Nhill Aeradio Station

Here is the second of the Wimmera Culture Victoria stories – 'Nhill Aeradio Station: navigating safely'.

The Nhill Aeradio Station building

In the largely flat, expansive landscape surrounding the town of Nhill in the Wimmera,the Aeradio beacon tower was a prominent landmark.

The Nhill Aeradio Station was a part of a vital national network established in 1938 to provide critical communications and navigation support for an increasing amount of civil aircraft. Situated at the half-way point of a direct air-route between Adelaide and Melbourne, Nhill was an ideal location for an aeradio station and was one of seventeen such facilities originally built across Australia and New Guinea by Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd (AWA) under contract from the Commonwealth Government.

After the station became operational in 1938, planes flying between Adelaide and Melbourne were frequently diverted to land at Nhill in the event of bad weather at one of the capital city airports, and grounded aircraft also stopped for refueling immediately adjacent to the Aeradio Station.

The Station was equipped with state-of-the-art communications equipment, much of which was designed and built in Australia by AWA. Transmitters and receivers worked on the high-frequency range, and operators communicated with airline pilots via microphone or, when atmospheric conditions created high levels of interference,via morse-key. Nhill’s identification was “NH Nhill”.

The Nhill station had a separate Power House for its generators, designed and built to a standard specification.
The Lorenz Beacon was the centre-piece of the navigation system at the station. Originally, the beacon was mounted on top of a steel tower, but this created problems with electric static and the steel tower was soon replaced with a wooden structure.

The Lorenz RadioRange aural beacon was replaced in 1952 with a VAR Visual Aural Range beacon.
When a new VHF communication network at Mt William in the Grampians rendered it obsolete, the Nhill station was decommissioned.

The new radio navigation beacon from the station verandah

Today,the station building is the Nhill Apex Clubrooms on the western boundary of the Aerodrome. The adoption of the building by the Apex Club was critical in preventing its likely demolition after the closure of the Aeradio facility in 1971.

The building survives today in remarkably original condition, and current work is being undertaken by the Nhill Aviation Heritage Centre group to restore the Aeradio Building and interpret its story as part of a local aviation museum.

 See the full story, archival photographs, and video at the Culture Victoria site.