Australia's First Sporting Heroine — The Marvellous Mrs Douglas: Part Two
On Christmas Eve 1859, Margaret Douglas and Beverley Howard started their epic 1500-mile walking match in Melbourne — which the city’s newspapers did their very best to ignore. Despite such hostility ...
16 Dec 202042min
Australia's First Sporting Heroine — The Marvellous Mrs Douglas: Part One
Melbourne’s Margaret Douglas was an endurance pedestrian every bit as remarkable as her Sydney contemporary The Flying Pieman. After stumbling upon a passing reference to her in an 1878 newspaper, I t...
11 Dec 202043min
Australia's First Sporting Hero — The Flying Pieman: Part Three
Having made his dazzling pedestrian comeback, The Flying Pieman takes another tilt at politics in typical comedic fashion before jolting the Sydney establishment with one last audacious stunt. Feeling...
27 Nov 202049min
Australia's First Sporting Hero — The Flying Pieman: Part Two
In September 1847, after crashing out during the challenge to walk 192 miles in 48 hours non-stop, The Flying Pieman takes a second tilt at this epic feat of pedestrianism. But he won’t stop there bec...
22 Nov 202034min
Australia's First Sporting Hero — The Flying Pieman: Part One
In the 1840s Australia was amazed by the epic pedestrian feats of William Francis King, who was known far and wide as The Flying Pieman. Our first sporting hero, this eccentric celebrity was every bit...
17 Nov 20201h 1min
The Digger Who Survived His 'Beheading'
75 years ago this week, the Japanese surrendered and WWII was over. After these celebrations came horror at what POWs had suffered. Of the many accounts of surviving atrocities, one stood out: Changi ...
10 Aug 202050min
The Plague Of 1900 — Part Two: Lockdown, Washdown... Knockdown
By mid-autumn 1900, dozens of people in Sydney had died from Bubonic Plague – many within a day of showing symptoms. Yet the CMO’s rat-killing recommendations were initially ignored and it’d be up to ...
24 Juli 202037min
The Plague Of 1900 — Part One: The Rats Must Die
It's New Year's Day 1900 and Sydney is celebrating on this sunny day. But Dr Ashburton Thompson, NSW's chief medical officer, knows that darkness is coming over the horizon in the form of Bubonic Plag...
12 Juli 202045min
