Australia On This Day
Australia On This Day
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What happened on this day back in the day? From the creator of Forgotten Australia, this is your daily dose of the stories that made headlines and sometimes made history.
Available episodes
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Sep 23, 2020
Season Finale - 23 September - 1935 - The Strange Case Of Boyd Sinclair
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.
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Sep 21, 2020
22 September - 1974 - Curtains For The Magician
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.
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Sep 20, 2020
21 September - 1973 - Blue Poles Polarises Australia
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.
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Sep 18, 2020
19-20 September - 1992 - The Bodies In Belanglo
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.
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Sep 17, 2020
18 September - 1950 - The Rich Life of our Forgotten Musical Genius
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, nearly die at the hands of a future Nazi war criminal and help a hot young director become the future master of suspense films.
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Sep 16, 2020
17 September - 1944 - Damien Parer Is Killed In Action
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.
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Sep 15, 2020
16 September - 1956 - "Good Evening and Welcome to Television"
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.
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Sep 14, 2020
15 September - 1895 - Mark Twain Arrives Down Under
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.
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Sep 7, 2020
8 September - 1954 - The Dark Side Of Rod Taylor
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 to erase any mention of his horrific behaviour. ** Australia On This Day will return with new episodes soon
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Sep 6, 2020
7 September - 1920 - Captain Snell Goes Stunting
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 atrocities. After he came back home, Percy Snell introduced thousands of his fellow citizens to aviation, entertained a future King of England and was pilot to a socialist state premier on an aerial election campaign tour that ended in what may have been the first political assassination attempt against an Australian politician in our history.
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Sep 5, 2020
6 September - 1940 - Dunera: Ship of Shame
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.
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Sep 4, 2020
5 September - 1908 - Dorothea Mackellar's My Country
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.
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Sep 3, 2020
3-4 September - 1939 - A New War For Father's Day
This was the 24 hours of Australia's war from the first shot of the war fired to the mass internment of 300 people.
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Sep 2, 2020
3 September - 1901 - The Australian Flag Flies For The First Time
On this day in 1901, the Australian flag was raised for the first time after the winners of the competition to design our national ensign were revealed. But in years to come, a myth about who’d won the competition would spread far and wide.
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Sep 1, 2020
2 September - 1970 - Raid The Bookstores!
On this day 50 years ago, Sydney's vice squad swooped on a clear, present and wholly fictitious danger to society: Alexander Portnoy. He was the protagonist of Philip Roth's raunchy satire Portnoy's Complaint, which had been banned in Australia despite being a critically acclaimed worldwide bestseller.
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Aug 31, 2020
1 September - 1934 - The Pyjama Girl Murder
On this day in 1934, the pyjama-clad body of a young woman was found near Albury in NSW, triggering one of Australia's most baffling murder investigations.
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Aug 26, 2020
27 August - 1978 - The Mass Arrest That Helped Make Mardi Gras
On this day in 1978, more than 100 gay rights activists were arrested in Sydney. It was a travesty of justice that, once overturned, helped pave the way for Mardi Gras as we know it. ** Australia On This Day will be on a short break — new episodes coming soon. In the meantime, please leave a rating and review. Thanks for listening. **
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Aug 25, 2020
26 August - 1904 - Lotus Thompson's Leggy Legacy
Australian silent movie star Lotus Thompson was born on this day in 1904. Before she turned 20 she'd arrived in Hollywood and made her name with a shocking act that called into question the movie industry's priorities. Or... did she?
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Aug 24, 2020
25 August - 1874 - Escape From Macquarie Harbour
On this day in 1824, two desperate convicts fled the brutality of one of Australia’s most notorious penal settlements to take their chances in the wintry Tasmanian wilderness. It did not go well.
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Aug 23, 2020
24 August - 1973 - Australia's Charles Manson
On this day in 1973, young thug Archibald McCafferty — fueled by drugs and supported by a gang of youthful misfits — began a killing spree that'd see him dubbed "Australia's Charles Manson".
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Aug 22, 2020
23 August - 1966 - The Wave Hill Walk Off
On this day in 1966, Gurindji stockmen and their families — led by elder Vincent Lingiari — walked off the job at the Wave Hill station in the NT in protest against poor pay and conditions — and for the return of their traditional lands. What followed was an epic eight-year battle.
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Aug 21, 2020
22 August - 1896 - Australia's First Night At The Movies
This was the day that Australian punters went to the movies for the first time – and it happened at Melbourne’s Opera House just nine months after the French Lumiere brothers got le punters to pay to see the moving pictures in Paris.
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Aug 20, 2020
21 August - 1972 - Ernestine Hill: Australia's Wandering Woman Writer
This day in 1972 marked the final page in the long adventurous life of Ernestine Hill, who, from 1930, roamed for decades to Australia's most remote places, writing hundreds of articles and numerous best-selling books. Oh, and she also had a son who was almost certainly an heir to the Packer media dynasty.
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Aug 19, 2020
20 August - 1857 - The Wreck Of The Dunbar
On this day in 1857, Sydney was visited by disaster when the clipper Dunbar was dashed against rocks on South Head. 121 people would die. One man would survive.
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Aug 18, 2020
19 August - 1930 - Sydney Harbour Is... Bridged!
On this day in 1930, Sydney folk crossed their fingers in the hope that the southern and northern arms of the Harbour Bridge would meet — rather than collapse in a disaster that might further ruin Australia's Depression-wracked economy.
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Aug 17, 2020
18 August - 1950 - The Sara Quads
On this day in 1950, Australians were on tenterhooks as they awaited news from Bellingen, NSW, where British war bride Betty Sara was giving birth to quads. Quads had never before survived in Australia. The story would be front-page news for days — and a staple of the Australian Women's Weekly for the next quarter of a century.
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Aug 16, 2020
17 August - 1889 - The Day Australian Art Changed Forever
On this day in 1889, Tom Roberts and fellow Heidelberg School painters opened their 9 x 5 Impressionist Exhibition, a controversial event that led to much derision but one that forever changed Australian art. If you'd spent a couple of pounds that day, how much would your investment be worth to your descendants today?
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Aug 15, 2020
16 August - 1928 - The Coniston Massacres
On this day in 1928, Constable George William Murray led a punitive raid against Aboriginal people in Central Australia in response to the murder of dingo trapper Fred Brooks. Five Aboriginal people were shot dead in the attack — and what followed was a series of mass killings that'd last two months and claim 31 lives, though modern historians put the toll at around 170. In this episode, I talk to historian Dr Robyn Smith, who has worked to map this and other mass killings of Aboriginal people in the NT for the University of Newcastle’s Massacre Map project.
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Aug 14, 2020
15 August - 1945 - The War Is Over: Thanks, Dig!
75 years ago today, Australian cities erupted in riotous celebrations because the Second World War was over. Here's how the day unfolded.
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Aug 13, 2020
14 August - 1956 - The Sydney Car-Bombing Double Murder
On this day 64 years ago Sydney police learned the truth about the horrific car-bombing double murder that had rocked and shocked the city overnight.
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Aug 12, 2020
13 August - 1940 - The Canberra Air Crash Catastrophe
80 years ago today a Hudson bomber crashed in Canberra, killing four of Australia's top wartime leaders — along with six other men. It was a tragedy that'd lead to the downfall of one Prime Minister and set two politicians on their paths to that top job. But what — or who — caused the crash?
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Aug 5, 2020
Season 1 Finale - 6 August - 1930 - Mr Eternity Finds God
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.
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Aug 4, 2020
5 August - 1944 - The Cowra Breakout
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.
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Aug 3, 2020
4 August - 1845 - Australia's Titanic
175 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.
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Aug 2, 2020
3 August - 1912 - The Persecution Of The Eccentric Sexologist
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.
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Aug 1, 2020
2 August - 1986 - The Theft Of The Weeping Woman
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.
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Jul 31, 2020
1 August - 1905 - Australia's First Lady At Law
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.
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Jul 30, 2020
31 July - 1902 - Henry MacCabe & Our Two Worst 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, 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 and white.
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Jul 29, 2020
30 July - 1930 - The Fate Of Australia's Forgotten Aviator
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 story in today's episode.
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Jul 28, 2020
29 July - 1917 - The Outback Accident That Changed Australian History
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 surgery — done by a postmaster being instructed by a surgeon 1200 miles way in Perth — via Morse Code telegraph messages. What came later, saved countless lives.
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Jul 27, 2020
28 July - 1950 - The Life-Saving Sacrifice of the Young Snake Catcher
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 interview about Kevin’s legacy with Brendan James Murray, author of Venom: The Heroic Search For Australia’s Deadliest Snake.
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Jul 26, 2020
27 July - 1909 - The Mysterious Disappearance of the S.S. Waratah
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 terrifying premonitions.
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Jul 25, 2020
26 July - 1919 - The Forgotten Flyweight Champion
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.
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Jul 24, 2020
25 July - 1910 - A Meeting Of Magnificent Minds
On this day 110 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.
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Jul 23, 2020
24 July - 1920 - Dad & Dave Hit The Silver Screen
100 years ago today, 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.
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Jul 22, 2020
23 July - 1931 - The Murder Of Mary Edson
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.
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Jul 21, 2020
22 July - 1950 - From Dead Heart To Inland Sea
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.
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Jul 20, 2020
21 July - 1942 - The Coastwatcher's Last Stand
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.
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Jul 19, 2020
20 July - 1940 - Australia's Spitfire Ace
Eighty 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 Battle of Britain Spitfire aces.
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Jul 18, 2020
19 July - 1960 - Australia's First Skyjacking
Sixty years ago today, 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.
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Jul 17, 2020
18 July - 1940 - The Goebbels Touch
Eighty years ago today, 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 minister Joseph Goebbels.
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Jul 16, 2020
17 July - 1932 - The Cairns Riot
On this day 88 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.
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Jul 15, 2020
16 July - 1952 - Humping A Swag To Hollywood
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 with case, the orphan-turned-swaggie-turned-reporter-turned-author kept working and writing, creating a hardboiled noir series that was published and praised all over the world.
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Jul 14, 2020
15 July - 1968 - The Lady Reappears
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 discoveries, how they changed our understanding of Australia and their ongoing relevance.
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Jul 13, 2020
14 July - 1906 - The Unluckiest Bookie
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.
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Jul 12, 2020
13 July - 1940 - The Death Of A Razor Gangster
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?
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Jul 11, 2020
12 July - 1912 - Queen Of Swimmers
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.
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Jul 10, 2020
11 July - 1980 - FM Radio's Debut Snafus
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 first? And who'd be delayed for three weeks?
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Jul 9, 2020
10 July - 1907 - Hello, Melbourne! Hello, Sydney!
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.
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Jul 8, 2020
9 July - 1952 - The Champ's Last Fight
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.
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Jul 7, 2020
8 July - 1965 - The Supreme Ruler Of The Wireless
On this day 55 years ago, 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.
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Jul 6, 2020
7 July - 1960 - The Kidnapping Of Graeme Thorne
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 capitalising on a "good murder story" where the victim was a child.
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Jul 5, 2020
6 July - 1964 - The First Aussie Digger KIA In Vietnam
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.
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Jul 4, 2020
5 July - 1920 - Eugene Falleni — Murderer?
On this day 100 years ago, 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 this day.
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Jul 3, 2020
4 July - 1964 - A Boy And His Steamroller
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?
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Jul 3, 2020
3 July - 1850 - This Train Will Be Delayed... Five Years
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.
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Jul 2, 2020
2 July - 1870 - The Case Of The Electric Snakes
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.
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Jul 1, 2020
1 July - 1932 - The Birth of the ABC
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
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Jun 30, 2020
30 June - 1930 - Don Bradman's Best Innings
Having lost the First Test and with the Second Test in the balance, Australians tune in to their wireless sets to hear if Don Bradman can save the day. What they'll hear is cricket history being made. (And later that year Don Bradman will make different types of records — with a piano in recording studios.)
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Jun 19, 2020
Introducing Australia On This Day
Coming soon - your new daily history podcast, from the creator of Forgotten Australia.
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