2Max FM streams community radio from Narrabri in New South Wales, built on a listener-driven mix of country, folk, rock and decades of pop hits. It is free to listen right now, anywhere in the world, no account required.
Started By a Public Meeting, Built Through a Decade of Setbacks
2Max FM exists because a group of locals decided Narrabri Shire needed its own station and simply organized one. Narrabri Shire Community Radio Inc. was founded following public meetings in March 1993, and the station's first broadcast went to air on September 3, 1993, running for just one week, according to the station's own account of its history. What followed was years of regulatory limbo rather than a straightforward path to full-time broadcasting. The old Australian Broadcasting Authority granted the fledgling station special extensions to cover flood emergencies in 1995 and 1996 and the 1997 bushfires, but a competing license application in the Shire forced 2Max to share airtime, one month on, one month off, with a rival applicant starting in 1999. It took until November 2000 for 2Max to finally win its own full-time broadcast license outright.
A Signal That Covers a Genuine Rural Footprint
From a transmitter broadcasting 10 kilowatts off the top of Mount Dowe, 2Max FM reaches well beyond Narrabri itself, covering Wee Waa, Coonabarabran, Gunnedah and Moree across the wider Narrabri Shire. Programming leans heavily on country music, the most played genre on the station, alongside folk, rock, classical and decades-spanning pop, a lineup the station adjusts based on regular listener surveys rather than a fixed corporate format.
Broadcasting From Gamilaroi Country
Narrabri's name comes from the Gamilaroi language, with possible meanings including "snake place" or "big creek," reflecting the deep Aboriginal history of a region the Gamilaroi people called home long before European settlement, according to Wikipedia's entry on the town. The town was proclaimed in 1860, built initially on wool and cattle, before the arrival of the railway cemented it as a regional trading hub and commercial cotton growing transformed the Namoi Valley economy starting in 1961. Just south of town lies the Pilliga Forest, the largest remnant temperate forest left in eastern Australia, a vast stretch of bushland that still shapes the character of the Shire 2Max FM broadcasts across.
How to Listen
2Max FM streams free on Radio Shuffle. Press play above for community radio built by locals, for a region with deep Gamilaroi roots in the New South Wales outback.