Radio played an important role in the construction of Australia's ‘imagined community’, transcending spatial boundaries and fostering the development of audiences who were fluent in radio's storytelling tools. This article explores the ways Australian radio audiences of the 1950s responded to Gwen Meredith's representations of Aboriginality, whiteness, intermarriage and assimilation in her long‐running ABC radio serial ‘Blue Hills’. Through an investigation of the aural constructions of race in the serial, and an examination of audience readings of a narrative that endorsed interracial marriage—because ‘colour will breed out in time‘—the article reveals some of the multiple understandings of assimilation and the Aboriginal ‘question’ in this period.