The Danger Zone (DZ)

It’s 1939 in Germany and the future is looking bright – although there’s just a possibility of war. But in the 6 years since their new and charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, was elected things have just have been getting better and better (though not so much if you’re a Jew though). Unemployment had been at 30% when Hitler came to power. By 1938 there wasn’t any. German self esteem and pride has re...

Two men. Both lived at the same time. Both did the same thing on the same night, at the same place. Everything they did was the same. One man changed the history of the world. The other man was hardly even noticed, just for the record, his name was William Dawes. That will mean nothing to you – and that is the whole point of this programme. What was it that they did differently from each other tha...

On 12 November 2020 Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that a 4½ year enquiry had revealed allegations of war crimes said to have been committed by some members of the Australian Defence Forces serving in Afghanistan. Scott Morrison “warned the nation to prepare for allegations of “serious and possibly criminal conduct” by Australia’s defence force in Afghanistan that could see...

A story has broken concerning allegations of Australian Defence Personnel having been involved in war crimes. In the present age it seems that more often than not that an allegation is treated as if it was the sames as a conviction, only without a trial. While that’s acceptable, and normal, in socialist regimes like Communist China and North Korea, the former Soviet Union, it has never been the wa...

This Danger Zone programme’s about how a Russian double agent, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, fled the Soviet Union using only a plastic Safeways shopping bag and a Mars Bar. And how an American spy got that old South American feeling – I Yi Yi Yi – and married his dream Latino woman, of very expensive tastes and needs, so he became a Russian spy to give her the lifestyle that she needed and that he cou...

In 1982/1983 the world stood at one minute before midnight. Russia was ready to launch an all-out first nuclear strike against the West – because, wrongly, they knew that America was about to launch a surprise nuclear attack on them. How the hell was the world going to avoid this! The key player to avoid this apocalypse was a Russian double-agent - Colonel Oleg Gordievsky. Tag words: World War III...

This programme’s about the man who has undoubtedly been the greatest spy in the history of the world. Every one of you listening right now owes your life to him. If it wasn’t for him World War III would definitely have happened. No “”ifs” or “buts” – the Third World War would definitely have happened and civilisation would have ended. A lot of people know about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. That...

It’s been said that “no other band … is as synonymous with the words party and good times than the B-52’s. Their infectious music is layered with dance grooves galore, that frankly just makes your body move, and has been in high gear for the past 35 years”. Athens Georgia is a university town - the University of Georgia. Athens Georgia is located just 70 kilometres from Atlanta, the capital of Geo...

Nothing much surprises me today but this did. You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you. There are people out there who are against electricity, modern medicine, hospital, worldwide telecommunications – almost instantaneous (like Skype, Facetime, Zoom – all of that stuff), international travel, cars, highways, plentiful food with virtually no famines, television, live streaming - I co...

This is the final episode in the story of the man who the ANZAC’s Revered – Fighting Mac. Mel Gibson told the story of Desmond Doss – the Seventh Day Adventist who refused to kill, was rejected by the men in his platoon and by the Army but at the Battle of Okinawa, on one day, 5th May 1945, saved the lives of 75 men. This story is about a man who risked his life for 2½ years in the bloodiest fight...

William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie is the most famous man of the ANZACs of World War I that you’ve never heard of. When he returned to Australia in early 1918 he was mobbed wherever he went, by the veterans who had come home, by the families and friends of ANZACs who he had helped – by writing to them about the deaths and the circumstances of the deaths of their loved ones, by helping distribute thou...

The most famous man of the ANZACs of Gallipoli and France, the man who was revered by the men of the ANZACs in World War I and till the day they died, is a man that you’ve probably never heard of. The ANZACs, when they were in the fighting zones, when they were resting, wherever, he was sought out for his company. When he returned to Australia in early 1918, exhausted to the point where he would n...

Fighting Mac was the man who our ANZACs revered. When he returned to Australia, after reaching a state well beyond exhaustion, having served first at Gallipoli, and then on the Western Front all the time with the 4th Battalion, he was ordered home in late 1917 reaching Australia in early 1918. The war was nowhere near won. The Germans had beaten Russia and now over 1 million of their battle harden...

You’d have to be a right bugger to have a go at the Australian Army chaplains in World War I. Why? Well listen to this story of one of them – and he’s not even the chaplain that was a legend to the ANZACs. This is another one. Chaplains weren’t supposed to have been landed with the first troops at Gallipoli, but somehow one was. He didn’t get that memo. He was Roman Catholic chaplain, Father John...

The most famous Australian that you’ve never heard of is William “Fighting Mac” McKenzie. He is known as the man who the ANZAC’s revered. Don’t worry, don’t feel embarrassed that you haven’t heard of him. It’s highly unlikely that you’ve heard of him or that anyone you know has because sadly we’ve let this man’s story be forgotten.  But back in the day, in Australia, between the wars and through t...

At the end of World War I “Fighting Mac” was the most famous ANZAC. Even before the Australians landed at Gallipoli he was a hero to the Australian soldiers. After the ANZAC landings, and right through to the time that he was sent home from the Western Front, exhausted from his super human exertions in the War, he was a legend and the man that the ANZACs revered. For decades after the end of the w...

He was the most popular man in the Australian Imperial Forces by the end of the First World War. He’d been amongst the first men to land at Gallipoli and he was one of the last to leave those dreadful shores. He served on the bloody Western Front until late in 1917. 1917 was the worst year of the war for the Australians. 55,000 casualties, 38,000 at Passchendaele alone. He was always amongst the w...

The world we live in today has been inspired out of the teachings of the Christian faith. And so it was that as part of that tradition, in 1912, the Presbyterian Church commissioned the Reverend John Flynn to look into the needs of bush communities in remote outback Australia. The Australian Inland Mission (AIM) was set up in 1912 as a result of his recommendations. Then in 1928 a new and exciting...

On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. But the size of that maritime disaster was dwarfed on 30 January 1945, when the Germans were carrying out the largest seaborne evacuation in history – 2 million people fleeing the onrushing Russian forces. One of the ships...

On 14-15 April 1912, the mighty, unsinkable, Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It took just 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink. 1,500 lives were lost. The people who died with the sinking of the Titanic died alone – in the middle of a vast ocean. But the sinking of the Titanic was not the greatest disaster at sea with the greatest loss of life. In today’s programme I’m g...

There have been three naval military disasters where the loss of life was greater than the 1,500 lives lost in the sinking of the Titanic. The stories are incredible. Over the next three programmes I’ll talk about them, beginning with the riverboat sinking on the Mississippi River in 1865 just as the American Civil War drew to a close – the worst maritime disaster in American history. Tag words: T...

Between 1929 and the early 1930s, the Communist government in the Soviet Union had conducted a policy of genocide against the peasant farmers of the Ukraine, called the kulaks. One of the benefits that was promised to come from getting rid of those vermin, those blood-suckers, would be the establishment of collective farms. Food production would be increased. Everyone would be happy. From each acc...

Today many people tell us that we should forget about history, we don’t need it. But then those same people tell us about all of the sins of our past that we must be deeply ashamed of today. If they say history doesn’t matter, then why are they telling us that we should be ashamed of our history. Slavery. Colonialism. There’s far more interesting history to talk about than those old issues. That h...

At the end of the magnificent funeral service for Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, a lone piper stood playing a piece. The piece is known by the name “ The Flowers of the Forest ”. In Eric Bogle’s moving song, No Man’s Land , he asks the unresponsive Private William McBride, whose gravesite he’s standing next to, “ Did they play the Flower o’ the Forest ” at his funeral . The Flowers of the F...

In my last programme I told the story of the ANZACs heading to Egypt and then the first day’s landings on Gallipoli. At the end of that programme I told you that by night time the commanders on the ground had some surprising feelings about how the landings had gone. I said that I’d talk about that in the next programme. So here I am. Let me tell you about what our generals thought about the Gallip...