Forgotten Australia

With Greg McHardie on the loose, there's another Woolworths bombing. Is the fugitive out for revenge or is he leading a far more laidback life? Even if his plans to leave the country don't come off, is there a jail that can hold him? In any case, both Greg and Larry aren't destined to stay behind bars long because that's just how NSW works Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this, the second-last instalment of this special series, Greg McHardie is as free as a bird after his audacious Easter escape from Parramatta Jail. That leaves consummate entertainer and storyteller Larry Danielson to give the performance of his life for the most importance audience he’s ever faced: a jury of his peers. If you enjoy Forgotten Australia, please leave a rating and review because it helps other people find the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the trial of the alleged Woolworths Bombers gets underway, the jury hears about ransom letters, suspicious clock mechanisms and gelignite bomb explosions — along with jokey European accents, disappearing Ford Falcons and the provenance of a gaudy blue safari suit. Witnesses include the accused men’s family and friends, cops both upstanding and corrupt — and a police informer who’ll be revealed as one of Australia’s vilest offenders. With the case against Greg McHardie looking airtight, he'll be damned if he’s going to hang around to be convicted. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Task Force’s Operation Softly, Softly circles Larry Danielson in Huskisson — with one of the detectives a Manly mate from the good old Flicks days who gets stuck into the booze while on interrogation duty. Fraught though his outlook is, Larry still has a chance at freedom. But Greg McHardie? He's in for serious time, which turns his mind to a jailbreak. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Greg McHardie claiming to detectives he’s a dead man if he names those behind the Woolworths bombings, the Task Force turns its attentions to his associates on the South Coast, including his housemate Larry Danielson, a lovable larrikin who made his name as a singer-songwriter in Papua New Guinea before becoming the host with the most at one of the best venues of the emerging Aussie pub rock scene. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After “Mr Bridge” is caught red-handed with the $1m Woolworths ransom, the suspect tells Task Force detectives he’s only a courier hired for the job. The mastermind’s name? Benny. From that moment on, Sydney’s police, press and public are all on high alert for this flashy character, who has threatened four more store bombings and for whose capture Woolies is offering a $250,000 reward. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As 1980 ends and the New Year begins, Woolworths and the NSW police wage a war of nerves with Mr Dunmore over arrangements for the $1m ransom handover. While the extortionist bomber has a cunning plan to get away with the loot, the Task Force’s massive undercover Operation Alpha has set an elaborate trap that’ll end in a showdown on Sydney Harbour. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After the Christmas Eve bombing of Woolworths' flagship Sydney store, the company awaits contact from the extortionist calling himself Mr Dunmore. Meanwhile, Woolies receives dozens more threats, a beer carton bomb is found in a store and a sensational leak splashes the terrorist’s secret $1m ransom demand all over the media. But what crime reporters don't know is that undercover detectives are already on the trail of man fitting the description of a Woolworths suspect — a man just released after a long prison sentence for Sydney gelignite bombings… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Christmas Eve 1980, young constable Allan Duncan responded to the Woolies Town Hall bomb threat and would be inside the building when the device detonated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Christmas Eve 1980, the Woolworths’ head office in Sydney gets a phone call from the man already responsible for two regional store bombings in the past week. An explosive device has been placed in the flagship variety store opposite Town Hall. It's going to detonate in 10 minutes. What follows is like something out of a Hollywood movie. But with its Holden utes and safari suits, beer carton bombs and pub rock gigs, this true-blue true-crime yarn could only have come from Australia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Christmas Eve 1859, Margaret Douglas and Beverley Howard started their epic 1500-mile walking match in Melbourne — which the city’s newspapers did their very best to ignore. Despite such hostility at home, our first sporting heroine would be appreciated by English reporters when she performed her walking feats in London and Liverpool. In this episode we also trace Margaret’s likely identity — and learn how she inspired a rival in Emma Sharp (pictured), who in turn nearly 150 years later inspired a distant relative to undertake a stirring long-distance charity walk in Canberra. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne’s Margaret Douglas was an endurance pedestrian every bit as remarkable as her Sydney contemporary The Flying Pieman. After stumbling upon a passing reference to her in an 1878 newspaper, I took a deep dive to shine a light on her completely forgotten achievements and examine how she was deliberately excluded from many newspapers of the time and then from a seminal history book that provided a chronology of pedestrianism. In part one we look at the colourful history of women who walked long distances in England and America, the abundance of coverage given to a man who walked 1000 miles in 1000 hours in Melbourne in 1858 and how Victoria's newspapers treated Margaret’s attempts to conquer the same challenge in the city six months later. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having made his dazzling pedestrian comeback, The Flying Pieman takes another tilt at politics in typical comedic fashion before jolting the Sydney establishment with one last audacious stunt. Feeling his mortality as he enters old age, William Francis King makes a public pledge of love — only for heartbreak to follow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In September 1847, after crashing out during the challenge to walk 192 miles in 48 hours non-stop, The Flying Pieman takes a second tilt at this epic feat of pedestrianism. But he won’t stop there because he has much bigger dreams that include walking 250 miles in 250 hours, spilling his soul in lectures on social issues and finding a damsel he can call Mrs Pieman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 tragedies that turned his life into legend. We begin with The Flying Pieman taking on his greatest challenge — walking 192 miles in 48 hours… without stopping for a moment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Forgotten Australia episode, we'll hear Colin's story in his own words. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 quarter of the 20th Century in Australia – with hundreds more dying... before one final lonely and forgotten fatality. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.com/privacy for more information.

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 with his own war-time ghosts. As the disturbances spread beyond the original "haunted house", Jack The Rapper became national front page news — and the "answers" offered posed only more questions. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 began to emerge. This is the conclusion and it's a story of wartime bravery, alleged Nazi spies, West African riots, men's magazines, TV game shows and Hollywood movie deals — with... of course... a cameo by Betty White. For more information: www. forgottenaustralia.com.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 combat in Vietnam two years later, being at the Munich Games in 1972 when Israeli athletes were massacred and how he dealt with PTSD and his recent and very grim cancer diagnosis. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 figure to fulfill her dreams of living a charmed life. For more information. www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 deranged serial killers. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for more information.

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 for more information.

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 acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 this episode. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 bloody tragedy that sounded like something out of the movies. For more information and to see Spencer's films, visit www.forgottenaustralia.com and visit us at www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 thousands of feet in the air. But along with the spectacle came scandal and tragedy whose mysteries endure to this day. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 century working in the space sector. The conversation ranges across what The Dish got wrong, what it was like to hear Apollo 13's crew fight for their lives, how he saved the space mission to Halley’s Comet and his plans to revolutionise communications using stratospheric drones. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 more information.

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 Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War and Carter White House. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for more information.

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 autobiography, which is to cause a sensation when it's smuggled from jail and published Australia-wide. For more information and for photos, visit www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, The Thing, The Gambler and The Mark Foy — and being stalked by a young assassin nicknamed Scotland Yard. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 unsolved murders, shootings and robberies. The publication of “The Robert Walker Story” in newspapers around Australia enthralled hundreds of thousands of readers, though his life and times would soon be inexplicably forgotten — until now. In part one of this three-part episode, we follow Walker in the 1930s as he rejects his respectable upbringing for a career as a petty criminal and cold-blooded gunman responsible for two murders. For more information: www.forgottenaustralia.com and www.facebook.com/forgottenoz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 prophecies, private detectives, car crashes and splashy headlines: this is the forgotten story of our original shock jock. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 beyond any reasonable doubt that the man himself was one of the world’s most accomplished lovers — if one of its most lacklustre fighters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 might also solve Australia’s most famous unsolved murder — that of the Pyjama Girl. 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.