Australia On This Day

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 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 information.

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 and white. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 story in today's episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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 interview about Kevin’s legacy with Brendan James Murray, author of Venom: The Heroic Search For Australia’s Deadliest Snake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 terrifying premonitions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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