Triple H Community Radio to star in national breakfast program

Community radio station Triple H, which broadcasts from its studio in Horsham, will be host to the country-wide morning program Good Morning Country every Thursday morning.

Long-time Triple H announcer and volunteer Heather Farrell will lead the morning broadcast, something she said she was keen, if not nervous, to begin.

"When I first started I thought if I was lucky there would be 30 people listening in Horsham," she said.

"It was a program that I listened to every morning. Generally, I am out on a walk with the radio in my pocket.

"So I threw my hat into the ring to see what bounces. I was fully expecting a 'don't come Monday'."

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The Good Morning Country Program is part of the Community Radio Network, a service community radio stations, like Triple H, can use to fill in gaps that their regular presenters cannot fill.

Many stations use the program for their breakfast broadcast, which runs from 5am to 9pm.

Good Morning Country Program presenter and community radio veteran Kevin Walsh has been in Horsham for the past week as part of the group's partnership with Triple H - helping Ms Farrell learn the ropes of national radio.

Mr Walsh, who broadcasts out of Taree in New South Wales, has hosted the morning program on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays ever since the onset of the pandemic.

He said he was looking forward to handing the reigns of the program to Ms Farrell.

"When she put her name forward I could have said, alright we are going to do this over the phone, but then I thought 'that is not very fair'," he said.

"By the time I leave, she will be right to go each Thursday by herself. That is mainly why I wanted to do this one-on-one."

Alongside the new appointment, Triple H's studios have received a tech upgrade to operate the new broadcast.

Mr Walsh said he hoped the new equipment and platform would bring in more Horsham youth who had an interest in radio and music.

"I think they have a wonderful setup here. It has come with a lot of hard work, but any good community radio station is manned by good people and people who are passionate, and that is what appears here.

"By this going national, younger ones might get the interest.

"One of the things I like to do when I go to towns is to go to high schools or Lions Clubs and speak about my experiences. I was told 'you will never get a paid job on community radio, it is all volunteer'. Well, now I am on a salary.

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"But I gave a lot of hours doing it for nothing, and I wasn't afraid to do work experience. Don't ever say no. If someone says 'do you want to fill in and do that?', go ahead and do it."

The new program was also a validation of all the hard work put in by the Triple H team during the pandemic, which disrupted much of the studio's day-to-day work.

Ms Farrell said the station had received many latter of support for its work during the pandemic.

"COVID has stressed to us just how important we actually are. We received so many letters from people during COVID who were totally locked up and the last thing they wanted to hear was Dan Andrews in the press conferences every morning, the last thing they wanted to hear was how many people died," she said.

"There were people who were locked in their houses and didn't see daylight for weeks. The number of people who contacted us and said thank you, you have saved me, we get up in the morning we put on Triple H and we zone out."

"That is absolutely blown us away, the people who have contacted us."

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