ROYAL CHRISTMAS BROADCAST

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27213, 3 December 1953, Page 13

ROYAL CHRISTMAS BROADCAST

Complex Problems For Technicians

ale commonwealth TO BE LINKED

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 2. Details of how the Queen’s voice will be carried around the world from Auckland on Christmas Day are given by Mr Laurence Gilliam, head of B-B.C. features, in an article in the “Radio Times.” the text of which has just reached New Zealand. Mr Gilliam, who visited this country recently, says in the article that the worldwide exchange of greetings which precedes the Queen’s speech will be centred on Australia. “This new orientation of a traditional London broadcast brings many exciting consequences in its train,” he says “Technically. this year's programme presents problems of rare complexity and the radio communication experts of Australia. Britain, and New Zealand have pooled resources to do all that is humanly possible to make this intricate world-wide hookup smooth and efficient. “An idea of the technical problems behind the broadcast can be gathered from the arrangements that have been made to ensure that the Queen’s broadcast from Auckland will be heard clearly throughout the world. The Royal message will travel first by landline from Government House, Auckland, to Wellington. Wellington will send it on by five different routes—by radio-telephone to Sydney, by radiotelephone to London, by broadcast .transmitters to Sydney and to London bv Royal New Zealand Navy transmitters direct to the Admiralty, London. and across the Pacific to San Francisco. Then New York, then Sydney in its turn will send the message on by radio-telephone to London. by Radio Australia’s broadcast transmitter direct to London and also by way of Ceylon and by way of Singapore. “These radio paths across the Poles, across the oceans and continents, are the communicating veins of the Commonwealth body. If this year’s Christmas broadcast is successful, first thanks and first praise will go to the hundreds of radio men who will spend Christmas Day and many days before at lonely transmitters and relay stations, the New Zealanders at Himatangi and Waiouru Wellington and Auckland, the Australians at Melbourne Sydney and Perth, and those on duty at Singapore and Colombo, Montreal and London, and at intermediate points throughout the world. “A Team Job” /“Die production, as well as the technical, side of this year’s programme will be a team job. Alan Burgess and I have flown to Sydney to work with the A.B.C. feature team, Neil Hutchison. Mungo McCullum and John Thompson. Charles Ladbrook and Bill Perry, of the 8.8. C., will be working with Australian technicians on the production. and Reg Patrick, of the 8.8. C., will make the technical liaison with New Zealand and Australian telecommunications officers. The narrator this year will be the well-known Australian broadcaster and war historian, Chester Wilmot, and the music, too, will have an Australian flavour, for it will be written by the Australian composer, John Antilß creator of the ballet ‘Corroboree’ and played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. “The new fact about this year’s Christmas broadcast is that it will be made for the first time from outside Britain. The young Queen takes an established tradition and gives it a new summer dress. The Queen, like her New Zealand and Australian listeners, will spend this Christmas Day in the sun. After morning service, Christmas in the Antipodes becomes a day of picnics and beaches, swimming and sailing, with turkey and plum pudding still at the heart of the festival in

ean e poin? At this antipod. B rA n s and end ° ur mg to welcome the Queen with thtir rousing ?hant the haka £nder St th° ICe n- tOO, wUI be a New z ®>-' EdmundHin^:? 1 ’ 654 conqueror. Sir home nf hi - y - speaking from the from « stster in Norfolk, 20 miles o ?“ ousnman from Darwin and a Berbn all n n ’ y ?u Loder ’ formerly of Dean?’who ? 016 thousands of Eurofre?- h?m haV ? f ? und a new and Faih c “°™e m Australia. He will be r ather Christmas at a Sydnev chiltneth! R arty ’ and Australia’s greeting ?rt th r Queem w tU be sent by 10-year-old lan Paterson, a sheep shearer’s whn fr h m M udgee, New South Wales, been undergoing speech CWld?or.’ tre H tment^ t the Far West Wales Home - Manly. New South

Back to Britain, for a West Country. Mrt,M eminisc ?s? ce of the Queen’s de- ???? a mont h ago before the prooat??? ?° V ?? along the westward ?all T Qoeen’s journey. First ThL Jam , alca - tn the West Indies. u ada s greetings are flashed ; r °m Quebec, on the Atlantic, to Lynn, +? W n Northern Manitoba, the Pa , clfic coast a t Vancouver, ™d then south to the Pacific Islands an S, Tonga, where Wynford Vaughan Thomas will introduce a S??‘?? 1 s , nies 5 ag ? from Queen Salote, Uon weU ' loved visitor to the Corona-

Links with Asia ni'rk h im ter Wilmot will pass the Christmas message on northwards to New Guinea, and northwards again to Korea for messages from the Commonwealth Division and the United Nations relief workers who are helping to rebuild on the ruins of war The line runs next across Asia. Here the Christmas message takes on the accents of many races—Chinese from Hong Kong, Dyaks from Borneo, Malay, Chinese and Indian from Singapore, Hindi. Pakistani and Singhalese. Beneath the rich and strange surface, tne message is the same good news of the silent battle which the peoples of Asia are fighting, for food, health, and knowledge. “From Asia, we move south across the Indian Ocean to Cocos Island, a new junction in the Indian Ocean for A he ail ?yays linking New Zealand and Australia with South Africa and SingaR? re ; A n Australian airman speaks for the lonely community on this coral airstrip. Then westward to the islard °f Mauritius, where we are greeted by the voices of children singing a French carol and by a former sergeant of the Pioneer Corps, who fought in the Western Desert. The chain of greeting v £ngs south to Cape Town, to the top Table Mountain, where an observer describes the Christmas morning scene and recalls the Queen’s visit to South Africa with her father and mother. “Then north through Africa to Salisbury, Rhodesia. Here the news is of the new federation. From Salisbury, John Parry introduces Pat Gleeson, an Australian mine manager at Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia, Captain Flint, of the Lake Nyasa steamer, Ilala, speaking for Nyasaland. and Regimental Sergeant-Major Elijah, of the Rhodesian African Rifles, one of the African soldiers who lined the route at the Queen’s Coronation in London, and who now sends greetings to the Queen in New Zealand in the name of his fellow Rhodesians. Two more calls remain in Africa. Nigeria speaks for West Africa, and Kenya for East Africa. From Kenya we shall hear from a Kikuyu chief and then from the Treetops Hotel in the Aberdare game reserve at Nieri. the romantic bungalow in a tree where the Queen’s reign began, a description of the forest scene on Christmas morning. “Before calling on Sir Edmund Hilary in Norfolk for the final greeting, we link the Australian meteorological station at Macquarie Island, in the subAntarctic, with their fellow scientists of the British North Greenland expedition, so the family circle of the Commonwealth is complete waiting to hear the Queen’s Christmas message from New Zealand.”