Forgotten Australia
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Forgotten Australia
Created by Michael Adams, author of The Murder Squad and Hanging Ned Kelly, Forgotten Australia delves deep into bloody crimes, dark histories, unsolved mysteries, eccentric personalities and bizarre happenings that are almost always stranger than fiction. Each episode brings to life people and even...
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289 episodi
Short – The Coastwatcher’s Lonely War
In July 1942, as Australia’s armed forces were about to begin what would become the legendary battle for the Kokoda Track, in another occupied part of...
Short – The Ballad of Australia’s Forgotten Boxing Champion
In July 1919, tiny-statured but huge-hearted youngster George Mendies won the Australian Flyweight Title. This was a crown he'd defend successfully ag...
Short – One Man, Two Mining Disasters
Australia suffered what is still our worst industrial disaster when an explosion ripped through the Mount Kembla mine on 31 July 1902. Strikingly, lea...
Short: An Aussie Movie Star’s Acid Horror
At the height of the silent movie era, young Australian star Lotus Thompson set her sights on Hollywood. But she soon faced a problem: her legs were s...
Short: SS Waratah – Australia's Own 'Titanic' Mystery
In July 1909, the world wondered what had become of the SS Waratah, last seen off coast of South Africa with more than 200 souls aboard. This grim mys...
Short: Australia's Free Speech Martyr
William Chidley was an early 20th Century Australian eccentric with his own philosophies, which he preached and published - and for which he was relen...
This Week in 1981: Don't Believe the Hype
The death of stuntman Dale Buggins, the arrival of Adam Ant in Australia and new ‘evidence’ in the Azaria Chamberlain case – it was a big week for sen...
This Week in 1956: TV debuts, rock ’n’ roll riots and a dancing senior citizen takes on the world
In the third week of September 1956, a small number of Australians finally saw what all the fuss was about when regular TV broadcasts began. It was a...
Short: The Death of Damien Parer
This week in 1944, Australia's most famous war cameraman — whose film Kokoda Front Line! had won us our first Oscar the previous year — was killed whi...
Short: Mark Twain Down Under
One hundred and thirty years ago this month, Mark Twain, creator of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and hailed as the world’s funniest man, arrived in Austr...
Short: When War Came on Father's Day
As winter became spring in Australia in 1939, the world stood on the edge of the abyss.
Then, on Father's Day, 3 September, everyone's worst fea...
Short: Australia's Worst Shipwreck
180 years ago this month, Australia suffered what is still our worst civil maritime disaster when the emigrant ship Cataraqui struck a reef off King I...
Short: From Dead Heart to Inland Sea
With Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre now flooded, we look back on the first time this happened in white history. Seventy-five years ago, Australia’s driest and...
This Week in 1931: The Man Who Fell To Earth – Part Three
Having enjoyed a trifecta of splashy Sydney skydiving successes, Stanley makes a new start in Melbourne only to learn that disasters come in threes.
This Week in 1931: The Man Who Fell To Earth – Part Two
After Stanley Thomas’s rapid rise to parachuting success in Sydney, his career starts to stall with a series of jumps that are erratic and dangerous.<...
This Week in 1931: The Man Who Fell To Earth – Part One
Stanley Thomas was a young parachutist who made himself into a star in Sydney in the early years of the Great Depression. In public, he thrilled with...
This Week in 1906: The Golden Rule Axe Murder
When John Hassett was murdered in his Adelaide hotel room, Australia wasn’t faced with a whodunnit but a whydunnit.
Why had his wife Ada committ...
The Curious Case of the Two-Headed Baby – Part Two
Reuben Doodeward faces court, but he’s not backing down, and neither is the NSW government, with the fight over the fate of the two-headed baby headed...
The Curious Case of the Two-Headed Baby – Part One
In 1906, Australia was scandalised that Sydney showman Reuben Doodeward (pictured) had exhibited a two-headed baby preserved in a bottle of spirits. Y...
Before the Mushroom Trial – The Poisoned Footy Player: Part Three
While the evidence against Veronica Monty was damning, she was also damned by the hypocritical morality of Australia in the 1950s. Tried for attempted...
Before the Mushroom Trial – The Poisoned Footy Player: Part Two
When Sydney detectives confirm star Balmain rugby league player Bob Lulham has been poisoned with Thall-Rat, they begin an investigation that at first...
Before the Mushroom Trial – The Poisoned Footy Player: Part One
On the 20th of July 1953, Sydney detectives discovered that someone had used rat poison to try to murder star Balmain rugby league player Bob Lulham....
This Week in 1980 – The Family Court Murders, Miracle Babies and Birds, Our Richest Real Estate and the Village People Conquer Australia
A judge is gunned down, we welcome our first test tube baby and we try to save the world’s rarest bird. Meanwhile, Sydney sets a record house price an...
This Week in 1955 – Part Two: A Ban on Aboriginal People, Putting An End to Polio, the Murder Manhunt and the ‘Murderphobia’ Case
While Sydney welcomes African-American entertainers, Moree bans Aboriginal Australians from exercising their human rights on the land that’s always be...
This Week in 1955 – Part One: A Murderer Escapes, Our Politicians Jail Pressmen and an Aussie Witnesses Horror at Le Mans
Up in the Queensland, a murderer and a robber break out of prison, while down in Canberra our Federal Parliament puts a couple of newspaper blokes beh...
Before the Mushroom Case: Australia’s Infamous Poisoning Murder Trial – Part Five
Following the verdict, Ronald Griggs has one last trick up his sleeve to amaze Australia.
It’s easy to get a free trial that will give you acce...
Before the Mushroom Case: Australia’s Infamous Poisoning Murder Trial – Part Four
Having already been convicted by the newspapers, Ronald Griggs stands trial for the murder of his wife. If he’s found guilty, he’ll be sentenced to de...
This Week in 1930 - America's Tariff Apocalypse, Aviatrix Amy Johnson Awes Aussies... and Ferris Bueller?
In the first week of June 1930, America was on the brink of economic apocalypse with its Smoot-Hawley tariffs – and their effects would be felt terrib...
Before the Mushroom Case: Australia’s Infamous Poisoning Murder Trial – Part Three
After Lottie Condon’s shock confession, Ronald Griggs becomes infamous overnight when Truth newspaper publishes every sordid detail of his scandalous...
Before the Mushroom Case: Australia’s Infamous Poisoning Murder Trial – Part Two
Following the mysterious death of his wife in the mountain town of Omeo, rumours about Methodist preacher Ronald Griggs reach a fever pitch — and a ve...
Before the Mushroom Case: Australia’s Infamous Poisoning Murder Trial – Part One
Nearly a century before Erin Patterson was put on trial in the mushroom murder case, Australia was scandalised by allegations that a young preacher fr...
This Week in 1905: Aussie Feminist Highs & Lows, the First Empire Day, an American President Ends a Russian War, and a Ratcatcher Echoes in Eternity
In London this week, the Aussie suffragist Nellie Martel explains to English women how they can win the vote, while back at home pioneering feminist L...
This Week in 1979: Aussie Movies Go Global, Ye Olde TV Listings & Our Forgotten Comedy Genius
This week at the Cannes Film Festival, My Brilliant Career made Australian film history, while back home Rupert Murdoch became a Sydney TV mogul, sett...
This Week in 1954 - Sydney Anarchy, Killer Trains, a Climate Warming Warning, Record Setters & the Roo Roo Hop
Pirates, sailors, mountaineers and the Abominable Snowman run riot through Sydney – a Sydney were you risk life and limb every time you catch a train....
Short – Nazi Aftertaste
85 years before American President Donald Trump gave unelected social media mogul Elon Musk unprecedented power with DOGE, Australian Prime Minister R...
This Week in 1929: The Blind Digger – Part Two
Just as Frank’s radio career is taking off, his private life is laid bare in a racy tabloid expose. But the sequel to this scandal is to be far more s...
This Week in 1929: The Blind Digger – Part One
Terribly wounded on 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli, AIF Private Frank Downes would be celebrated as The Blind Digger. After returning home on the first ho...
This Week in 1904: Rampaging Percy Ramage – Part Two
Did you have to be crazy to take on 10 cops at once? Was Percy Ramage 'perfectly insane'? The question was key but Melbourne’s best and brightest just...
This Week in 1904: Rampaging Percy Ramage – Part One
In Melbourne and Geelong from the 1890s, Percy Ramage saw red whenever he saw the cops. Known as 'The Policeman Puncher', he was such a 'human tiger'...
Short: Cocaine Kurtz
This German-born thug's misadventures included shooting his dad in the butt, taking to the bush as an escapee, doing time in a POW camp, selling cocai...