Dark Australia

For more than 170 years, Sydney’s beaches, harbour and rivers were the scene of some of Australia’s most terrifying shark attacks. From the earliest recorded fatality in 1791, through the deadly summers of Coogee and Bondi, the shark panics of the 1930s, the introduction of shark nets, and the infamous attacks of Middle Harbour, Sydney spent generations trying to understand, control and survive th...

Deep in the Australian bush, people have been reporting strange creatures for generations. Massive ape-like figures moving through the trees. Black panthers stalking rural New South Wales. Giant reptiles that should have disappeared thousands of years ago. And animals officially declared extinct that some insist are still out there. In this episode of Dark Australia, we explore some of the country...

In 1822, eight convicts escaped one of the most brutal penal settlements in Van Diemen’s Land and disappeared into the wilderness. What followed became one of the darkest survival stories in Australian history. Starving, exhausted and hopelessly lost, the group began to turn on one another. Men vanished. Bodies were butchered. And when Alexander Pearce eventually emerged from the bush, his account...

In Part Two of The Family, the world Anne Hamilton-Byrne built begins to collapse. After years of isolation, control, punishment and psychological conditioning, some of the children start to question the life they have been forced to accept. Leeanne Creese escapes. Sarah Moore is pushed out. Both begin speaking to police. Then, on 14 August 1987, authorities raid Kai Lama. For the children inside,...

Behind the gates of a secluded property near Lake Eildon, a group of children were being raised almost entirely apart from the outside world. They dressed alike. Their hair was dyed the same colour. They were told they were brothers and sisters. And at the centre of their world was a woman they were taught to call mother. Her name was  Anne Hamilton-Byrne . In Part One of this  Dark Australia  inv...

On 29 July 2023, five people sat down for lunch at a home in the small Victorian town of Leongatha. On the menu was Beef Wellington. Within days, three of the guests were dead. A fourth was critically ill. And at the centre of the investigation was the woman who had prepared the meal... Erin Patterson. What followed became one of the most closely watched criminal cases in modern Australian history...

On the morning of 6 April 1966, something extraordinary happened above a suburban school in Melbourne. More than 200 students and teachers reported seeing a strange flying object descend over Westall High School before disappearing into nearby paddocks. Within minutes, rumours spread of military vehicles, unexplained government interest, and witnesses who claimed they were warned never to speak ab...

After weeks stranded on the remote Houtman Abrolhos Islands, Jeronimus Cornelisz's reign of terror is nearing its end. While innocent survivors continue to be hunted, a small band of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes prepares to make a final stand. In the dramatic conclusion to Australia's darkest maritime story, we follow the desperate battle for survival, the capture of one of history's m...

BATAVIA Part Two: The Ship of Secrets After surviving one of history's most catastrophic shipwrecks, the passengers of the  Batavia  believe the worst is over. They're wrong. Stranded on the barren islands of the Houtman Abrolhos in 1629, the survivors face a new and far more terrifying threat, not from the sea, but from one of their own. As Jeronimus Cornelisz consolidates power, fear bec...

BATAVIA Part One: The Ship of Secrets In 1629, a Dutch merchant ship carrying hundreds of passengers, crew, and a fortune in silver struck a remote reef off the coast of Western Australia. More than 300 people survived. What followed would become one of the darkest and most shocking stories in Australian history. In Part One of our Batavia series, we explore the rise of the Dutch East India Compan...

DARK AUSTRALIA — Episode 7 Ivan Milat: The Backpacker Killer Part Three — The Monster of Belanglo The hunt is over. In the final chapter of our Ivan Milat series, we follow the investigation as it closes in on the man behind the Backpacker Murders and uncover the evidence that would ultimately bring one of Australia's most notorious serial killers to justice. From police raids and chilling dis...

The bodies discovered inside Belanglo State Forest revealed a level of violence that shocked Australia — and terrified the world. In Part Two of this Dark Australia series, we dive deeper into the Backpacker Murders: • the victims, • the forensic evidence, • the escalating brutality, • the police investigation, • and the psychological evolution of Ivan Milat. As more graves are uncovered beneath t...

DARK AUSTRALIA — Episode 1 Ivan Milat: The Backpacker Killer Part One — Into Belanglo In the early 1990s, Australia was seen as one of the safest backpacking destinations on Earth. Young travellers hitchhiked freely between Sydney and Melbourne, trusting strangers along isolated highways and disappearing into the adventure of the Australian bush. Then the bodies began appearing inside Belanglo Sta...