Forgotten Australia

At the age of 17, Robert Brand did work experience at the Overseas Telecommunications Commission’s station in Paddington, Sydney, where he played a small part in ensuring the television images of Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon were seen around the world. On the 50th anniversary of that historic event, Robert talks about how this experience inspired him to spend the next half cen...

Just hours before Apollo 11 landed on the moon on 20 July 1969, young Australian pop star Cathy Wayne was shot dead on stage while performing for American Marines in Vietnam. Yet Cathy hadn’t been killed by the enemy — she’d been gunned down by one of the very soldiers who she’d travelled half way around the world to entertain. But who shot Cathy and why? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

There was no doubt Audrey Jacob had shot Cyril Gidley dead in front of hundreds of people during a charity dance at Perth’s Government House. But why had she killed him and was she guilty of murder? The final instalment of this episode takes us inside one of Australia’s most extraordinary trials—and beyond to a second murder, the tragic downfall of a business titan and across the world to the Cuba...

In 1925 beautiful young Audrey Campbell Jacob shot a young man dead in front of hundreds of revellers during a charity dance in the ballroom of Government House in Perth — and the court case that followed the crime was every bit as shocking. For more information, including photos and articles, go to www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy...

Back in Melbourne in early 1954, James Robert Walker is hellbent on murdering The Brain and The Thing. But after he reluctantly casts himself in the role of protector to a damsel in distress, the veteran gunman finally ends up serving a life sentence in Pentridge Prison. There, true to form, he hatches a plan as ruthless as it is audacious. Every bit as bold is that Walker is secretly writing his...

Having spent half of the 1930s behind bars, murderous gunman James Robert Walker moves back to Melbourne to start a new life on the straight and narrow. There, he meets the sultry Rita, the love of his life, who he makes his wife, and they amass a stash of cash so they can buy a hotel together. But Walker's past won't let him go and he's soon at the centre of an underworld feud involving The Brain...

Charismatic crook and killer James Robert Walker pretty much wrote the playbook that Mark “Chopper” Read would later follow. Finally convicted of murder in Melbourne in 1953, he made headlines by demanding to be hanged. Denied his death wish, Walker then planned a massacre in Pentridge Prison – setting out his reasons in a book-length confession he’d written in secret, in which he also admitted to...

Long before Mick Molloy or Kyle Sandilands, Arundel Nixon ripped up the radio waves as the risqué “King of the Cads”. For a decade the Cad worked for —and was sacked from — hit stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane as he battled censors, conservatives, radio bosses, his three wives and a small army of his own personal demons. On-air sackings, drinking binges, court cases, fateful...

Radical revolutionaries, maniacal Marines, sexual shenanigans, dodgy dealings, horny hippies, Hare Krishnas and High Court judges: this is the stranger-than-fiction story of American military deserter Douglas Beane. From the violence of Vietnam in the Seventies to beach life in Brunswick Heads in the Eighties, Doug’s case rattled the echelons of power in Washington and Canberra while proving beyon...

Private James Coughlan only saw one day of combat — 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli — yet his war would continue at home for years, one of thousands whose quiet fates are often forgotten on Anzac Day. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaustralia.com Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This 1939 case seemed ripped from the pages of a detective novel — and may even have been inspired by one. There was the man with the murky past. Sisters who met sudden suspicious deaths. A corpse that had to be exhumed. Crucial evidence that was allowed to be destroyed and a coroner with a bizarre conflict of interest. Adding to the sensation: police thought by solving the Walwa mystery, they mig...

Who was this good guy with a gun? We delve into life of American cowboy Albert “Arizona” Ryan, who became a celebrity in 1919 in Australia after killing a man to end a Sydney siege. Hear how Arizona, like Dirty Harry, had a history of trigger-happy vigilantism, and how, like Dirty John, his creepy marriage to a wealthy woman came to a violent end. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaust...

A century ago, in the Sydney slum of Surry Hills, a Chinese gunman shot more than a dozen people, triggering a dramatic police siege that was only ended by the violent intervention of a lone American vigilante. But who was this self-styled cowboy with the six-shooter? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1891 Henry Lawson published a poem called “The Ghost at the Second Bridge”, which told of encountering a terrifying spectre on lonely Mount Victoria Pass in the Blue Mountains. While a fright of fancy, Lawson’s poem was based on a tragic true story. Gather round for the haunting tale of a handful of murders, a couple of hangings, chaotic court cases, drunken witnesses, shock acquittals, and, of...

Another missing woman, more illegal operations and alleged murders, along with scandalous affairs and amnesiac witnesses. In the final part of this episode, the full extent of Nurse Hannah Mitchell’s trials and tribulations is revealed. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaustralia.com Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more infor...

In 1923 Nurse Hannah Mitchell faced trial, charged with the murder of Bertha Coughlan and the attempted murder of her ex-husband Frank Bonfiglio. The evidence was sensational, as were the verdicts. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaustralia.com Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She dropped a headless torso into the Yarra River and shot her ex-husband full of holes — and these were just two of the horrific crimes alleged against Nurse Hannah Mitchell in the 1920s. The full story of “Melbourne’s Most Notorious Woman” is told for the first time in a special three-part episode. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaustralia.com Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/...

While many bushrangers are celebrated as rebel leaders, the one man who might really fit the bill—Ralph Entwistle, leader of the Ribbon Boys—is all but unknown. It was his naked swim that led to Australia’s biggest convict uprising—1830’s The Bathurst Rebellion—and resulted in one of the largest mass hangings in our history. Yet the entire tragedy wouldn’t have happened if it not for a police magi...

Elected to state and federal parliament, Thomas Ley’s career in 1920s politics was marked by hypocrisy, corruption, ruthless manipulation and the lingering suspicion that he may have killed his rivals. The worst fears of his critics were confirmed in 1947, when Ley was convicted of cold-blooded murder in one of England’s most sensational court trials. For more information and photos: www.forgotten...

Australians are no strangers to big cat stories, but only one mystery resulted in the capture of not one but two monsters. In the early 1890s, witnesses claimed to have seen a tiger in the Tantanoola region of South Australia and graziers often found their sheep mutilated and partly devoured. Search parties failed to capture the beast until an expert marksman joined the hunt. Yet even after the cr...

In March 1872 Australians were shocked by one of the most cold-blooded murders the colonies had ever seen. The nightmare began with the discovery of a badly decomposed body that had been weighed down with a heavy stone in the Parramatta River. Even more chillingly, it soon emerged that this victim, John Bridger, had been lured to his brutal death via an employment advertisement in The Sydney Morni...

With Titanic sinking in the early hours of 15 April 1912, boatswain Albert Nichols has to muster his men and make ready the lifeboats. Around 1am, it’s claimed, he was given a dangerous mission that, if successful, would save many more lives. But mystery swirls around what happened in the next 80 minutes. For more information and photos: www.forgottenaustralia.com Find us on Facebook: www.facebook...

Albert Nichols was born in 1864 on remote Lord Howe Island. After a public scandal that saw him pitted against his parents, Albert fled to Sydney before working his way to London as a seaman. There he established a successful career with the White Star Line, working as a boatswain first on the company’s luxury liner Adriatic and then on the even-bigger Olympic . In April 1912 he transferred to Tit...

From 1946 Sydney’s Leonard Lawson was a hero to kids for creating the comic book The Lone Avenger. But in reality the young artist was a psychopathic villain responsible for crimes far more terrible than anything in his stories. For five decades Lawson would outrage Australia by destroying innocent lives and make a mockery of the law’s ability to control violent offenders. For more information and...

It was the Teacher’s Pet -style mystery that gripped Australia 80 years ago. Brisbane socialite Marjorie Norval disappeared in November 1938 under bizarre circumstances, sparking the biggest search in Queensland’s history. In the days and months to come, four heroic rescuers would die, one of her rumoured lovers would commit suicide, and a light would be shone on the city’s shady characters, from...