It was less than two days steaming before the fleet arrived at Port Phillip, Melbourne to a welcome on 29 August 1908 only slightly more subdued than that at Sydney. After the scheduled week in Melbourne, the fleet departed on 5 September 1908 with the newspapers of the day publishing patriotic poems about the visit. The fleet's arrival a few hours early on 11 September 1908 at Albany, Western Australia (the then small town with the large harbour), caught the residents and many country visitors literally napping. When the word spread there was a rush of people to the vantage points on the heads and elsewhere. A further week in Albany allowed both coaling operations and celebrations, with the majority of the fleet departing 18 September 1908. While the fleet did not visit any other Australian ports, it closely hugged the Western Australian coastline on its way to Manila and local shipping companies did good business taking tourist out to view the fleet under steam. For Australia, with wireless telegraphy equipment only deployed to a handful of British naval vessels on Australia Station at the time, the temporary presence of the Great White Fleet meant a 200+ per cent increase in its wireless systems. The vast majority of vessels in the US fleet were equipped with wireless telegraphy. It is curious that a wide variety of different wireless systems were being utilised by the US fleet, with no known inter-operability issues. Yet a few years later, Australia remained concerned about the ability of each system to work with the others. The vessels and their wireless equipments were as follows:  As the fleet steamed west from Pearl Harbour, its movements were widely reported in the media as "wireless messages" and "Marconigrams". But the implied directness was not representative and the messages had to almost circumnavigate the globe due to the lack of receiving facilities in Australasia, coupled together with the British Admiralty's refusal to communicate with non-Marconi systems: How Wireless Messages were Obtained. Henry M. Collins (general manager for Australasia of Reuter's Telegraph Company, Limited) wrote to us under date Melbourne, August 6:— "As a good deal of curiosity has been aroused by the wireless telegrams received by this company from the American Fleet during the past few days, it may be of interest to the public to know how the information has been obtained. For some time past endeavours have been in progress to get into touch with the battleships before their arrival at Auckland for which port they steamed direct from Honolulu. It was at first attempted to establish communication through the good offices of the British Admiral; but it was found on enquiry that H.M.S. Powerful could not exchange wireless messages with the American vessels, presumably because different systems are employed.