Chapter 17

There was so much background noise in the recording that it appeared to me just a garbled mess. It brought back to mind the stereo that Dad had bought once he decided that the new-fangled machine, the TV, was bloody awful. As you can imagine in far outback Queensland in the sixties the reception was abysmal. He had been in Cairns and seen the wonders of TV and then bought one and lugged it all the way back to Croydon only to find that it was potentially a waste of money. The ‘snow’ that appeared on the screen was broken occasionally with some vision of very poor quality and the occasional squawking of sound. We had a sixty-foot-high radio antenna which was used to call the RFDS and to listen to short wave radio. He was loathe to bring it down to then run up another cable with a TV antenna attached to it, but he eventually succumbed to the idea rather than admit the exorbitant price he paid for the TV had been wasted. We helped him pull it down in dead stony silence. The money he had spent was weighing heavily on his mind and fuelling his temper. We didn’t want to be around when that gas tank exploded so we helped. Mum watched from the relative safety of the veranda. She had made one comment only about the TV and Dad had showed a lot of restraint and decorum. He had turned and walked out the door and hadn’t replied. The banging and crashing from the machinery shed that ensued was enough for all of us to know that one comment was one too many.

We hauled the sixty-foot pole down to the ground, mounted the new TV antenna which had been ‘guaranteed’ to work; attached the enormous length of ribbon cable and back it went up again. There were eighteen metal guy ropes attached and each had to be tensioned all over again to get the pole perfectly vertical. This took three hours as Dad was a “sixteenth of an inch was too far out” type of person. The cable was reverently attached to the TV and ……… Dad exploded! Vague silhouettes of characters loomed in the ‘snow’ but the sound was far more distinct. We turned the channel dial and found that we needn’t have bothered. There was one station only and it was unwatchable. Mum checked the radio and luckily there was no interference and it still worked perfectly. Dad would have driven to Cairns at that point if it had ruined the radio and possibly never returned. He would have been remanded in custody pending the trial for the long slow death of a television salesman.

Tom, even at the age of only eight, was a prolific reader and he was busy reading the information details that came with the new ultra-modern VHF aerial. I wonder even now about his testosterone levels. Dad and I never read manuals. I still remember Tom’s clear shrill voice reading with expression, “Before mounting the antenna ensure that the antenna is pointing in the general direction of where the signal should be coming from.” The TV antennae guide even had a map of where the main signal should be coming from for each of the states. Some repeater stations were also included. Northern Queensland had a signal emanating from Townsville but there appeared to be no repeater station heading in our direction.

“Give me that thing,” Dad growled ripping the paper off my brother. He read it and reread it. It was the first time I had heard him swear inside the house. Mum didn’t even dare admonish him such was the tension in the room. “Right, we’ll give it one more go, and if it still doesn’t work, I’ll use the shotgun!” We hoped he’d just shoot the TV and not force us to traipse off every second week for years to come just to visit him in gaol. Laboriously we undid the guy cables and slowly lowered the offending aerial down. Dad then headed off to the machinery shed and was gone for about half an hour. Mum suspected that he had a few bottles of whisky stored up there but she never found them. He didn’t return with alcohol on his breath but a special tube in his hand. He inserted it over the stub of the bottom of the antenna pole buried in the ground. We raised the antenna slowly. Tom very dangerously asked whether Dad should check the direction. He received in return not an angry retort, but a smile.

Again, the pole was raised but this time the guy cables were not all tied and the huge pole swung precariously above us held in place by gravity a few cables and the tube. All three of us received rapid fire instructions. Mum was to watch the TV and tell us if the reception improved or not. Tom was to relay those instructions to Dad who stood at the base of the pole. My job was to clip and unclip guy cables as necessary. One look at Dad was enough for all of us to know not to ask questions. Dad put a pair of stillsons on the tube and gave the tube a twist. He looked up expectantly at Tom who checked with Mum. There was no change. I loosened off a couple of guy cables and he was able to move it around more. He indicated I should attach some other cables if we had to move it again. Still no change. The next hour and a half was a blur as the tube was moved turning the pole around with little result. I was constantly changing attaching points for cables and we three apprentices didn’t dare go to the toilet, ask for food or drink during that time. According to Dad we had turned the pole two hundred and eighty degrees. He had marked the points on the pole. It was not looking good. Suddenly there was a shout from inside and Tom came rushing over after he had spoken to Mum and checked himself. Sound was there. Still Dad would only make infinitely small adjustments. Now over 320 degrees and the sun sinking in the west, there was a scream from inside. This time Dad left his post and raced inside while I did my best to guarantee there was no movement especially of the pole falling to the ground. Dad came out yelling, “Wiggly lines, we’ve got wiggly lines!”

I wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad thing. If it was a good thing there was every chance that a salesman in Cairns was breathing a sigh of relief. Dad set to work again and as we passed 335 degrees there was a yell asking us to stop and go back a tad. I never knew what a tad was but dad must have as there was a whoop of delight from Mum and Tom. Dad and I secured all the guy cables to their new permanent fixing points and went inside to see the delights of modern technology. There in front of us was no longer snow. In clear black and white was a man reading the news. Dad turned the channel much to our horror. We thought we had lost all reception and had to start all over again. Each channel gave us snow. He turned back to the original channel and it still worked. There was great relief all round. No-one had the audacity to point out to Dad that we could have saved hours if he had turned it clockwise a few degrees instead of nearly a full circle anticlockwise. None of us was that brave or stupid.

The rest of the evening was spent tightening up all the guy cables and the pole now stood perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Mum finally made us lunner, which was lunch and dinner combined as we hadn’t had time for either. We walked back into the room that housed the TV only to find that the test pattern was on. That was boring after five minutes so we turned the TV off. The next day we sat glued at various times watching and watching. Dad got bored after a while and said what was on wasn’t worth watching. We thought he’d change his mind after a while but he never did. Of course, we didn’t tell him the time the dog chewed through the cable and Tom and I hastily and quite successfully patched it. We loved that dog and wanted it to live to a ripe old age.

Dad decide that TV wasn’t for him and the next time he went to Cairns he came back with a pile of records and a whizz bang record player with an amp and graphic equaliser that had more sliding controls than I thought existed in the whole world. Needless to say, he went to a different shop to buy the record player.

The cassette deck I was listening to had no such gimmickry attached and finally I asked Colonel Atkinson for a very powerful amp and broadband equaliser and the original recordings, explaining that every copy carries its own distortions. Up until that point I had identified six different distinct voices which I labelled A, B, C, D, E & F. I indicated there was possibly more bit there was a huge amount of static blocking it. Rather than ordering a special system in, we took the lift down to the bottommost floor. He signed us in at a door and as we walked inside, I was gobsmacked with the Aladdin’s cave of equipment that existed down there. There were three other defence personnel working in there and I was introduced to each of them. Colonel Atkinson led me to a vacant chair and said, “Lieutenant Downs this is reserved for you. Anytime you need to access this equipment you will be able to. I will make special provision for you and you will get a lift pass that allows you access to this level. You will still need to sign in.

He placed the cassette in an open slot and passed me a set of headphones. I was wrong about Dad’s amp and graphic equalizer. I had seen pictures of the mixing machines in recording studios but this one left them for dead. I pushed play and used some of the slide controls. The difference was remarkable. I was able to block out various bands of sounds and soon certain voices became very distinct. I started writing things down on a pad. Colonel Atkinson peered over my shoulder and stayed silent. As each person spoke or spoke over the top of someone, I not only wrote down the words, but what I believed was the style or mood of the speech. The recording was less than five minutes long but nearly an hour later, after a lot of pausing and replaying I had a good handle on the content of the conversation. One voice I recognised, C, the voice on the plane. The actual conversation that had been recorded was really pretty frivolous I thought, but the Colonel who had never left my side seemed very pleased. He took the transcript and we left the area and returned to floor where we both had offices. It was after knock off time by then and he thanked me before I was dismissed.

That smarmy salesman in Cairns all those years ago had led me to this place. If he hadn’t sold Dad that TV and we hadn’t had that frustrating day tuning it, Dad would never have bought the stereo he did and then showed me how it worked and how sound could be distorted and clarified. As I jogged around the lake and thought about the job I was now doing and the possible political implications that this monitoring might lead to, I wondered whether I could find that salesman. You can’t miss close up with a shotgun but a long-range rifle with my skill, well, he would be easy pickings.