Commenting on my recent post about butterflies, David said, I’m sure you’ve probably answered this before in a previous post so please feel free to direct me to it, but how did you get started in radio? Was it something you always wanted to do?
I don’t know that I have ever talked about my start in radio on The Journey so here is as good a place as any.
It is certainly something that I have always wanted to do. Growing up I’d be glued to the radio listening both to the music and the announcers. We lived in a timber and asbestos home. Our block was on a slope and so the stumps that the house sat on were higher at the back than the front. This gave me a great little place under the back of the house to set up my own radio station.
I saved like crazy for quite some time to buy a radio with a microphone attached. I then set it up under the house and ran wire to the front of the house where I placed a speaker. Instant radio station. Later on I was given a reel to reel tape recorder and I moved my radio station to the front verandah. I had recorded a dozen or so songs from the radio and would play them repeatedly, stopping the tape and announcing the songs after each one. If I remember I actually had a network of two stations, 6GR and 6GL. I used about three or four different names and accents so that I could have more than one announcer at my two stations. I also enlisted some school friends at times to fill a shift here and there.
Years later, after becoming a qualified chef and then working at a couple of other unrelated jobs, I went to 98.5 Sonshine FM and asked if I could try out as an announcer. That was in 1988 and the station had only been on-air for a month or so. I did a quick voice test, a few weeks training, and was then given a short, late night shift on a Sunday. Over the next few months I started doing Saturday nights, then earlier shifts on both Saturdays and Sundays.
After a year of doing part time work on weekends and a few fill-in shifts during the week here and there, I was taken on full time. I worked at Sonshine FM for 10 years before taking long service leave. At that point I left and started working at The Bible Society as the Bike for Bibles Coordinator for Western Australia. During my time in that job I still did the occasional weekend and fill in shift. After 5 years in that position it was time to return to radio. I’ve been back for around 11 months and I couldn’t be happier.
I know that’s a fairly long post but it’s still a very short history of my entry into radio.
I’m very interested in hearing about other journeys. Did you ‘play’ at what you were later to become? Did you steal money from other children and later on become a banker? (Sorry, just kidding.) Did you have a fascination with pulling things apart and putting them back together and now you’re a mechanic? Did you pretend to cut your friends’ hair and now you’re a hairdresser? I’d love to hear your story.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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Fasinating. You always hear about people growing up with a passion and then following through with it when they get older. I think there’s definitely something we can all learn from that.
Great story, thanks for answering my question.