REPEAT: On this day in 1930, Arthur Stace — hopeless Sydney alcoholic — converted to Christianity and set himself on the path to becoming Mr Eternity, whose one-word message would eventually reach billions worldwide. Australia On This Day will be on a short break until next week. Thanks for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more…

REPEAT: At 2am on this day in 1944, the Cowra Breakout began. This episode looks at the man who blew the bugle that gave the signal for the mass escape – and how he wound up behind barbed wire as the first Japanese POW in the first place, courtesy of a Darwin Digger's odd angry shot and the bravery of an Aboriginal man from the Tiwi Islands. Hosted…

REPEAT: 176 years ago today, Australia suffered what is still our worst civil maritime disaster when the emigrant ship Cataraqui struck a reef off King Island and sank in Bass Strait. Of the 409 aboard, just nine were to survive - but fate held a cruel trick in store for two of these men. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: On this day in 1912, William Chidley, radical sexologist and one of Australia’s most eccentric characters, was arrested for being a lunatic – the first use of this power against him in a vendetta that’d eventually make him a martyr to free speech. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: On this day in 1986, one of Australia's strangest and funniest crimes was committed when Pablo Picasso's masterpiece The Weeping Woman — valued at $2m — was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria and held to ransom by a mysterious group calling themselves Australian Cultural Terrorists. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more …

REPEAT: On this day in 1905, Flos Greig became Australia’s first female lawyer — but before she could practice the law she had to change it via an act of parliament. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: Australia suffered what is still our worst industrial disaster when an explosion ripped through the Mount Kembla mine on 31 July 1902. Strikingly, lead rescuer Henry MacCabe had 15 years earlier been acclaimed a hero of the 1887 Mount Keira explosion, which was our previous worst industrial catastrophe. Yet Henry's legacy isn't quite black …

REPEAT: Pioneering Australian pilots Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm and Bert Hinkler are household names for their aviation feats and tragic fates. Eric Hook is forgotten — not even a Wikipedia entry. But in mid-1930 his England-Australia flight was a front-page story as the world awaited news of what had happened to him in Burma. Hear his st…

REPEAT: On the 24th of May 1917, famous Aussie boxier James Leslie “Les” Darcy died in America. Just over two months later in Western Australia, his namesake, jackaroo James Darcy, would unwittingly become the one to really alter history when he came off a horse in the remote Kimberley and suffered terrible internal injuries. His only hope was surg…

REPEAT: On this day in 1950 in Cairns, amateur herpetologist Kevin Budden caught a Taipan to start Australia’s anti-venom program for that deadly species. He died in the process. But his sacrifice saved the lives of many people — at least one of whom then saved other lives. Today’s episode tells the story of this forgotten hero — and includes an in…

REPEAT: On this day in 1909 the SS Waratah, voyaging from Australia to England via South Africa with more than 200 people aboard, vanished without a trace. This is a story that includes a one-armed double murderer, a scientific genius who'd reshape the way we see the universe and a buttoned-down business chap whose life was saved by a series of ter…

REPEAT: On this day in 1919, boxer George Mendies won the Australian Flyweight Title — and it was a crown he'd defend successfully again and again. Despite this being a period of racism and anti-Semitism, this Jewish-Portuguese-Chinese Australian champion was hugely popular — and his fate was every bit as tragic as those of Les Darcy and Dave Sands…

REPEAT: On this day 111 years ago, two scientific giants spent a couple of hours hanging out and talking shop in Sydney. One had invented the telephone. The other's inventions had made it possible for men to fly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: On this day in 1920, Raymond Longford's classic silent film On Our Selection had its Australian premiere in Brisbane. This was a bush saga that defied expectations thanks to a new cinematic approach. Hear all about it in today's episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: On this day in 1931 Australia was shocked by news of an Adelaide crime, as much for its sheer brutality as for the cold and calculating way the killer had tried to cover his tracks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: On this day in 1950, Australia learned that its driest and most inhospitable region had become a huge inland sea — and that it was being explored by the only white man who'd successfully made a living in the Lake Eyre area. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: On this day in 1942, the battle for the Kokoda Track began — just as the long and lonely war of a brave Australian coastwatcher came to its end in another part of New Guinea. Con Page isn’t a name that’s widely known – but it should be. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: 81 years ago today the Battle of Britain was raging. Among those taking on the Nazis in Spitfires was a handful of young Australian pilots on secondment to the RAF. On this day in that desperate time, Brisbane-born Gordon Olive made his mark with his first confirmed Luftwaffe kill — setting himself on the path to becoming one of our few Bat…

REPEAT: On this day in 1960, Australia was shocked by our first skyjacking, when a disgruntled young man pulled out a sawn-off .22 rifle and a gelignite bomb on TAA Flight 408 from Sydney to Brisbane. With 49 lives in the balance at 20,000 feet, everything came down to a split-second decision by a brave crew member. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p…

REPEAT: On this day in 1940, wartime Australia was appalled by the dictatorial powers claimed by Sir Keith Murdoch. The media mogul had just been appointed as Director General of Information by Prime Minister Menzies, but the control he wanted over newspapers, radio and cinema had politicians and newspaper editors comparing him to Nazi propaganda m…

REPEAT: On this day 89 years ago, 1000 Cairns citizens marched on a camp of 100 unemployed men. A pitched and bloody battle ensued that left 80 people injured. Who was to blame? When cases came to trial, the verdicts were surprising. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: Born in 1900, Charles Shaw grew up in poverty, was orphaned at age 14 and worked more tough jobs than he could count over the next two decades before settling into a career as a newspaper journalist and columnist for the Bulletin. On this day in 1952, Hollywood bought Charles's latest novel — and it'd become a movie classic. Though flush wi…

REPEAT: On this day in 1968, geologist Jim Bowler found the bones of an Aboriginal woman who'd died and been ritually cremated and buried more than 40,000 years ago. Mungo Lady — as she became known — and Jim's next discovery — known as Mungo Man — rewrote our history books. More than half a lifetime later, Jim Bowler joins us to recall those disco…

REPEAT: Shonky Melbourne bookie Don McLeod fleeced Flemington punters through a scam known as scaling. When his luck ran out and he felt the full fury of a mob of mug punters, the shock waves were felt all the way to the Victorian state parliament. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: On this day in 1940, a bullet-ridden body was found in a dark alley in Sydney's Surry Hills. The reign of razor-gangster William Smiley had come to a bloody end. But which of his many enemies had killed him? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: At the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, champion swimmer Fanny Durack became the first Australian woman to win a gold medal. But Fanny nearly didn't get there because her very presence at the games had been staunchly opposed by an influential Sydney feminist and by powerful Australian swimming and Olympic bigwigs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/…

REPEAT: Back when the Village People's Can't Stop The Music was top of the charts and AC/DC's Back In Black was about to be released, Australian rock fans were hanging out for the start of FM radio that'd cater to their tastes. The race was on between 2MMM, 2Day FM and 2JJJ in Sydney, and 3EON FM and Fox FM in Melbourne. But who'd hit the airwaves …

REPEAT: After much preparation, expenditure and near catastrophe, the rival cities of Sydney and Melbourne are as last connected by telephone — but for first-day callers there are some things you're not allowed to say. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: Aboriginal boxer Dave Sands was a household name in the late 1940s and early 1950s, holding three Australian titles — and wearing the Empire Middleweight Crown. But tragedy intervened as this champion prepared his run at a world title. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: On this day in 1965, wireless pioneer Sir Ernest Fisk died in his Sydney home. This eccentric genius left a colourful legacy, having not only introduced radio broadcasting to Australia but having also proposed we might use it to communicate with the dead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: This was a crime against a child that shocked a nation. Yet the kidnapping of Graeme Thorne was also the sensational story that young media proprietor Rupert Murdoch needed to make his acquisition of Sydney's Daily Mirror a success — just as his father Keith Murdoch had bolstered his newspaper career 40 years earlier in Melbourne by capital…

REPEAT: Australian Army Warrant Officer Kevin Conway of Queensland became the first Australian soldier to die in combat in Vietnam when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army launched a fierce night-time assault on a US Green Beret base in Nam Dong. More than 50 years later, questions remain about the circumstances of his death. Hosted on Acast. S…

REPEAT: On this day in 1920 Sydney police arrested a man named Harry Crawford for murder — giving Australian newspapers the story of the year when it was revealed this male suspect was biologically female. The Eugene Falleni "man-woman" case — as it became known — culminated in a sensational trial, though doubts that justice was done persist to thi…

REPEAT: What possessed a 15-year-old Sydney boy to save for three years to buy a 50-year-old vintage steamroller? How'd he end up splashed across the front page of the newspapers and the star of a newsreel? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: Australia's first railway got under way with huge fanfare — and then went nowhere for more than half a decade. As bad as this delay was, a crucial decision made during this bumbling period would derail Australia for much of the next century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

REPEAT: When colonial newspaper readers were jolted by the claim that electric snakes were on the loose, it was up to a heretical scientific genius to weigh in on this shocking reptile tale. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

REPEAT: The ABC is born amid controversy over whether it should carry advertisements and whether its bosses are politically biased. Here’s the catch: the ALP wanted an ABC with ads... and ABC bosses were said to be biased towards the Liberals Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

On this day in 1935, taxi driver John Smillie (cousin of William Smillie, the razor gangster of the 13 July episode) was shot dead in Sydney. It'd be six months before an arrest was made. His alleged killer? A boy named Boyd Sinclair, who'd be held without trial... for more than a decade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

On this day in 1974, feared and hated criminal Stewart John Regan — nicknamed The Magician for his skill at making people disappear — got his bloody comeuppance on a Sydney street. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this day in 1973, the deal was done — Australia was the proud new owner of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles. The price? $1.3m — the most ever paid for an American artwork. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this weekend in 1992, two bodies were found in Belanglo State Forest in the Southern Highlands of NSW. The discovery triggered the hunt for the man who'd become known as Australia's worst serial killer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Arthur Benjamin was born on this day in 1893 — and it was also on this day in 1950 that he was in The Sun newspaper slamming Sydney as a backwater. Stumbling on this article led me to wonder about this then-famous pianist and composer. Scratching the surface was to find a man whose rich life saw him write a tune for a future Queen’s special day, ne…

On this day in 1944, Australia's most famous war cameraman — whose film Kokoda Front Line! had won us our first Oscar the previous year — was killed while filming American Marines trying to retake a tiny Pacific island held by the Japanese. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

On this day in 1956, Channel Nine executive Bruce Gyngell uttered these famous words. While TV was a modern marvel, its genesis in Australia dated back to the 1880s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

125 years ago today, Mark Twain, acclaimed as the world's funniest man, steamed into Sydney Harbour — and started cracking jokes to a newspaper reporter before he even got off the boat. For the famous visitor, his trip to Australia was more than the first stop on a world tour. It was Mark Twain’s chance to redeem himself. Hosted on Acast. See acast…

Rod Taylor was our biggest movie star of the 1960s, beloved by generations of Australians for his knock-about persona and success in Hollywood films such as The Time Machine and The Birds. But a chance discovery in an Australian newspaper database a few days ago revealed a far darker ‘success’. That was: rewriting the history of his first marriage …

On this day a century ago, Captain Percy William Snell thrilled Brisbane by performing aviation stunts in a biplane right over the centre of the city. After seeing an ad for his 1920 joy flights, I went down the rabbit hole and discovered a man who rose from childhood tragedy to be a Great War fighter ace — but who may also have committed wartime a…

On this day 80 years ago, the SS Dunera steamed into Sydney Harbour. Aboard were more than 2000 men — most of them European Jews who'd fled the Nazis. Having been declared "enemy aliens" in England, they'd been transported to Australia, only to endure two months of brutality on the voyage at the hands of sadistic British soldiers. Hosted on Acast. …

On this day in 1908, Australia's most beloved and popular poem saw print for the first time. Dorothea Mackellar's "My Country" — with its line, "I love a sunburnt country" — would soon be an important part of our national identity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This was the 24 hours of Australia's war from the first shot of the war fired to the mass internment of 300 people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.