Some of them operated only during certain hours, say between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. When the owner went to bed, he or she would plug the home phone line into the BBS and leave it there until morning. Others ran 24 hours a day, but the busiest times were always at night.
Of course it wasn't just intellectual stimulation some users were after. Visitors often sought identity as much as ideas. On an electronic bulletin board, you could create a personality, mould it into shape and make it your own. Age and appearance did not matter. Technical aptitude did. Any spotty, gawky teenage boy could instantly transform himself into a suave, graceful BBS character. The transformation began with the choice of name. In real life, you might be stuck with the name Elliot Dingle—an appellation chosen by your mother to honour a long-dead great uncle. But on a BBS, well, you could be Blade Runner, Ned Kelly or Mad Max. Small wonder that, given the choice, many teenage boys chose to spend their time in the world of the BBS.
Generally, once a user chose a handle, as the on-line names are known, he stuck with it. All his electronic mail came to an account with that name on it. Postings to bulletin boards were signed with it. Others dwelling in the system world knew him by that name and no other. A handle evolved into a name laden with innate meaning, though the personality reflected in it might well have been an alter ego. And so it was that characters like The Wizard, Conan and Iceman came to pass their time on BBSes like the Crystal Palace, Megaworks, The Real Connection and Electric Dreams.
What such visitors valued about the BBS varied greatly. Some wanted to participate in its social life. They wanted to meet people like themselves—bright but geeky or misanthropic people who shared an interest in the finer technical points of computers. Many lived as outcasts in real life, never quite making it into the `normal' groups of friends at school or uni. Though some had started their first jobs, they hadn't managed to shake the daggy awkwardness which pursued them throughout their teen years. On the surface, they were just not the sort of people one asked out to the pub for a cold one after the footy.
But that was all right. In general, they weren't much interested in footy anyway.
Each BBS had its own style. Some were completely legitimate, with their wares—all legal goods—laid out in the open. Others, like The Real Connection, had once housed Australia's earliest hackers but had gone straight. They closed up the hacking parts of the board before the first Commonwealth government hacking laws were enacted in June 1989. Perhaps ten or twelve of Melbourne's BBSes at the time had the secret, smoky flavour of the computer underground. A handful of these were invitation-only boards, places like Greyhawk and The Realm. You couldn't simply ring up the board, create a new account and login. You had to be invited by the board's owner. Members of the general modeming public need not apply.
The two most important hubs in the Australian underground between 1987 and 1989 were named Pacific Island and Zen. A 23-year-old who called himself Craig Bowen ran both systems from his bedroom.
Also known as Thunderbird1, Bowen started up Pacific Island in 1987 because he wanted a hub for hackers. The fledgling hacking community was dispersed after AHUBBS, possibly Melbourne's earliest hacking board, faded away. Bowen decided to create a home for it, a sort of dark, womb-like cafe bar amid the bustle of the BBS bazaar where Melbourne's hackers could gather and share information.
His bedroom was a simple, boyish place. Built-in cupboards, a bed, a wallpaper design of vintage cars running across one side of the room. A window overlooking the neighbours' leafy suburban yard. A collection of PC magazines with titles like Nibble and Byte. A few volumes on computer programming. VAX/VMS manuals. Not many books, but a handful of science fiction works by Arthur C. Clarke. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A Chinese-language dictionary used during his high school Mandarin classes, and after, as he continued to study the language on his own while he held down his first job.
The Apple IIe, modem and telephone line rested on the drop-down drawing table and fold-up card table at the foot of his bed. Bowen put his TV next to the computer so he could sit in bed, watch TV and use Pacific Island all at the same time. Later, when he started Zen, it sat next to Pacific Island. It was the perfect set-up.