Radio Ballyvaughan in north County Clare was
first heard at Easter
April 1966. It was first reported as broadcasting from 9am to 1pm on Sundays
on 300m medium wave covering the Galway Bay area of North Clare and South Galway. By September newspapers
were reporting that it was on air from 10am to 1pm and then from 3 to 5pm. In
a letter to the Irish Press on Wednesday September 14th, a ‘Mr. R.C. of Bansha’
wrote that,
“Over
the past few days I have been picking up weak signals from two Irish 'pirate'
stations. The first was heard on the high-frequency end of the 80 metre band
around 3.8 megacycles. Transmissions from this station begin at about 3.0 p.m.
(Irish time) and close at 6.15. Programme consists of records, including many
Irish ballads, Country and Western music, and the closing announcement states
that 'the mini station is now going off the air'. "The second 'pirate' was
logged on 300 metres from 10 a.m. till 1p.m., and also from 3pm till 5p.m. Here
the programmes consist of 'pop' I records and many of the Irish showbands are
featured, together with the relay of news. from RTE. The station identification
is frequently given, but I was unable to comprehend it due to weak signal and
noise level".
In a second letter to the
same newspaper, a ‘B.K., Galway’ identifies the 300-metre station as Radio Ballyvaughan, with
an address at Main Street, Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare.
Their programmes consisted of pop records and
showband music and crudely relayed Radio Eireann’s hews headlines at the top of
each hour. According to an article in the Clare Champion in 1989, the station
was operated by student Gerry Wallace from Lisnard. In
an obituary on a local school master Mattie Bermingham in 2019 on the
Ballyvaughan/Fanore GAA club page, it filled in more of the story as Gerry has
been a student of the former headmaster,
‘his
(Master Bermingham) infectious enthusiasm was transmitted to one of his pupils,
Gerry Wallace of Lower Street[1], Ballyvaughan. From 4.00pm
each afternoon, Gerry and his friends began transmitting Radio Goaleen from
their 'studio' located at Low Street, to the wider Galway Bay area. Records
(LPs) such as those received from Ben Dolan (Salthill, Galway), an older
brother of Joe Dolan; then a Mullingar teenager, could be heard across the
airwaves on both sides of Galway Bay, as a teenage audience discarded their
school-books and exercises for the following day; to tune into their own radio
station.’
In a 2012 news item in
the Clare Champion[2] it reported,
‘a
recent visitor to Ballyvaughan was Gerard Wallace formerly of Lisanard,
Ballyvaughan and now resident in Dublin. In the 1960’s as a teenager and a
student of the Ballyvaughan Vocational School, he built one of the finest radio
stations in the West of Ireland and called it Radio Goaleen. Needless to say,
it was eventually closed by the Postmaster General in Galway.’
When the golden period of
pirate radio ended in Ireland in 1988, one of the franchises awarded was to
Galway Bay FM[3]
run by Gerry Rabbitte. He would later sell his station but remain in radio purchasing
Highland Radio based in Donegal from businessman Denis O’Brien. Speaking about
his love of radio, it was reported that,
‘As a teenager, he heard the
scratchy broadcasts of a pirate radio station transmitting into Galway from
Ballyvaughan. The ambitious Gerry found someone to drive him out to the place
where the weak signal was coming from. He discovered a shed at the back of a
house where the broadcaster had rigged up a mast “like a goalpost with a hanger
at the top”. Gerry says he had to “see how the thing worked” and was fascinated
with the ingenuity of it all.’[4]
Radio Goaleen/Radio Ballyvaughan was a pioneer in the
west of Ireland in 1966, when Radio Caroline was dominated the airwaves from
the seas around Britain and Ireland. Ahead of its time, Gerry and his friends
proved there was an appetite for an alternative to Radio Eireann and a demand
for local radio.
[1] Lower Main Street
[2] Friday August 10th 2012
[3][3]
Originally known as Radio West
[4]
https://www.writeeditblog.com/single-post/2018/02/08/gerry-thats-a-great-radio-station
