In 1998 I built my first web site, a corporate brochure site for 612 ABC Brisbane, then called 4QR.

Looking back on the frames based navigation, the animated email gif, and the rather cumbersome graphics it seems somewhat naive.

I got interested in the internet while working in Alice Springs, being an early user of WorldMail, a sort of packet mail system. Alice Springs has a high technical base, in part because of the presence of Pine Gap, the satellite tracking station.

Within the corporation (or commission as it was then), we had begun to use electronic mail, in those days “All-In-One”, using dumb terminals or the old DEC Rainbow’s.

On moving to Brisbane my interest in the internet and what it could do expanded, so I taught myself HTML and CSS.

The ABC had begun building websites inn 1994, and in 1997 I inquired as to the possibility of building a website for the local metropolitan radio station, 4QR.

The business was still very much a cottage industry, and my conversation went like this:

Rae: I want to build a website for 4QR
Multimedia editor: OK I have set up http://www.abc.net.au/4qr
Rae: Do I need anything else?
Multimedia Editor: Here’s your ftp account details.

So there I was, a web developer, and in my spare time I built this first site for what became 612 ABC Brisbane.

LINKS

• Wayback Machine view of 4QR site
• Current site for 612 ABC Brisbane