February 28, 2016
A crowd of people descended on community radio station CROW-FM’s Wondai studios on Saturday morning.
The reason for the get-together was an Open Day the station was running in conjunction with the monthly Wondai Markets, which were being held across the road in Coronation Park.
Many guests came for a close-up look at the inside of the thriving community broadcaster and some – a hungry handful – came to take advantage of the free sausage sizzle running on the footpath outside.
Whatever the motivation, visitors inspected the station’s downstairs reception area, staff rooms and kitchen; then saw the upstairs studios where announcer Shaz Birkett was busy running the popular Saturday morning Garage Sale program in front of a live studio audience.
Shaz explained that with as many as 150 different items up for sale most Saturdays, the Garage Sale show was a demanding program that required announcers to be “really on the ball”.
Some also heard about the station’s ghost, which has been known to walk up and down the wooden stairwell late at night, creaking boards as it moves through the building.
And a brave few even took a trip into the basement underneath the multi-storey Haly Street studios to inspect the famous Winston Burrows Music Archives which were decorated with a spooky skeleton, cobwebs and dusty vinyl LPs.
As station manager Chris “Corky” Corcoran explained, the Archives were a place where many had gone, but slightly fewer had returned (!).
One of the aims of the Open Day was to encourage more volunteers to get involved in CROW-FM’s many activities, and another was to encourage more people to become CROW-FM members.
CROW stands for “Community Radio Of Wondai”, and the non-profit station runs under a community broadcasting licence.
The programs the station runs and many aspects of its day-to-day operations are decided by CROW-FM’s board who – in turn – are elected by the station’s members.
Membership of CROW-FM is just $10 per year for individuals or $30 for families, and anyone in the South Burnett is welcome to join.
A membership application form can be obtained from the CROW-FM website
Thanks Dafyd/SB Online for an excellent article to explain some of the basics of how not for profit community radio CROW FM works using volunteers to support to support the community they serve.