Forgotten Australia
by Michael Adams
Bloody crimes, unsolved mysteries, eccentric celebrities, dark events and bizarre happenings: it's all here – the stuff you wish they'd taught you in school! Dive into our strange-but-true history via never-before-told stories, author interviews, weekly flashbacks and the weekly trivia quiz. Forgotten Australia is created and hosted by Michael Adams, author of the acclaimed true crime books The Murder Squad, Hanging Ned Kelly and They'll Never Hold Me. He's also a regular history and true crime commentator on ABC Nightlife and the podcast Australian True Crime. Support Forgotten Australia for a few bucks per month to get ad-free early episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, a show shout-out and the chance to win prizes in the special edition trivia quiz episodes. Get a week's free trial here: Patreon: patreon.com/forgottenaustralia Apple: apple.co/forgottenaustralia <
Episodes
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The Plan to Kill Harold Holt – Part Two: Beyond Conspiracy
The arrest of Holt’s would-be assassin was at first kept need-to-know. But when the story broke in court, it was sensational front-page news. Why had this young man wanted to shoot Holt? Had he been acting alone? Was Holt being reckless with his own safety? Claim and counter-claim would be heard…
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The Plan to Kill Harold Holt – Part One: God’s Lonely Man
Australian prime minister Harold Holt’s mysterious fate in 1967 is the stuff of lore and conspiracy theory. Which makes it ironic that few know about the documented plan to assassinate him in November 1966. After the news was initially suppressed, the court hearings were a front-page sensation....
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The Guyra Ghost – Part Two: Portal for a Poltergeist?
The investigation into the mystery of Minnie introduces a hard-charging cop and a spiritually minded scribe. Our quest for answers takes us from northern NSW to the mean streets of Sydney and the shores of Gallipoli. Check out my other podcast – Australian Murder – where we ‘Do the crime and do…
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The Guyra Ghost – Part One: Things That Go Bump in the Night
Halloween Special! Just over 100 years ago, Australia was spooked by strange happenings at a farmhouse in northern NSW. Showers of stones! Bumps in the night! Night after night! All centred on a little girl named Minnie. Was she a portal to a poltergeist? The police, press and public wanted...
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The Runaway Plane – Part Two: “Shoot It Down!"
With the Auster Archer over Sydney, and everyone freaking out, the RAAF scrambles to do something… anything… but their responses are 100% inept and 0% intercept. Luckily, a couple of other Top Guns are ready to fly into the Danger Zone... Be sure to check out my new true crime show Australian...
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The Runaway Plane – Part One: “There’s No Pilot!”
In August 1955, Sydney was suddenly under threat from a rogue plane. Had it really taken off by itself? Would it crash into the city? What were the RAAF doing about it? Be sure to check out my new true crime show Australian Murder. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Support Forgotten…
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Introducing Australia Murder
I'm launching a new true crime podcast called Australian Murder. Here's the lowdown. Check out Australian Murder wherever you get your podcasts. Follow to get the first episode as soon as it's released next week!
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Talking History – Musquito: The Real Story of a Legendary Colonial Warrior
Who was Musquito, the Aboriginal warrior feared by colonists in Sydney and Tasmania? Historian Naomi Parry Duncan's new book takes us behind the myths for a better understanding of this remarkable man. But Musquito: The Real Story of a Legendary Colonial Warrior is much more than a biography – it...
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Australian Frankenstein – Part Two: The Infernal Machine
Having successfully toured Australian cities with Frankenstein, Professor Hornburg invents a new machine man that uses a new energy source. But he and his creation – called Adam Iron, first man of iron – will have to share the limelight with a snake charmer and his nest of vipers. Two showmen...
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Australian Frankenstein – Part One: The Steam Man
Just as the Iron Outlaw Ned Kelly is going to the gallows, Australians are astonished by a walking automaton called ‘Frankenstein - The Steam Man’. Professor Hornburg’s invention is intriguing, ingenious and imaginative. But is it really ‘the greatest piece of mechanism in the universe’? How much...
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Mysteries of the Sea – Part Three: Beyond Human Knowledge
In March 1912, Australia was stunned to learn that Koombana was missing in nearly identical circumstances to Yongala. In this final episode, we look at how good and bad luck again decided who lived and who died, how the Koombana story crossed over with the loss of Titanic, and how the Adelaide...
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Mysteries of the Sea – Part Two: Dead Unlucky
Alongside Yongala, the Adelaide Steamship Company prided itself on its luxury vessel Koombana, designed especially to work the Western Australian coast. But this was a seemingly cursed vessel, where anything that could go wrong did, from disappearing and dead passengers, to collisions, fires and…
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Mysteries of the Sea – Part One: More Haste, Less Speed
In March 1911, with the loss of the ship Waratah still fresh in memory, a big passenger liner went missing in a cyclone off northern Queensland. As a massive search began, Australia tried to believe that ‘no news is good news’. Incredibly, a year later almost to the day, the same scenario played...
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Short – The Mystery of the Waratah
I’m re-releasing this short as background for the new miniseries, Mysteries of the Sea. 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 mystery was even more sensational for featuring a double...
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Short – Good Evening and Welcome to Television: The Real Story Behind An AI Slop Promo
This week marks the 70th anniversary of regular television broadcasting in Australia. Channel Nine recently 'recreated' the 'Good Evening and Welcome to Television' moment in a fakes-over-facts promo generated by artificial intelligence. In this short, we look at the strange evolution of…
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Talking History – Blackbirding: A Reckoning With the Australian Slave Trade
Blackbirding – A Reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade. We talk about the practices and policies that led to a staggering death toll – and how we don’t remember because our forgetting was engineered by language and laws meant to obscure and hide the true horrors.
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Australia’s Slave Ship Massacre – Part Three: Confessions of Mass Murderers
Dr James Patrick Murray kidnaps and kills more people, and goes mad and is nearly murdered himself, before returning to Australia to be acclaimed as a saviour during a smallpox outbreak. But the hero becomes villain overnight when the truth of the massacre is revealed. Yet the doctor – dubbed…
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Australia’s Slave Ship Massacre – Part Two: Shoot Them All
Dr James Patrick Murray takes the brig Carl to the sunny South Seas and into a heart of darkness beyond the imagination of even Joseph Conrad. In this nightmare of his creation, shooting dozens of defenceless men is only the start of the atrocities.
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Australia’s Slave Ship Massacre – Part One: Doctor Evil
Dr James Patrick Murray ranks as one of the most evil characters in Australian history. In September 1871, he ordered the massacre of 70 men that his slavers had kidnapped from Bougainville and imprisoned aboard their ship. In Part One, we look at Dr Murray’s background – and how he became widely...
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The Last Gasp: Stubbing Out Ciggie Commercials – Part Two
From 1972, Paul Hogan was the Australian tobacco industry’s most formidable marketing weapon, the Winfield warrior in a new era of mandatory health warnings. When a total ban on ciggie commercials loomed, the manufacturers were to pivot and spend even more money with media companies and sporting...
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The Last Gasp: Stubbing Out Ciggie Commercials – Part One
Fifty years ago this week – 1 September 1976 – tobacco commercials were banned on Australian television. So, it was goodbye to Paul Hogan, Stuart Wagstaff, Norman Gunston and other celebs selling ciggies and smoking to adults and kids alike via the idiot box. In this episode, we sift the dirty...
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Short - Our Forgotten Crime Fiction Mastermind
Aussie writer Charles Shaw came from the school of hard knocks to create a true-blue noir antihero in a series of novels that were internationally popular and compared with the work of hardboiled master Mickey Spillane. He also wrote another bestseller that was adapted into a Hollywood classic in...
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Short – Bravery & Barbarism: The Wave Hill Walk-Off
Sixty years ago this week, Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari led 200 Aboriginal stockmen and their families in the Wave Hill Walk-Off. They were protesting pitiful pay and conditions and demanding the return of traditional lands. The Walk-Off was the start of a brave eight-year struggle. In this...
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The Small Town ‘Teacher’s Pet’ Murder
Nearly 100 years ago, the village of Wolumla on the far south coast of NSW was shocked by its first murder. The motive for this crime was so scandalous that a wall of silence protected suspects and other victims from police and public exposure. Available for the first time on general release…
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Aussie History Trivia Quiz #4 – Cops, Crims, Kooks, Censors & Singers
How well do you know your murderers, mobsters, armed robbers and bent coppers? How good is your memory for Aussie rock hits of the 1970s and 1980s? Test yourself with this all-new trivia quiz. 30 questions across three rounds. How high can you score? Use a free trial for access to supporter...
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Dead Men Don’t Fill Out Census Forms – Part Two: A Forgotten Serial Killer?
Digging into the murderer’s past and future is to find two more cold-blooded killings. Forgotten Australia is created and hosted by Michael Adams, author of the acclaimed true crime books The Murder Squad, Hanging Ned Kelly and They'll Never Hold Me. He’s also a regular guest on ABC Nightlife…
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Dead Men Don’t Fill Out Census Forms – Part One: Murder at Scrubby Creek
A shocking early result of our first national census was... murder! In 1911, a Cloncurry census collector's investigations into an unreturned form turned up a dead man, burned to bones in the vastness of the Never Never. But this cold-blooded crime was very likely not the killer's first murder –...
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Talking History – Abe Saffron: Mr Sin as Man and Myth
Did Abe Saffron kill Juanita Nielsen? Order the Luna Park fire? Or was so-called Mr Sin exerting a more subtle yet no less more sinister force on Australian society? Author Stuart Coupe joins us to talk about separating fact from fiction in his new book Saffron Incorporated: The First King Of The...
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True Crime Classic Miniseries: Bloody Murder in the Blue Mountains – Part Three
Even when the verdict is delivered in the Katoomba murder trial, the story is far from over – especially after the convicted man makes a startling allegation. Support Forgotten Australia for a few bucks per month for ad-free early and exclusive bonus episodes and the chance to win prizes.…
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True Crime Classic Miniseries: Bloody Murder in the Blue Mountains – Part Two
In the wake of the gory outrage at the California, the accused faces an inquest and then his trial for murder. If he's found guilty, he'll be sentenced to death. But is he bad – or mad? Parts 3 will be on general release soon. You can hear it now early and ad-free by supporting the podcast: Apple…
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True Crime Classic Miniseries: Bloody Murder in the Blue Mountains – Part One
A Katoomba hotel. A locked room. Screams in the night and a body in the morning. The mystery of what happened in Australia’s favourite resort town in autumn 1917 was like something by Agatha Christie. Except this wasn’t a whodunit – it was a whydunit. Parts 2 & 3 will be on general release soon....
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The Bunbury Bombing
Fifty years ago this month – 19 July 1976 – Australia’s first act of environmental terrorism was directed at the Bunnings-owned wood chip export facility in Bunbury. Who were the bombers? What had they hoped to achieve? What was the fallout for the growing green movement? Support Forgotten...
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Talking History – White Death: The American Legend Behind Australia’s Best-Worst Movie
In 1936, western author Zane Grey came Down Under to catch giant sharks and film his adventures. The result was White Death, a so-bad-it’s-good monster movie. Vicki Hastrich, author of The Last Days of Zane Grey, joins us to talk about his time on our shores and seas, how we reacted to and were...
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True Crime Classic – Sydney’s Wildest Woman
While 1950s eccentrics Bea Miles and Rosaleen Norton are well remembered, Luba Shishova was twice as wild yet she's all but forgotten. Dubbed ‘Olga from the Volga’ and a ‘one-woman Russian Revolution’, this chaotic beauty cut a swathe through Kings Cross, earning adoring fans among the city’s...
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A Murder of Note – Part Four: Cursed From Birth
Having bent justice to their will successfully once, Kenneth Brown and his supporters tried a new defence tactic: arguing that he’d been cursed from birth as a hereditary homicidal maniac. If you’re in danger from domestic violence, call Triple 0. National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence...
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A Murder of Note – Part Three: The Villain as Victim
With Mary Ann Brown dead, and no doubt that Kenneth killed her, his April 1876 murder trial appeared to be an open-and-shut case. But he had the best defence that money could buy – and a colonial elite closing ranks to protect one of their own. If you’re in danger from domestic violence, call...
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A Murder of Note – Part Two: Shotgun Marriage
In part one, we heard about Kenneth Brown. In this episode, we look at Mary Ann Tindall and how she became his wife and victim. If you’re in danger from domestic violence, call Triple 0. National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service Tel: 1 800 737 732 https://1800respect.org.au...
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New Miniseries: A Murder of Note – Part One: A Man of the Killing Times
We all know Edith Cowan – first woman elected to an Australian parliament – graces out $50 note. But did you know she was shaped by a traumatic childhood? In 1876, her father, the prominent colonial settler and explorer Kenneth Brown, shot her stepmother dead. This was a crime that shocked…
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Australia's Forgotten Serial Maniacs
In 1837, three cold-blooded killers committed a series of bloody outrages that left nine people dead. Two of these murderers were to face their own gruesome fates. But, in an ironic twist, the third would be legally untouchable despite all the victims he'd shot and axed. Support Forgotten…
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Talking History - Australia’s Real-Life Jack Sparrow
Ahoy, me hearties! William Swallow became the pirate captain of the convict ship Cyprus after he seized the vessel in Tasmania in 1829. From there, it was a case of ‘Bring me that horizon!’, with Swallow and his crew of motley misfits setting sail for freedom on the far side of the world. Author...
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True Crime Classic – The Botanic Gardens Massacre
A True Crime Classic from the Forgotten Australia archives: Just over 100 years ago, Australia suffered one of the world's first random mass shootings when a man went berserk with a rifle in Melbourne’s 1924 Botanic Gardens Massacre. The public was panicked for as long as he evaded the massive...
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Australia’s First Sporting All-Nighters
This week, when we stay up (or get up) to cheer the Socceroos, we’ll be doing what Aussies first did one winter nearly a century ago. In 1930, the Ashes test cricket series was broadcast live from England via the new marvel of the age – radio! Night after night, Australians defied sleep to hear...
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Aussie History Pod Trivia Quiz #3 – Sexy Sinema, Ghostly Figures and a PM Minus His Pants
Who named Australia? Which former Prime Minister lost his pants in public? Which celebrity came chasing ghosts Down Under? What were the weirdest names suggested for Melbourne before Melbourne became Melbourne? Welcome to the pub trivia night that plays out in your podcast player How well do you...
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Aussie History Pod Trivia Quiz #2 – Failing film stars! Flailing Frenchmen! Falling space junk!
Failing film stars! Flailing Frenchmen! Falling space junk! They’re all here, the true and the false, the serious and the deeply stupid. Three rounds. 30 questions. Like pub trivia! Just minus the overcooked rigatoni and the annoying team at the next table who are definitely cheating. Play by...
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Aussie History Trivia Quiz #1 – Serial killers! Chocolate animals! Robot chaos!
Serial killers! Chocolate animals! Robot chaos! They’re all part of the first-ever Aussie History Pod Trivia Quiz. Three rounds. 30 questions. Just like pub trivia! So, how well do you know your Aussie history? Play along by yourself or play against mates! There’s a free downloadable answer sheet...
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Shoot to Kill – How an Aussie Won the Worst 'Olympic' Event Ever Held
Donald Mackintosh was the world’s best shooter and in 1900 in Paris he won what is still the most shocking sporting event ever associated with the Olympic Games. Did he really win gold? Why is that the least controversial thing about his claim to fame? Plus: the first Aussie History Pod Trivia…
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A Cannibal Convict & Other Grave Tales
This week in 1826 was a bad time to be a cannibal bushranger. Plus: Bold Ben Hall bites the dust; the first Brit buried Down Under; and the making of a murderer in On Our Selection. See Forgotten Australia live! "Crashes, Chases and Crooks in Melton History" – as part of the Melton Heritage...
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Aussie Insults: Where Did 'Boofhead' Come From?
Who was Boofhead and where did he come from? We say happy 85th birthday to an iconic yet idiotic Aussie bloke who appeared in our midst when we needed him most. Plus: a brief history of the $1 coin and a salute to the astute astronomer who wound up on our $100 note. Forgotten Australia supporters...
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Talking History – The Wildest Showman
Author and music journalist Jeff Apter joins us to discuss his recent book, Lee Gordon Presents: How One Man Changed Australian Life Forever, the first biography of the wild man who not only brought rock ’n’ roll Down Under, but who pioneered so much else, from jazz festivals and strip shows to...
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Blue Murder On The Golden Mile — Part Five
In this final instalment, the jury delivers its verdict in the marathon trial of Phillip Treffene and William Coulter for the murders of Detective-Inspector John Walsh and Detective-Sergeant Alexander Pitman. But their decision isn't the end of the story — with twists even brilliant barrister...
About this show
Bloody crimes, unsolved mysteries, eccentric celebrities, dark events and bizarre happenings: it's all here – the stuff you wish they'd taught you in school!
Dive into our strange-but-true history via never-before-told stories, author interviews, weekly flashbacks and the weekly trivia quiz.
Forgotten Australia is created and hosted by Michael Adams, author of the acclaimed true crime books The Murder Squad, Hanging Ned Kelly and They'll Never Hold Me.
He's also a regular history and true crime commentator on ABC Nightlife and the podcast Australian True Crime.
Support Forgotten Australia for a few bucks per month to get ad-free early episodes, exclusive bonus episodes, a show shout-out and the chance to win prizes in the special edition trivia quiz episodes.
Get a week's free trial here:
Patreon: patreon.com/forgottenaustralia
Apple: apple.co/forgottenaustralia
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Hosted by
Michael Adams
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