About Trax FM

Trax FM

Trax FM is the community radio station of Port Pirie, broadcasting on 105.1 FM to South Australia's Mid North from its transmitter at The Bluff. Run entirely by volunteers under Pirie Community Radio Broadcasters Incorporated, it has been a fixture of the region since the mid-1990s, moving from temporary licences and makeshift studios — the TAFE, a railway station waiting room, railway carriages, the railway Signal Box — to full-time broadcasting in December 2004. With the slogan "Part of Your Community, Part of Your Life," it programs music, sport, news and non-English-language programs 24 hours a day, reaching from Jamestown to Whyalla and across to Port Augusta.

Overview

Trax FM is a community radio station in the classic Australian mould: volunteer-presented, locally governed, and programmed for the community it serves rather than for advertisers. Its schedule is a mosaic of specialist music programs — country, easy listening, rock, jazz, swing, German music, Filipino radio, Aussie music — alongside community-service staples like the Sunday-night Radio Reading program, local sport broadcasts and outside broadcasts from community events. The station's coverage area is the Mid North: Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Whyalla, Jamestown, Wallaroo, Moonta, Redhill and Lochiel. Contactable at 251 The Terrace, Port Pirie (PO Box 887), phone (08) 8633 2111, it is listed with the SAcommunity directory and streams online. For the Mid North, Trax FM is the community's own voice on the dial — local, live and, as its tagline puts it, "lovin' it."

History

The Trax FM story begins in March 1993, with a public meeting upstairs at the BH Club in Port Pirie, chaired by Mayor Denis Crisp — who would later host his own programme on the station — to test interest in establishing a community radio station. The Station Manager of Coast FM attended and addressed the meeting, explaining what community radio was all about. At the meeting's end, a list of names formed a steering committee for a new organisation in Port Pirie. In July 1993 an incorporated body was registered: Pirie Community Radio Broadcasters Incorporated — the legal entity that still holds the station today.

With incorporation came the ability to obtain temporary broadcast licences, and Trax FM's early years were a tour of Port Pirie's spare spaces: the TAFE, the pottery building at the High School, the old railway station waiting room, railway carriages on the platform, and finally the Signal Box in the railway yards. It is a history familiar to community stations everywhere — broadcasting from wherever would have them, held together by volunteer enthusiasm.

The station applied for a permanent licence in 2002, and the news arrived in characteristically community-radio fashion: the team was notified while broadcasting at the Smelters Picnic in 2002 that the permanent licence had been granted — callsign 5TRX, on-air identification Trax FM. At 1.30 pm on Monday 13 December 2004 the new Bluff transmitter was switched on, the late Graham Bell presented the first programme, and Trax FM as it is known today was born — receivable from Jamestown to Whyalla and as far north as 70 kilometres north of Port Augusta on the road to Coober Pedy.

The studios moved with the station's growth: from the Signal Box in 2010 to Wandearah Road in the old council works office then owned by the TAFE, and in May 2015 to the current home in the greyhound building at Phoenix Park. Along the way, as the station's own history puts it, there has been "a lot of fun, hard work, many many outside broadcasts and of course many presenters who are no longer with us." The station's self-description — "truly part of your community" — is earned across three decades of volunteer broadcasting.

Programming

Trax FM's program grid is a celebration of volunteer radio's eclecticism. Specialist music programs include Good Morning Country, Blast from the Past Brekkie, AM on FM, Monday with Macca, New Millenium Music, Vietnam Vets, Easy Listening, Night Tunes, One O'Clock Rock, Top of the Pops, Aussie Music Weekly, German Music, Country Jukebox, Spotlight, Hot Sweet and Jazzy, Let The Bands Play, Australian Made Music, Awesome Eighties, Zara's Music Mix, Classic Country, Back in Black, Baby Boomers, 45 RPM Side A and B, Raised on Rock, Real World Gardener, Sensational Seventies, Rock on Saturdays, Smooth Saturdays, Tecka's Tracks, Countryfolk Australia, Golden Oldies, Radio Filipino, Swinging Sixties — and the Sunday-night Radio Reading program.

The Radio Reading program, broadcast every Sunday night at 7 pm, is a partnership with the volunteer Port Pirie group Paper Talk, whose readers have been recording and posting out readings for over 25 years; since July 2019 their readings have aired on Trax FM, with readings from the Adelaide Sunday Mail filling in when Paper Talk is in recess. Sport is a major commitment: the station broadcasts local soccer from the Sports Precinct facilities, and the Australia Day awards and speeches each January are carried live — a service that became especially important during COVID attendance restrictions, when listeners unable to attend could hear the speeches from a wide range of guests.

The outside-broadcast tradition runs deep. In 2017, Whyalla Community Brass asked Trax FM to broadcast a celebration concert live from the Middleback Theatre in Whyalla; the station travelled north, sorted the technical issues with theatre staff, and put the event to air, with Gordon MacKenzie — producer of the networked program "Let The Bands Play" — travelling from Melbourne to compere. The performing bands included the Whyalla Secondary Schools Stage Band, Samaritan College Band, Whyalla Community Brass joined by the Port Lincoln City Band, the Kadina–Wallaroo–Moonta band, Marion City Band from Adelaide and the Royal Australian Navy Band (Adelaide) — segments later played Australia-wide on "Let The Bands Play." It is community radio at its most literal: the station as the region's stage.

Coverage and Audience

Trax FM transmits on 105.1 MHz from The Bluff near Port Pirie, with coverage spanning the Mid North: Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Whyalla, Jamestown, Wallaroo, Moonta, Redhill and Lochiel — a radius of roughly 110 kilometres. Its audience is the Mid North's community-radio listeners: the volunteers' families and neighbours, the country-music devotees, the easy-listening audience, the multicultural communities served by the non-English-language programs, the print-disabled listeners of the Radio Reading program, and the sports fans who tune in for local broadcasts. In a region also served by commercial stations 5AU and 5CS and by ABC North and West SA, Trax FM's point of difference is its hyper-localism: no network feed, no syndicated announcers — just Port Pirie people talking to Port Pirie people.

Ownership

Trax FM is owned and operated by Pirie Community Radio Broadcasters Incorporated (ABN 62 763 780 505), the not-for-profit community organisation registered in July 1993. The station holds a community broadcasting licence from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (callsign 5TRX). It is run entirely by volunteers — presenters, technicians, administrators and fundraisers — under the governance of the incorporated association. As a community licensee it operates under the Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice, with the obligations to community access, participation and localism that the licence entails.

Digital Presence

Trax FM maintains an official website at traxfm.org.au — the row's listed website — with its history, community engagement and program information, and streams its 105.1 FM service online for listeners beyond the Bluff transmitter's reach. The station is listed on Australian radio directories and streaming aggregators, and its social channels promote programs and outside broadcasts. For a station that began in a railway signal box with temporary licences, the digital present — a permanent licence, a Bluff transmitter, a website and a stream — is the payoff of three decades of volunteer persistence. Trax FM's own history ends its account with the line that is also its mission statement: "We are truly 'Part of Your Community.'"