Pioneering the Australian Web.

Colin Dixon · 40+ years building practical technology in Australia, from PDP-10s and 56k dial-up servers to drones and modern AI.

See the Journey ↓Make a short link

Colin Dixon in Mallacoota — Colin Dixon · Mallacoota, Victoria

The Journey: A 40+ Year Timeline

Four decades of practical problem solving, education, and computing in regional Australia.

The 1970s

The Foundation

The journey began in the late 1970s during my Physics degree. My first encounter with computing was with a true mainframe, a DEC PDP-10. Programming was a tactile, manual process involving card readers and clunky line editors on a terminal. To even get the machine started, one often had to manually type in a bootstrap routine. The new PDP-11, called a "mini computer," was physically much smaller but more powerful.

In my third year, that PDP-11 provided a moment of magic. It self-booted one day to reveal two games hidden on its massive 12-inch hard drive: the legendary text adventure Zork and the classic Moon Lander. Moving beyond the pure calculation of my Fortran and Pascal studies to interactive entertainment sparked a lifelong passion for technology’s vast potential.

The 1980s

Education and Entrepreneurship

My first teaching job at Rockhampton Grammar School in 1980 put me in charge of a classroom with a PDP-11 and eight terminals. After moving to Shepparton, with no official computing curriculum in Victoria, the pioneering class I taught was officially "typing", but in reality I taught classes of up to 30 students the fundamentals of BASIC. The eight Commodore 64s I won for the school were a huge boost. Personally, I owned a BBC Micro with a far more structured BASIC.

This deep involvement in the personal computer boom, plus work as a specialist consultant for BBC Microcomputer networks, culminated in launching my own business in 1986: Veritas Computers in Albury. The retail outlet thrived until the economic downturn of the early 1990s prompted a shift to solo consulting.

The 1990s

Pioneering the Australian Internet

Inspired by America Online, I registered OZOL (AusOnline) and began hosting websites from a Compaq SystemPro 486 server over a 56k dial-up line with a dedicated IP. Before Google, we used AltaVista. Before social media, we had IRC, ICQ, and Bulletin Boards. I built early databases for real estate clients and hand-coded the first HTML pages in text editors, most notably the iconic Australian-made HotDog Editor.

As business grew, the operation moved to Dragnet, an early Albury-based ISP, and connected to their T1 line. Looking back, Australian internet technology has come an extraordinary distance.

The 2000s

Evolution to Service Broker

The business evolved into a technology broker as ServiceBroker.com.au. Tools like Microsoft FrontPage made WYSIWYG editing easier, and we built solutions with ASP databases and client portals.

In 2026 Service Broker was reactivated, because there is a real need again: helping businesses and households cut their tech, subscription and running costs. Visit servicebroker.com.au.

This was also an era of recognising the value of digital real estate. The domain oze.com.au once drew a $15,000 offer (I countered with $25k, but no sale). That valuable three-letter property now powers new projects like music.oze.au.

The 2010s

Mobile Consulting and Teaching

The decade began with a memorable year in the Kimberley. In 2010, I spent 10 months at Derby District High School as the ITAS, teaching Literacy and Numeracy to 55 Year 10–12 Aboriginal students. With sporadic attendance, I had time to become the school’s internal relief teacher, help with a full network upgrade, and raid the computer graveyard to return two dozen written-off computers to classrooms. This broke some rules and was not popular with administration once they discovered I was a systems administrator!

The rest of the decade was spent as a mobile consultant from a caravan, travelling Australia, following the weather for windsurfing, and taking casual maths teaching assignments. Staying connected from remote places like Ningaloo Reef was a constant challenge, as documented in our 2012 remote internet case study.

Read the 2012 Remote Internet Case Study →

The 2020s

Resilience, Reinvention and the AI Frontier

After settling in Mallacoota in 2018, the major bushfires of 2020 became a pivotal moment. I started Dronecraft to document the community recovery. The COVID shutdown that followed lasted effectively two years; many small businesses were lost and many are still recovering.

Now, with things looking up, the AI explosion has reignited that original pioneering spirit. With new domains like dixon.au, oze.au, and ozol.au secured, it feels like the early days of the web all over again.

Shortener v2