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| Can’t help
that sinking feeling By Barry Rollings Volume 50, No. 1, February 8, 2007 |
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A page of Australian history closed and the skyline of Canberra’s Belconnen district was forever changed with the December 20 removal of the three 183m low-frequency towers at the Navy Transmitting Station in Lawson. In the 67 years since their introduction to service, including the tumultuous years of World War II, who knows what messages of international importance were conveyed via the Belconnen landmark? In 1956 it passed the results of the Melbourne Olympic Games to a waiting world audience. The removal of the towers was approved by the Minister for Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell in January, 2006. Approval for the towers’ removal was subject to Defence following a strict range of approval conditions to protect the site’s environment and heritage values. The towers were taken down by controlled fall. Selected guy wires on each tower were severed using small cutting charges at ground anchor points, allowing each tower to fall over in a planned direction. They will be cut up and removed for recycling except for one tower segment which will be retained on site for a possible future static display. The building and some of the major equipment will be retained for heritage purposes. At its peak BNTS had 38 high-frequency transmitters and apart from the large towers, had about 44 other antennae. When built in the late 1930s, Canberra was chosen because it was considered less vulnerable to invasion than other British Empire wireless stations in the Pacific. Plans were approved in 1938, work began the same year and 30 naval ratings arrived in March 1939 to operate and guard the receiver and transmitting stations. Officially opened on April 20, 1939, BNTS made its first operational transmission on December 22, 1939. The towers were removed because they were no longer operational, their retention would incur considerable cost to taxpayers and their removal was deemed the safest option as they continued to age and degrade. |
