The Argonauts Club, which was broadcast on ABC Radio between 1941 and 1972, was by far Australia's most popular radio programme for children in the pre and early-television era. The club had run briefly in Melbourne in 1933-34 and was revived as a national programme in 1941, as much to encourage comradeship at a time of war as to entertain. The club continued well into peacetime and unlike many of its contemporaries, lasted well into the first two decades of television. By 1950 there were over 50 000 Club members.

The Club, which encouraged children's contributions of writing, music, poetry or art, ran six days a week for 28 years, until it was broadcast only on Sundays, and was finally discontinued in 1972. In many Australian households with Baby Boomer children, it became a ritual to turn on the family radio at 5pm each weekday and tune to the local ABC station and listen to the hourly Argonauts Club broadcast.

The programme followed a regulat format - first up there was a serial for eight-to-ten year olds about Mouse, Auntie Bunn and the Muddle-Headed Wombat. That was followed by a different talk segment for each day of the week. On Mondays, the guest was Tom the Naturalist (natural history); Tuesdays, Phidias (visual arts); Wednesdays, Argus, and later Icarus (on writing and literature); and Thursdays, Mr Melody Man (music). The format on Fridays was quite different, with a readers’ contribution section called the Argosy, and a segment in which the ‘personalities’ were abruptly foolish and funny for ten minutes a week. A serial for ‘older children’ ended each night’s programme.

If the character's names sound rather strange, that is because the whole programme was based on the idea that it took children on a "voyage" of adventure and exploration every day, in the way that the Jason, a hero of Greek mythology, led the Argonauts on adventures. The members of ‘the team’, as those who had parts in the broadcast called themselves, were given names from Greek mythology. Mac, the leader of the presenters, was known as ‘Jason’.

The idea of the Argonauts’ Club was that each child should participate, but that each should remain anonymous. Each active member of the club built up a record of achievement, but rarely competed against another Argonaut. So that new listeners understood what the club and its strange names were all about, every year the crew would tell the story of Jason, the ship Argo and the Argonauts. In the story there were fifty Argonauts, and they voyaged for years, seeking the Golden Fleece.

Children who joined the club were allocated to a ship, of which they were a numbered rower of a crew of 50. My name (I was a member as a teenager) was Ocnus 21. Children could gain points for themselves by contributing to the programme's various segments (art, poetry etc). By gaining points, children rose to certain levels in the club, and were received achievement awards. These included Dragon’s Tooth (150 marks), Golden Fleece (400 marks), Golden Fleece and Bar (600 marks).

Membership of the club was restricted to children from seven to seventeen, and despite the high drop-out rate among adolescents due to reaching the age limit, or the calls of other activities like sport and television, by the early 1950s the Argonauts’ Club boasted 150,000 members throughout Australia.

The programme was co-hosted for its entire 31-year run by Atholl Fleming, known to generations of Australians by his on-air names "Mac" and "Jason". Many notable Australians worked as presenters on the show including poet A.D. Hope ("Anthony Inkwell"), future ABC General Manager Talbot Duckmanton ("Tal") who hosted a weekly sports segment, actors Leonard Teale ("Chris") and John Ewart ("Jimmy") and future "Mr Sqiggle" host and film producer Patricia Lovell. Painter Jeffrey Smart (Phidias), commented on art, and popular children's author Ruth Park contributed dramatised stories. Her main character, which began life as a bunyip, eventually evolved into her beloved "Muddle Headed Wombat" charatcer (voiced inimitably by Johnny Ewart) and its popularity on The Argonauts led Park to write her popular series of Muddle-Headed Wombat books in the 1960s.

Ewart, a Sydney actor heard on almost any of the commercial radio serials as well as other ABC programmes, replaced 'Chris', who was played by Leonard Teale, in the mid 1950s. Ewart became the main workhorse of the Children’s Hour: the Muddle-headed Wombat in the Ruth Park serial of the same name, the naughty boy in Mr Mulligatawny’s Academy, the unctuous sidekick of Mac during the Argosy, and the silly bloke with the old car that kept breaking down. A prominent contributor was one Ithome 32, now known as Barry Humphries, creator of "Edna Everage".

None of the female members of the team could ever achieve the same status because of the strict Public Service rule of the day that a woman must resign upon marriage. This rule in fact cut short the career of Elizabeth Osbourne, one of the architects of the programme, in 1950. Year after year, just as listeners had begun to enjoy the style of any woman Argonaut, she would disappear. (For this reason, the voice of Mouse in The Muddle-headed Wombat also changed every year or so.)

In 1969 the show was cut to half an hour, and given the 4.30 pm time slot to cater for what was now the largest part of its audience - country children - who did not get home from school until five o’clock. At that time, the format was changed and all references to Jason and the Argonauts were phased out. Contributors’ actual names were read out and the only announcer left from the programme's golden years was Jimmy. Without warning, the programme was shifted to a once-a-week Sunday timeslot, and upon the death of Atholl Fleming in 1972, it was replaced by a slick concoction aimed at teenagers, and The Argonauts Club was no more.

Interviewed at the time of the move to the once-a-week Sunday schedule, John Ewart was justifiably bitter. He expressed how much work had gone into the programme since 1939, what it stood for, and what the ABC was turning its back on in the name of progress. Unfortunately, the ABC had conducted a survey, finding that more than half of the programme’s listeners were by then over 40. That was the reason given by the ABC for withdrawing funds from the programme.