Plenty Valley FM's first broadcast was not a radio station launch in the usual sense. It was a two-day test run at the Greensborough Festival on October 3 and 4, 1987, put together by a group calling itself Outer North Eastern Community Radio. Nearly four decades later, the station that grew out of that festival stall is Melbourne's official emergency broadcaster for three council areas north of the city.
Built From a Caravan, Not a Studio
In July 1988, the fledgling station ran its first extended transmission from a mobile caravan studio, and listeners responded with roughly 400 phone calls over the course of the broadcast, an enormous response for a group that did not yet hold a broadcast licence. An October 1988 test broadcast that handed the microphone to local schools proved popular enough that it pushed multiple schools to sign on as subscribers, an early sign that the station's community-first approach would define it long after its first licence arrived.
A London Link-Up From a Primary School
One of the more unusual moments in the station's early history came in November 1988, when a test broadcast from Yarrambat Primary School included a one-hour simultaneous link with a community radio station in London. For a group still years from a permanent licence, broadcasting live alongside a station on the other side of the planet was an ambitious flex of what a volunteer-run community operation could pull off.
From Test Broadcasts to a Real Licence
The Australian Broadcasting Authority approved the station's licence application in December 1990, and Plenty Valley FM began regular scheduled programming, five hours a night on weekdays and extended hours on weekends. The station operated out of Yarrambat Primary School until the site was compulsorily acquired in the late 1990s, forcing a move to its current home on Childs Road in Mill Park in 1999.
Built for Emergencies From the Start
The idea of serving as an emergency information outlet was not an afterthought bolted onto the station later, it emerged directly out of those early test broadcasts, when organisers first proposed the station could inform the community during a civic emergency. That proposal became a permanent role, and Plenty Valley FM is now the designated Emergency Services Broadcaster for the City of Banyule, Nillumbik Shire and the City of Whittlesea, a responsibility few small community stations anywhere are entrusted with.
A Festival Stall That Became Critical Infrastructure
Few community radio stations can trace an unbroken line from a two-day festival test broadcast to an official emergency communications role covering three local government areas. Plenty Valley FM's path there ran through a caravan, a primary school, a transcontinental radio link and nearly forty years of volunteer commitment, and it now serves Melbourne's Outer North East as both a local music and talk station and a piece of genuine civic infrastructure.