How Bruce the cockie nearly brought a radio station undone

For a part of the world that’s used to dealing with cyclones, floods and heatwaves – who’d have guessed it would be a bunch of rogue cockatoos that nearly brought the local community radio station undone?

Certainly one of the more amusing radio stories of the week came from Far North Queensland, where 101.5 Douglas FM broadcast technician Bryan Bergman had been left scratching his head.

Last year, the station began experiencing random power reductions.

“Our transmitter would drop in power by about 100 times,” Bryan told 3AW Afternoons host Tony Moclair yesterday.

Bryan noticed a pattern. The power reductions would happen after rain. Local listeners would report that the reception had gone scratchy.

Bryan would head up to the transmitter site, reset it and power it back up. Job done? Not quite.

“I started worrying,” says Bryan. “I’m thinking, OK – there’s something else going on here.”

So a team of climbers was sent in to investigate.

Sure enough, some hungry cockies had been chewing on the cabling leading to the station’s FM antenna.

The cables became exposed, meaning each time there was heavy rain, the whole system would go into a ‘fault’ state. And our feathered friends were the culprits.

Unusual? Not really.

“You’d be surprised how often this happens,” Bryan laughs. “In the mysterious tech world of radio, we have a lot of things to contend with. Cockatoos are one of them!”

The Community Broadcasting Foundation came to the rescue via a $12,000 Quick Response Grant, enabling the station to fix the damage, and (hopefully) keep the cockies at bay.

As part of application process, the station was asked if it could supply a photo of the cockies on the tower.

Well, no. So an image of said cockie was created – for illustrative purposes only, of course!

Affectionately named Bruce, as you can see, he’s got a beer in a stubby holder. After all, it gets hot up there. A man’s gotta drink.

Images supplied by Bryan Bergman at Douglas FM and the Community Broadcasting Foundation.