. The sample had been taken at some 10 shopping centre localities spread throughout metropolitan Sydney and also included one location each in Newcastle and Wollongong. A minimum of 40 persons completed interviews at each location; all were aged 25 or over with a cross section of age, and conforming to other normal distributions of demographics. They were questioned on their general radio listening habits. The raw data was statistically verified, weighted, expanded and processed using computer facilities at Sydney University. One programme came out of it head and shoulders above all others, with a peak of 50,000 listeners it was Early Evening Concert. The research document made the point that this programme had prevented listeners from switching over to news television at six ‘o’clock which figures showed happened on the other evenings of
the week. Marion von Adlerstein, who died three years ago at the age of 88, was one of the country’s abidingly stylish figures. She was a copywriter in the 1950s, and a contributor whose elegance, insight and wit graced every section of Vogue Australia over two decades. She was also an avid listener of 2MBS and of Brendan Walsh in particular. In an article that she once wrote, Marion said: “There are sounds and there are noises. Sounds are pleasant, noises are not. The voices of Marian Arnold and Karl Haas on ABC-FM and Brendan Walsh on 2MBS are among the sounds that are music to my ears.” In 1984 in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald she even
elevated Brendan and 2MBS to the level of paradise, along with her mother’s bread and butter pudding and newly-hatched cygnets in Centennial Park. Brendan continued as a treasured presenter on 2MBS for 40 years until the dreaded Alzheimer’s took him from us.
Going back to the very early days, a great on-air talent that started his radio career at 2MBS was Martin Hibble. Hibble was a passionate collector of stage and film music. He regularly raided his vast collection for rare repertoire and was greatly missed when, in 1979, he decided to leave Sydney for Adelaide and a job with ABC Classic FM. He was to die a tragically early death at the age of 55.
Coming on the scene in the early 80s was Belinda Webster. A professional flautist and conductor, apart from producing the programme Music Weekly, she was very keen, as she put it, on bringing the musical life of Sydney to 2MBS and then giving it to the listeners. She was instrumental in attracting some of the world’s top musicians to the studio. Aware that there was a whole generation of incredible Australian musicians whose work was going to go down the historical plughole, their work as soloists and as chamber musicians going to be lost. In 1991 she started her Tall Poppies CD company and since then has been responsible for recording more than 300 Australian artists and ensembles.
Another fantastic milestone will be set on the 1st of February, 2025 when another of 2MBS’s early presenters, Owen Fisher, will present his 1000th programme of Music that’s Band. Owen first went to air in 1980 with a programme called Banned Music for the Censors, which
Brendan Walsh
he had to explain was band music for the hearing senses. After 22 programmes, and endless explaining of the title, he changed it to Music that’s Band where it remains today. Programmed entirely from his own collection, Owen claims to have no fewer than 32 CDs just of the Allentown Band, and has interviewed most of the world’s leading band conductors.
Deciding to found a radio station was one thing. Quite another was to find a suitable studio space from which to broadcast. The caravan idea having been thankfully ditched, Jarvie’s troops were lucky to be given the offer of a couple of rooms in Alexander Street, Crows Nest. Over time the couple of rooms grew to most of the available space on that floor, but it still wasn’t going to be enough.
The opportunity arose in late 1975 to buy the freehold of a cottage at 76 Chandos Street, which had been converted into a then-disused production and editing studio. The price was $65,000. An urgent appeal raised $25,000 from supporters, but a mortgage for $40,000 was still required. Chairman Philip Weate, with charm and cap in hand, went to the local bank manager, who told him: “There is no way I should be doing this – you have no reliable source of income, but I love classical music, so you can have it.”
At last 2MBS had a permanent home of its own, despite it being hopelessly ill-suited for the purpose. It was a bit like broadcasting from inside the funnel of a cruise liner with an added bit sticking out the back. The two studios were on the ground floor, whereas the record library was on the third floor up a steep flight of stairs. God help the presenter who needed a replacement disk in a hurry! Tucked away in a cubby hole on the left as you entered was a space for volunteers to sit. Not altogether surprisingly it was quickly christened The Den! To add to the architectural confusion, there
were technical anomalies as well. For example, the presenter’s panelling equipment in Studio A was entirely different from that in Studio B, meaning that new presenters had to learn two different sets of instructions. Right down the very back of the building, at the other end of what was Studio C, was a much larger studio designed to house small performances, where there was a third set of panelling equipment in an extremely small, cramped control room. Avoided, if they could, by most presenters, there was one man who delighted in broadcasting his night-time show from there while his two small sons slept on blankets under the desk!
In 1987 there was a wide measure of agreement within the station that the present accommodation was too small and a new building was needed. Actually these thoughts had been brewing since 1979 but kept getting put in the too hard basket. Pressure was rapidly building on studio booking times and there was never enough time for the technicians to carry out maintenance work. Records were being culled from the library, not because they weren’t needed, but simply because there wasn’t enough room to house them.
In an impassioned plea to the board in September 1987, Mick Withers wrote: “Every effort must be made to propel the organisation out of our present quarters and into a larger and more suitable building at the earliest possible date.”
On the 22nd of April, 1988 the Board noted that the relocation of the station to a larger premises was essential in order to improve the efficiency, amenity and capacity to fulfil the Society’s aims and encouraged the Relocation Working Group to go on looking for suitable premises. The group went on looking, and looking, and looking.
By the turn of the century, some dozen or so years on, things were becoming critical. It was becoming more and more dangerous to work in the building due to overcrowding, as well as technical problems with ageing cabling. This uneasy status quo continued until, in late 2007, a fairy godmother (or father) appeared in the shape of Peter Mayoh. Peter ran an architectural practice in
Owen Fisher
Northbridge and also dabbled in property development. He advised the Board that he had acquired the two adjacent sites at 72 and 74 Chandos St and was looking to redevelop them into ground floor commercial premises with five floors of residential apartments above. His proposal was that no money should change hands. Instead 2MBS would contribute its land to the project. Mayoh would pay to move us into temporary premises, pay our rent for the duration and then pay to move us back into a new, strata-titled, ground floor commercial unit, fully fitted out and comprising 40% more floor space than we currently occupied.
It seemed too good to be true! There was certainly a lot of initial scepticism about whether it could ever happen, but, in the circumstances, the station could not afford not to explore the proposal.
At this juncture, David Brett had just stepped down from the Board after four years, the last three as chairman. Simon Moore had succeeded as chair. However, he worked full time and conceded he could not handle his Board responsibilities and lead the negotiations with Mayoh. It was agreed that David would be the Project Manager, reporting to the Board.
Meetings with Mayoh commenced in early 2008. Negotiations proceeded on two parallel tracks. First were discussions on the physical configuration of our intended space. Usually, Max Benyon accompanied David to these meetings to provide technical input and make Mayoh aware of the unique challenges involved in constructing a radio station in a residential building. Agreement was soon reached on the basic layout and this never really changed. The space belonging to 2MBS at that time comprised Lot 18 on the strata plan, which ends at the dividing door in the back corridor just beyond the toilets. The small meeting room by Reception was to be the Station Manager’s office, the Boardroom was to be an open plan office area for other staff and downstairs what is now the Green Room was to be the CD Library. Board and committee meetings would be held in the Performance Studio, as was the case in the old building.
While there were to be innumerable minor issues, usually concerning soundproofing, routes for cabling and accommodation on the roof for our studio-to-transmitter link, the really big problem was the performance studio. Located on the lower floor, this presented complex challenges to protect the studio from the noise of cars and motorbikes going into and out of the underground car park which adjoined the studio. Secondly, Max determined that in order to get an acceptable reverberation in the studio, we needed a minimum floor to ceiling height of 4 metres. Initially, this looked impossible to achieve.
After months of back and forth discussions and ideas, a solution emerged of building the studio as a “box within a box” so it sat separated and isolated from the surrounding structure and thus protected from outside noise and vibration. Then, innovative ideas and compromises gradually clawed centimetre after centimetre of additional height until Max and his technical colleagues were satisfied it was enough.
The second negotiating track concerned contracts. While no money was changing hands, we still needed a contract of sale for our land, a contract of purchase for the new strata unit and an agreement for funding of our removal and accommodation. What most exercised the Board, however, was the risk that, having transferred the land, the developer then went broke and we were left with nothing. So, we needed to negotiate for Mayoh to purchase a bond which would pay us the full value of our property in the event that he defaulted.
Fortunately, we were provided with an introduction to Bruce Hambrett, then Senior Partner at Baker McKenzie in Sydney, a branch of the world’s largest legal firm. David Brett was able to make a presentation to him in his office and eventually convince him that Baker’s should become our pro bono lawyers. Specifically, they would handle all the transactions with Mayoh, including drafting contracts and deeds, so we kept control of the process. They did superlative work over several years – work which, if done commercially, would have been billed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By late 2008 all seemed to be progressing to a satisfactory conclusion – when disaster struck!
The GFC hit and all Peter Mayoh’s financing for the project fell over! It appeared that all the effort would be wasted, but Peter was nothing if not persistent. Eventually, a new line of credit was secured from St George Bank, but funds would not start to be released until 85% of the residential units had been sold off the plan. So, again, we had to sit on our hands.
By late 2009, that threshold had been achieved and all was ready to proceed. In 2010, after three years of uncertainty, all the necessary documents were signed, and then in another piece of luck which was to characterise the entire project, a building, known as The Hat Factory, at 87 Chandos Street, directly across the road from us, became available for rent. It had a large, open production/ warehouse area which could easily be partitioned into workspaces and makeshift studios and was ideal for the station’s short-term use.
Both the original building and the temporary one were available for use, so fitting out and transfer across the road could take place over time at our convenience. We ended with the rather surreal experience of presenters broadcasting live to air from a studio in Number 76 in an otherwise completely empty building.
By May 2010, 2MBS was totally relocated and demolition and construction could proceed on the old studios. The heroes of the last phase were the technical boffins – Max Benyon, Roger Doyle and Rob Tregea, who devoted a big chunk of their lives to working with the builders and with Mayoh’s acoustic consultant on the details of the technical fit-out. Rows were frequent and, as the costs mounted well beyond Mayoh’s allowances, big meetings were held to thrash out compromises. Throughout all these difficulties, Peter Mayoh showed goodwill and a commitment to deliver a good result. Whatever the disagreements, there was never any threat on either side to resort to lawyers at ten paces.
There was one final twist. While 2MBS was getting so much
more space, there was still discontent that it was not enough to meet the ever-growing needs of the organisation and would still be very cramped. Then, like magic, out of the blue came the Kruger bequest, which would eventually amount to $3.2 million –unimaginable riches for an organisation used to living from hand to mouth. At more or less the same time, Peter Mayoh had decided not to relocate his architectural practice, but to put Lots 19 and 20 (the other ground floor commercial lots) up for sale.
The Board opted to purchase Lot 19 and David Brett was able to negotiate a price of $760,000 with Mayoh. This gave 2MBS the staff offices, CD library, dubbing booth and meeting space, resulting in the current layout of the complex.
The long-awaited move into the new offices took place in February 2013 and then gradually the studios came on line until the move into 72-76 was completed in May 2013, with the building being officially opened by the then Governor of NSW, Professor Marie Bashir at a ceremony on 1st August 2013.
Meanwhile, Peter Mayoh was still looking to sell Lot 20. Once moved in, the Board realised that it really didn’t want another business so close by. At this point our two leading technical boffins, Max Benyon and Roger Doyle, both made “living will” donations to allow David Brett to negotiate the purchase of Lot 20 for the frankly knock-down price of $290,000. This space is now the Max Benyon Room, used for social functions, seminars and meetings.
The success of the whole endeavour is confirmed by the 2020 valuation of our three lots at $3.9 million – with future capital growth guaranteed by the development of the Crows Nest area. As well as financial security, 2MBS now has the luxury – for a community organisation - of a secure, modern operating base, with room to grow. Not bad for a $65,000 investment all those years ago!
The final word must go the literally hundreds of volunteers who have given up countless hours since those early days to keep the radio station on the air, and to the thousands of listeners who have supported the station, always rallying to any cry for financial assistance, which has made this particular radio station, I believe, unique in the world. From the start the motto of 2MBS has been For Music Lovers by Music Lovers. Says it all really.
2MBS Founders and their original occupations
Trevor Jarvie English tutor
Max Benyon Electrical engineer
Charles Barton TAFE teacher
Howard Cocks Bank employee
George Cromarty Electrical engineer
Harold Downey Telecommunications engineer
Walter Dullo Chocolate maker & musicologist
David Garrett Music critic
David James Television presentation co-ordinator
Doug Keech Transport planner
Max Keogh Commercial radio programmer and presenter, TV station manager, music critic, film industry publicist, industry sector spokesperson and media lawyer
Michael Law Retired Naval officer
Gary Levin Electrical technician
Charles Noble Water Board employee (retired)
Andrew Parker Chemical plant manager
David Rumsey Organist and teacher
Neil Runcie Professor of Economics, UNSW
Lindsay Somerville Typesetting sales representative
Graeme Tait Post graduate physics student
Philip Weate Stockbroker
Grahame Wilson Technical officer - television
Colin Wrightson Bank employee
Copyright
Credit: Elizabeth Barton, David James
2MBS:
