Hearing Australia from the Lower Mainland has been a holy grail of mine for many many years. I don't remember exactly when the thought first entered my mind but it's been a goal for almost as long as I've been DXing.
For the last two nights I've been recording 1116 kHz expecting to hear one or more of the 100 kW class transmitters in China, based on the Asian propagation of the last few days, but no Chinese audio ever materialized. The first night I heard a few hints of voice and music but nothing identifiable. Last night was different; over the course of six hours, voice did fade up numerous times but not often to an intelligible level and then not for very long, just enough for a few words to make it through, teasing me because one could often recognize it as Australian-accented English (and I've listened to enough weak signals to recognize the danger of wishful thinking). The last time I got excited about a possible Australian signal was when listening on 891 kHz. At the time I didn't know that KBBI in Homer relayed the BBC World Service during the night. A UK accent is easy to mistake for an Australian accent once it's been mangled by the ionosphere. That got me all excited until the content made me suspicious, finally confirmed that it was the BBC when they gave an ID.
Last night there was one fade-up that lasted about three minutes which happened just before the bottom of the hour. Excitement mounted as I heard three commercials in a row with a "com.au" web site, two of the commercials listed Australian phone numbers. Then came confirmation via an ID: "Brisbane's own triple-one six 4BC". Many's the time I've had to wait days for a usable ID; hearing one the first time is golden!
No doubts about the ID, and proof that Australia can be heard from the Lower Mainland despite Vancouver Island's mountains being in the way and all of our local flamethrowers blasting away. One just needs to be patient and listen on the approprate frequencies.
Interestingly, 4BC is only about 100 km further away than VOA Thailand, although the power is VERY much less: 17 kW (or is it 6.3?) versus 1 MW. A map shows that it's hard to get closer to Vancouver in Australia than Brisbane is! It must help the signal that the transmitter is on the north side of Brisbane, very close to the ocean facing Vancouver.
Technical Details: An 8x4m Pennant antenna pointing at Japan, no preamp, feeding an Icom R71a, R71a preamp on, tuned to 1116 kHz lower sideband, normal bandwidth filter. The great circle path to Brisbane is 250° azimuth, which is about 75 degrees from the direction of the Pennant's peak sensitivity (not that it matters much with a Pennant).
I'll be hanging out on 1116 for a while...