Forgotten Australia

In the 1840s Australia was amazed by the epic pedestrian feats of William Francis King, who was known far and wide as The Flying Pieman. Our first sporting hero, this eccentric celebrity was every bit as famous for his non-stop talking as for his non-stop walking. In this episode we delve into his incredible accomplishments, the larrikin streak that saw him lampoon colonial politics and the traged...

75 years ago this week, the Japanese surrendered and WWII was over. After these celebrations came horror at what POWs had suffered. Of the many accounts of surviving atrocities, one stood out: Changi prisoner AIF private Colin Fleming Brien had lived through his attempted beheading. This front-page story shocked Australia and his testimony would help convict Japanese war criminals. In a special Fo...

By mid-autumn 1900, dozens of people in Sydney had died from Bubonic Plague – many within a day of showing symptoms. Yet the CMO’s rat-killing recommendations were initially ignored and it’d be up to a future PM to stand up for poor people on the front lines of the lockdown, washdown and knockdown policy. Despite lessons learned from the 1900 outbreak, the Black Death would recur through the first...

It's New Year's Day 1900 and Sydney is celebrating on this sunny day. But Dr Ashburton Thompson, NSW's chief medical officer, knows that darkness is coming over the horizon in the form of Bubonic Plague. Once the Black Death strikes, he'll be in charge of Sydney's defences — and have to convince the populace that fleas from infected rats are to blame for the pestilence. Hosted on Acast. See acast....

In winter 1950 a dark old house in Melbourne — owned by an elderly dying widow — was terrorised by nightly visitations from a fiend who was nicknamed "Jack The Rapper". Like something of out a classic horror movie, the sensational story included frightened nurses, traps laid by cops, vigilante mobs stalking the streets, voyeuristic ghostbusters and a stake-out orchestrated by a tabloid reporter wi...

WWII Aussie coastwatcher Reg Evans rescued John F. Kennedy in the Pacific in 1943 but his world-changing role in history would be left out of media articles and campaign propaganda that sought to emphasise Jack’s war heroism. It wasn’t until a little Sydney magazine started digging some 17 years later that the truth about the man who’d saved the life of the 35th President of the United States bega...

Sixty years ago this month JFK won the West Virginia primary — a decisive moment for his campaign — and he did so with a low-blow political move meant to showcase him as a naval war hero. But not even JFK knew the truth behind the story that was to help him capture the White House — that he was only alive thanks to the work of a mysterious Australian coastwatcher. For more information: www.forgott...

John Kinsela is an Aboriginal man, a Vietnam veteran, a two-time Olympic wrestler and a survivor of PTSD and cancer who was awarded the OAM in 2017 for his work with Circle Sentencing, a western Sydney initiative to keep Indigenous offenders out of the prison system where possible. I spoke with him about growing up in poverty in the 1950s, the road to the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, seeing comba...

Having achieved fame as a fashion model in Paris and London by 1935, Margaret Vyner set her sights on the movies — finding her first substantial film role in the most unexpected place, just as she’d soon meet the love of her life when she least expected it. But the Second World War would change everything — and by the 1950s Margaret would have to reinvent herself yet again to survive. For mor...

In August 1934 — more than half a century before Elle Macpherson was dubbed “The Body” by Time magazine — Sydney teenager Margaret Vyner was acclaimed as Australia’s first celebrity model when she caused a sensation at Paris fashion parades as muse to legendary French designer Jean Patou. But with the Second World War bearing down, plucky Margaret would have to be more than just a pretty face and...

After helping to catch serial killer Mad Mossy, Tracker Riley became Australia's most-decorated Aboriginal policeman, yet he still faced racism — with tragic circumstances. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the Dubbo region in the mid-to-late 1930s, Aboriginal tracker Alexander Riley worked three high-profile murder investigations — including bringing serial killer "Mad Mossy" to justice. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For nearly 40 years, Aboriginal tracker Alexander Riley chased down thieves, fugitives and murderers in outback NSW — and saved the lives of many people who’d become lost in the harsh landscape. Among Tracker Riley's famous cases were the frustrating manhunt for Roy Governor, known as “the last of the bushrangers”, and collecting grisly evidence against “Mad Mossy”, one of Australia’s most derange...

In 1919 Australia was baffled by a real-life mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes when the body of a young man was discovered on top of a railway carriage outside Melbourne. Who was he? How had he died? How had he ended up on the roof of a moving train? While there would be an official explanation, a century down the track I'm presenting a new theory about what really happened. For more information w...

In 1954 popular Sydney model Shirley Beiger went on trial for the shooting murder of her boyfriend, with the already sensational proceedings made wilder by her outbursts, a media frenzy, the appearance of a crazed mystic, the accused's unruly cheer squad and a confused verdict. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy...

In 1954 glamorous Sydney model Shirley Beiger shot her lover dead outside a Sydney nightclub. But why did she kill him — and what punishment would she face? For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and https://www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Murray Chambers from Queensland survived when an enemy submarine sank the merchant ship Donerail a few hundred miles off Hawaii. Twenty four men made it into a lifeboat. When this lifeboat washed up 38 days later, 2000 miles away in Tarawa, Chambers was the lone survivor. But his story didn’t quite add up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...

In June 1946 a crew of four sailing the ketch Nova down the New South Wales coast vanished with their boat in bad weather. 132 days later a lone skeletal figure washed up just barely alive 1000 miles away, having endured one of history’s most incredible forgotten oceanic ordeals. But for this survivor the battle was just beginning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fifty years before Fine Cotton, Australia was electrified by a series of audacious racing ring-ins starring a champion horse named Erbie. The man who exposed the conspiracy? Bert “Cardigan” Wolfe, the country's top turf writer, who’d recently witnessed Phar Lap’s greatest moment — and then his last.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As 1940 starts and the “Phoney War” ends, Australian RAF Bomber Command pilot Jim Brough flies ever-more dangerous missions against the Nazis and faces death again and again — wondering how long it’ll be before his number is up and whether a fortune teller’s prediction will come true. For more information, visit www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See...

Eighty years ago this week, World War II began when England declared war on Germany in response to the Nazi invasion of Poland. Within 48 minutes of the war starting, RAF Bomber Command launched its first mission. For Australians in the RAF, the fight was on — and James Brough from Tasmania would be among the first to take on the Luftwaffe. This forgotten hero's story is told for the first time in...

From making pioneering bushranger films and launching the careers of Australia’s most famous early stars to a bitter business betrayal and a bloody murder in the remote wilderness, the conclusion to movie mogul Cosens Spencer’s story is like something from the silver screen. But it’s all true. For more information visit: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast....

In the early 20th century, Spencer Cosens was Australia’s greatest showman. With his wife, projectionist Senora Spencer, he pioneered motion picture exhibition, establishing the first permanent cinema, introducing sound and colour films and championing local feature production. But a business betrayal would ruin Spencer’s career, permanently sabotage the Australian film industry and result in a bl...

On a Saturday night in June 1928 a masked gunman shot and killed sisters Esther Vaughan and Sarah Falvey in the lolly shop that had made them favourites in the inner Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill. Who killed the woman and why? For the first time, the murder, the mystery and the main suspect are re-examined. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on...

In 1937 Jean Burns was widely reported as Australia’s first woman parachutist — but the newspapers were out by nearly half a century. For six months in 1890, Valerie and Gladys Van Tassel — under the management of American aeronaut “Professor” Park Van Tassel, their supposed brother — caused a sensation with their dazzling parachute jumps from trapezes suspended beneath crude hot air balloons thou...