Australian History Stories

Ranking history

About the show

Latest episodes

• Bushranger Book Two: Bold Jack Donohoe

  March 4, 2026 · 23 min

  Three decades after the colony’s first bushranger, the settlement was larger, harsher, and more organised — and so were its outlaws. Along the roads west of Sydney, a transported convict named Jack Donohoe moved from escape to armed…

• The Beaconsfield Mine Collapse

  February 12, 2026 · 25 min

  During Australia’s gold-rush era, miners were drawn not just to rivers and fields, but to deep quartz reefs locked inside hard rock. At Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania, that discovery led to a mine that would operate, in different forms…

• Bushranger Book One: Black Caesar

  January 29, 2026 · 31 min

  Before Australia had roads, towns, or a stable food supply, the colony was already producing its first outcasts. In a settlement governed by hunger and discipline, one transported convict—known to history as Black Caesar—crossed the line…

• The Thalidomide Scandal

  August 6, 2025 · 24 min

  In the early 1960s, a new "wonder drug" swept through Australian pharmacies—promising relief from morning sickness and sleepless nights. It was hailed as safe, gentle, and modern. But behind its glossy packaging, something sinister was…

• The Batavia Shipwreck

  July 24, 2025 · 36 min

  In 1629, the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia wrecked on the treacherous reefs of the Houtman Abrolhos, off the coast of Western Australia. What followed was one of history’s most horrifying tales of survival, mutiny, and mass murder…

• The Emu War

  July 17, 2025 · 21 min

  In the sun-scorched expanse of Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, late 1932 brought more than just drought and economic hardship—it brought an invader unlike any other. Not soldiers, not bandits, but a battalion of emus: towering, flightless…