We’d like to also celebrate and thank all our volunteers, as today falls during National Volunteer Week 2009!

We were very proud to celebrate our 14th birthday on 17 May at the Peregian Originals. We also had the official launch of our 2nd CD, Noosa Sound Waves 2, a double CD album. (If you’d like to buy a copy, call us at the station and you’ll also get a free subscription to 101.3!)

We’re even prouder still to have since received this email from one of our earliest members, who was instrumental in getting the concept of 101.3FM community radio off the ground:

“Hi Mark and the FM101.3 team,
This afternoon my partner Sue and I went down to Peregian to the Community Radio 14th birthday celebration. It was great to see the number and range of people and the energy of the volunteers and the performers. I have to admit, it brought a tear to my eye.
In 1985, when Mike Prenzler and I got together with an equally enthusiastic group of volunteers and managed to convince the federal government and many of our colleagues in commercial radio to support the development of a community radio station here in Noosa, we weren’t sure where it would end up. In some ways, like many similar initiatives, we thought that perhaps it was a dream.
It is a little known fact that those first training sessions were undertaken on equipment donated by commercial FM stations in Brisbane and much of the training was undertaken by commercial radio volunteers here in Noosa and imported up from Brisbane.
Fortunately we were very successful at raising money and donations of equipment so, despite a few setbacks and a period of inactivity in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, 14 years ago, Barry Charles, Andrew Tucker and their team were handed sufficient assets and funding to pull it off!……….and so today in Peregian, we see the journey continuing!
Today was a fantastic tribute to everyone who has built and maintained the station. The station’s demographically diverse audience needs FM101.3… our community is running a serious risk of losing touch with reality and with people of all backgrounds, persuasions and interests. Keep up the fight against the mono-culture!
Please pass on my congratulations and best wishes for another 14 years.
Regards
Peter Bycroft

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