Early Australian Amateur Radio Callsigns

Ever wondered how the Australian amateur radio prefix VK came about?

According to "History of Australian Radio Callsigns" by K3HZ, Dave, it came from a block of prefixes beginning with the letter V, assigned to British Commonwealth countries in 1912 to commemorate the death of Queen Victoria.

The block VH - VK was allocated to Australia but these were not assigned to Australian amateurs until 1928.

1910, after representations by the WIA, the then Postmaster General's Department began issuing experimental licenses. These used a three letter call beginning with X and did not differentiate between states until 1912 when these three
letter calls were broken up into blocks according to state.

VK Callsigns