by RHSQ Administration | Aug 8, 2019 | From the Archives
This plaque, from Possession Island off the tip of Cape York, commemorated Captain James Cook’s claiming of the “whole eastern coast of Australia from the Latitude of 38 degrees south” (from near Melbourne north to Cape York) in the name of the British king.
The British believed that Australia was terra nullius (empty land) whereas, in fact, human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago. People migrated by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now South-East Asia. These first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth – human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 years ago.
The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland is attributed to the Dutch. The first ship to chart the Australian coast was the Duyfken captained by Willem Janszoon in 1606. The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines during the 17th century and named the island continent “New Holland“.
Later in 1606, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, the Torres Strait islands.
Next, William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699 on a return trip.
Then in 1770, Captain James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. Cook named the tiny island off the tip of Cape York Possession Island on 22 August 1770.
In 1992 Mer (or Murray) Islander Eddie ‘Koiki’ Mabo began a fight to change Australian laws because he believed the land belonged to the Torres Strait Islanders who had lived there for thousands of years. The Mabo case ran in the High Court of Australia for over ten years.
On 3 June 1992, the High Court ruled that “terra nullius” should never have been applied to Australia. The “Mabo ruling” found that the Mer people had owned their land prior to annexation by Britain.
Native title is the legal recognition that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have rights to, and interest in, certain land because of their traditional laws and customs.
reconciliation.org.au/nrw
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38th_parallel_south
by RHSQ Administration | Jul 31, 2019 | From the Archives
Tom Elliot conducting TV experiments at the Observatory Tower, Wickham Terrace, 1937
While television broadcasting officially commenced in Queensland in 1959, Queenslanders first started experimenting with television broadcasting technology in the 1930s. Thomas Elliot was part of a group of dedicated amateur radio operators, who, in 1934, began broadcasting television signals from the Old Windmill in Brisbane’s Wickham Terrace. Elliott was an established technological pioneer, having previously been one of the first people in Queensland to register as a ham (amateur) radio operator.
The group performed demonstrations for politicians and journalists and successfully broadcast Australia’s first test transmission, which was received in ‘a cottage on the outskirts of Ipswich’. The group used the experimental radio station 4CM, which belonged to the radiologist Dr. Val McDowall. In 1935, they obtained a license permitting them to broadcast television. At the time, 4CM was the only station in Australia capable of television broadcasting. Initially, the group experimented with broadcasting still images including a picture of the American actress Janet Gaynor and pages from the Courier-Mail.
They progressed to experiments with moving images, broadcasting animated films. To widen participation, they released instructions outlining how to build receiving equipment. At its height, the group’s broadcasts were being received by roughly three-dozen people, who The Telegraph referred to as ‘televiewers’. Buoyed by this success, one commentator, quoted in a 1935 edition of The Courier-Mail, declared that ‘Australia can have television here and now if the authorities are willing to cooperate…An efficient system of low definition television could be put on the air almost immediately’.
These early experiments were brought to an abrupt halt by the outbreak of the Second World War. By the time the war ended, their time had passed, with television broadcasting coming to be regarded as largely a professional matter.
Gordon Donaldson, Tom Elliott, Ron Carter, and Peter Gorrie, early television researchers, Brisbane
See:
- “Newspaper in Television Test: Success of Brisbane Transmission.” The Courier-Mail, 10th October 1935 (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/35923566).
- “Television Here and Now: Experiments in Brisbane: Close-Up Picture.” The Courier-Mail, 28th March 1935 (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/35860209).
- Elizabeth Anne Davies. “Film, Television and the Urban Experience: A Case Study of Brisbane.” PhD diss. Griffith University, 2009 (https://www120.secure.griffith.edu.au/rch/file/f878c698-13ba-0c72-2e00-e8862d775259/1/Davies_2010_02Thesis.pdf).
- Harvey. “Claim of Queensland’s “Backroom Boys”: “We Had Television Fifteen Years Ago.” The Courier-Mail, 9th April 1949 (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49687701).
- Ipswich City Council. “When Television Came to Ipswich.” Ipswich City Council Planning and Development Update, 17th March 2014: 11 – 13 (https://www.ipswichplanning.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/11310/PDU-Edition-17.pdf).
- Simon Miller. “Brisbane Had Television in 1934.” State Library Blogs: John Oxley Library, 20th March 2019 (http://blogs.slq.qld.gov.au/jol/2019/03/20/brisbane-had-television-in-1934/).
