Bloody crimes, unsolved mysteries, eccentric celebrities, dark events and bizarre happenings: it's all here – the stuff you wish they'd taught you in school!Dive into our strange-but-true history via never-before-told stories, author interviews, weekly flashbacks and the weekly trivia quiz.Forgotten Australia is created and hosted by Michael Adams, author of the acclaimed true crime books The Murder Squad, Hanging Ned Kelly and They'll Never Hold Me. He's also a regular history and true crime commentator on ABC Nightlife and the podcast Australian True Crime.Support Forgotten Australia for a few bucks per month to get ad-free early episodes, exclusive bo...
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Sep 29, 2026 · 57:27
In March 1912, Australia was stunned to learn that Koombana was missing in nearly identical circumstances to Yongala. In this final episode, we look at how good and bad luck…
Sep 27, 2026 · 1:04:11
Alongside Yongala, the Adelaide Steamship Company prided itself on its luxury vessel Koombana, designed especially to work the Western Australian coast. But this was a seemingly…
Sep 24, 2026 · 48:37
In March 1911, with the loss of the ship Waratah still fresh in memory, a big passenger liner went missing in a cyclone off northern Queensland. As a massive search began,…
Sep 24, 2026 · 21:59
I’m re-releasing this short as background for the new miniseries, Mysteries of the Sea. In July 1909, the world wondered what had become of the SS Waratah, last seen off coast of…
Sep 15, 2026 · 19:35
This week marks the 70th anniversary of regular television broadcasting in Australia. Channel Nine recently 'recreated' the 'Good Evening and Welcome to Television' moment in a…
Sep 7, 2026 · 49:35
Blackbirding – A Reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade. We talk about the practices and policies that led to a staggering death toll – and how we don’t remember because our…
Sep 7, 2026 · 1:05:44
Dr James Patrick Murray kidnaps and kills more people, and goes mad and is nearly murdered himself, before returning to Australia to be acclaimed as a saviour during a smallpox…
Sep 6, 2026 · 52:48
Dr James Patrick Murray takes the brig Carl to the sunny South Seas and into a heart of darkness beyond the imagination of even Joseph Conrad. In this nightmare of his creation,…
Sep 6, 2026 · 1:02:17
Dr James Patrick Murray ranks as one of the most evil characters in Australian history. In September 1871, he ordered the massacre of 70 men that his slavers had kidnapped from…
Sep 3, 2026 · 45:54
From 1972, Paul Hogan was the Australian tobacco industry’s most formidable marketing weapon, the Winfield warrior in a new era of mandatory health warnings. When a total ban on…
Aug 31, 2026 · 1:02:31
Fifty years ago this week – 1 September 1976 – tobacco commercials were banned on Australian television. So, it was goodbye to Paul Hogan, Stuart Wagstaff, Norman Gunston and…
Aug 28, 2026 · 19:28
Aussie writer Charles Shaw came from the school of hard knocks to create a true-blue noir antihero in a series of novels that were internationally popular and compared with the…
Aug 26, 2026 · 13:18
Sixty years ago this week, Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari led 200 Aboriginal stockmen and their families in the Wave Hill Walk-Off. They were protesting pitiful pay and…
Aug 24, 2026 · 35:50
Nearly 100 years ago, the village of Wolumla on the far south coast of NSW was shocked by its first murder. The motive for this crime was so scandalous that a wall of silence…
Aug 17, 2026 · 29:44
How well do you know your murderers, mobsters, armed robbers and bent coppers? How good is your memory for Aussie rock hits of the 1970s and 1980s? Test yourself with this…
Aug 9, 2026 · 36:23
Digging into the murderer’s past and future is to find two more cold-blooded killings. Forgotten Australia is created and hosted by Michael Adams, author of the acclaimed true…
Aug 5, 2026 · 50:04
A shocking early result of our first national census was... murder! In 1911, a Cloncurry census collector's investigations into an unreturned form turned up a dead man, burned to…
Jul 27, 2026 · 46:57
Did Abe Saffron kill Juanita Nielsen? Order the Luna Park fire? Or was so-called Mr Sin exerting a more subtle yet no less more sinister force on Australian society? Author…
Jul 23, 2026 · 45:52
Even when the verdict is delivered in the Katoomba murder trial, the story is far from over – especially after the convicted man makes a startling allegation. Support Forgotten…
Jul 22, 2026 · 41:24
In the wake of the gory outrage at the California, the accused faces an inquest and then his trial for murder. If he's found guilty, he'll be sentenced to death. But is he bad –…
Jul 19, 2026 · 44:30
A Katoomba hotel. A locked room. Screams in the night and a body in the morning. The mystery of what happened in Australia’s favourite resort town in autumn 1917 was like…
Jul 16, 2026 · 1:01:16
Fifty years ago this month – 19 July 1976 – Australia’s first act of environmental terrorism was directed at the Bunnings-owned wood chip export facility in Bunbury. Who were the…
Jul 12, 2026 · 41:26
In 1936, western author Zane Grey came Down Under to catch giant sharks and film his adventures. The result was White Death, a so-bad-it’s-good monster movie. Vicki Hastrich,…
Jul 6, 2026 · 53:52
While 1950s eccentrics Bea Miles and Rosaleen Norton are well remembered, Luba Shishova was twice as wild yet she's all but forgotten. Dubbed ‘Olga from the Volga’ and a…
Jun 30, 2026 · 34:13
Having bent justice to their will successfully once, Kenneth Brown and his supporters tried a new defence tactic: arguing that he’d been cursed from birth as a hereditary…
Jun 29, 2026 · 33:57
With Mary Ann Brown dead, and no doubt that Kenneth killed her, his April 1876 murder trial appeared to be an open-and-shut case. But he had the best defence that money could buy…
Jun 28, 2026 · 57:11
In part one, we heard about Kenneth Brown. In this episode, we look at Mary Ann Tindall and how she became his wife and victim. If you’re in danger from domestic violence, call…
Jun 27, 2026 · 48:50
We all know Edith Cowan – first woman elected to an Australian parliament – graces out $50 note. But did you know she was shaped by a traumatic childhood? In 1876, her father,…
Jun 26, 2026 · 49:30
In 1837, three cold-blooded killers committed a series of bloody outrages that left nine people dead. Two of these murderers were to face their own gruesome fates. But, in an…
Jun 26, 2026 · 50:06
Ahoy, me hearties! William Swallow became the pirate captain of the convict ship Cyprus after he seized the vessel in Tasmania in 1829. From there, it was a case of ‘Bring me…
Jun 25, 2026 · 35:16
A True Crime Classic from the Forgotten Australia archives: Just over 100 years ago, Australia suffered one of the world's first random mass shootings when a man went berserk…
Jun 25, 2026 · 26:46
This week, when we stay up (or get up) to cheer the Socceroos, we’ll be doing what Aussies first did one winter nearly a century ago. In 1930, the Ashes test cricket series was…
Jun 25, 2026 · 46:30
Who named Australia? Which former Prime Minister lost his pants in public? Which celebrity came chasing ghosts Down Under? What were the weirdest names suggested for Melbourne…
Jun 1, 2026 · 42:50
Failing film stars! Flailing Frenchmen! Falling space junk! They’re all here, the true and the false, the serious and the deeply stupid. Three rounds. 30 questions. Like pub…
May 21, 2026 · 41:09
Serial killers! Chocolate animals! Robot chaos! They’re all part of the first-ever Aussie History Pod Trivia Quiz. Three rounds. 30 questions. Just like pub trivia! So, how well…
May 17, 2026 · 32:50
Donald Mackintosh was the world’s best shooter and in 1900 in Paris he won what is still the most shocking sporting event ever associated with the Olympic Games. Did he really…
May 3, 2026 · 32:28
This week in 1826 was a bad time to be a cannibal bushranger. Plus: Bold Ben Hall bites the dust; the first Brit buried Down Under; and the making of a murderer in On Our…
May 2, 2026 · 34:17
Who was Boofhead and where did he come from? We say happy 85th birthday to an iconic yet idiotic Aussie bloke who appeared in our midst when we needed him most. Plus: a brief…
May 2, 2026 · 43:11
Author and music journalist Jeff Apter joins us to discuss his recent book, Lee Gordon Presents: How One Man Changed Australian Life Forever, the first biography of the wild man…
May 1, 2026 · 30:39
In this final instalment, the jury delivers its verdict in the marathon trial of Phillip Treffene and William Coulter for the murders of Detective-Inspector John Walsh and…
Apr 30, 2026 · 49:48
On Monday 16 August 1926, a large crowd gathered outside Perth's Supreme Court, hoping to get access to what promised to be the most sensational criminal trial Western Australia…
Apr 29, 2026 · 46:02
After police swoop on their suspects, Evan 'Teddy' Clarke, Phil Treffene and William Coulter are charged with the murder. But one of these men will turn against the others, with…
Apr 27, 2026 · 36:58
Re-released to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the crime that shocked a nation. On 12 May 1926, south of Kalgoorlie, at an abandoned mine known as Miller's Find,…
Apr 26, 2026 · 37:06
A special re-release to commemorate the 100th anniversary. On 28 April 1926, Detective-Inspector John Walsh and Detective-Sergeant Alexander Pitman disappeared while…
Apr 23, 2026 · 1:05:53
While history tells us Anzac Day started on 25 April 1916, the first such event took place six months earlier in South Australia. The name 'Anzac Day' was coined for this…
Apr 20, 2026 · 34:24
In this interview episode, Dr Daniel Reynaud, author of The Man The Anzacs Revered, tells us about the colourful and incredibly brave AIF chaplain William McKenzie, who was a…
Apr 16, 2026 · 31:01
Having already won two events at Athens in 1896, young Aussie athlete Teddy Flack throws himself at a third victory by entering the Marathon – and he’ll reckon the result ensures…
Apr 13, 2026 · 40:39
Teddy Flack becoming our first Olympic champion is the prototypical tale of the Aussie have-a-go sporting hero. But in 1896, when Teddy was undertaking his Greek odyssey, and…
Mar 30, 2026 · 26:28
Arthur Stace is an Australian legend. But for decades the identity of ‘Mr Eternity’ was a Sydney mystery. Who was this man? Why was he writing this message over and over? How did…
Mar 26, 2026 · 33:35
‘Boots on the ground’: it rolls off the tongue all too easily. But America – and Australia – learned that in Vietnam they didn’t have boots on the ground. They had them in a…
Mar 26, 2026 · 49:51
I'm adopted and – while I come from colourful characters who roamed from Ireland and England to Western Australia, Lord Howe Island and Sydney, via South Africa and the Western…
Mar 26, 2026 · 1:12:55
After tragedy strikes, Emma Murtough begins the colourful third act of her life – as "Mrs Rumtough", fearless travelling housekeeper of the Western Australian wheatbelt and…
Mar 26, 2026 · 58:34
Having made her unthinkable decision, my great-grandmother Emma Murtough takes her children for a new life in Australia. But getting to the Land of Better Chance is to require a…
Mar 24, 2026 · 43:04
Beyond the propaganda about glory, duty and sacrifice, the aftermath of the Great War ushers in a grave new world for my great-grandmother Emma Murtough and her three children.…
Mar 22, 2026 · 41:30
My great-grandfather Peter Murtough arrives on the Western Front in August 1915. He is soon plunged into some of the most horrific battles of the Great War. Casualty rates soar…
Mar 20, 2026 · 38:01
Celebrated high diver Peter Murtough takes the plunge when he marries Emma Hanbury – my colourful great-grandmother. But being a husband and father to three young children…
Mar 18, 2026 · 58:31
After the patriotic fervour that sends Peter Murtough to South Africa, he and hundreds of thousands of soldiers discover the reality of the Boer War is hunger, thirst, filth and…
Mar 15, 2026 · 50:25
In July 1898, my great-grandfather Peter Murtough competes for the title of best diver in the world. But seeking more than the thrills of the life aquatic, he ratchets up the…
Mar 12, 2026 · 44:21
Having fought the French and beaten the odds, Bernard Murtough’s family goes on to prominence in peacetime, establishing themselves and their mineral water business in Portsea.…
Mar 9, 2026 · 47:36
I recently discovered that my great-grandfather was a champion diver who was active in the very same London scene as the doomed stuntmen who featured in my recent miniseries…
Feb 26, 2026 · 13:15
From a run-in with the future Nazi villain, to working with the master of movie suspense, Aussie musical genius Arthur Benjamin lived a big life, even if he’s these days…
Feb 23, 2026 · 27:02
A century and a half ago, the age of the typewriter dawned in Australia. Who was the first to import these new American gizmos? Would they cause the extinction of handwriting?…
Feb 20, 2026 · 20:12
This year marks the 125th anniversary of the Australian flag being raised for the first time – the winning design selected from a competition that attracted over 32,000 entries.…
Feb 15, 2026 · 34:34
Having just retired from the NSW police, infamously bent Sydney detective Ray Kelly injects himself into the Beaumont case in what is one of Australia’s most cynical newspaper…
Feb 12, 2026 · 39:51
In Spain, a B-52 accident has left a nuke lost at sea – while on land a fallout cover-up is in full swing. In Australia, even as more Diggers than ever are dying on the…
Feb 10, 2026 · 42:33
In the second week of February 1966, Australians are preparing for ‘Changeover Day’, when we’ll say 'G’bye' to pounds, shillings and pence and say 'G’day' to dollars and cents.…
Feb 2, 2026 · 43:47
Australia is shocked by three Sydney murders – even as a spate of brutal attacks on sex workers goes ignored by the police and tabloid media. Plus: Lindy Chamberlain freed as the…
Jan 29, 2026 · 29:00
In the Philippines, authoritarian ‘strongman’ President Ferdinand Marcos – having once survived a sex tape scandal that should've sunk him, and having siphoned billions from the…
Jan 26, 2026 · 54:14
After an Englishman fell to his death at Uluru on Australia Day 1986, a search of the area would find the crucial evidence that proved Lindy Chamberlain was innocent of the…
Jan 23, 2026 · 19:41
Welcome to the first episode of Forgotten Australia Spotlight, which is to showcase the work of other history storytellers. First up, History Daily, with their episode about the…
Jan 19, 2026 · 27:56
Having left his mark on Australia, Professor Charles Peart’s legend is to fade with the years, even as others step up to even greater heights for even more dangerous plunges –…
Jan 14, 2026 · 58:00
Arriving in Australia, Professor Charles Peart lives up the hype and wows crowds in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, before showing New Zealand audiences what he can do.…
Jan 11, 2026 · 47:52
After a diving tragedy shocks London, Professor Charles Peart rises to fame with his daring and dizzying head-first pool stunts. When Australian circus owners come looking for…
Jan 4, 2026 · 53:16
Welcome to Season 10! There are a lot of wild stranger-than-fiction episodes and miniseries coming your way in 2026. To start the New Year, let's splashback 130 years... In 1895,…
Dec 30, 2025 · 1:05:27
In 1881, plucky Mary Stoddard won the Great Australian Christmas Card Competition and launched her long and brilliant career in the Sydney art scene. While colonial gentlemen…
Dec 26, 2025 · 1:04:59
Hope you all had a great Christmas. New episodes will be out next week. In the meantime... Australia's first Christmas cards were displayed at The Garden Place. In this episode,…
Dec 21, 2025 · 1:03:36
In 1881, after years of a Christmas card market dominated by wintry imports, the John Sands company launched a competition for Australian-themed designs, with the best and most…
Dec 15, 2025 · 32:25
A new Christmas episode is on the way. In the meantime, let’s revisit the cheekiest Santa Claus in Australian true crime history: Dusty Sheehan – the young Melbourne larrikin,…
Dec 8, 2025 · 41:50
In the weeks after Shirley Butler's murder, newspaper reports hinted that police weren't divulging everything they knew. Then, in June 1953, nearly six months after her death,…
Dec 7, 2025 · 38:02
In this re-release episode, we revisit one of Australia’s most haunting murder cases. On Christmas Day 1952, the body of Shirley Butler was found not far from her Sydney home.…
Nov 28, 2025 · 20:13
In September 1920, Captain Percy Snell thrilled Brisbane by performing aviation stunts in a biplane right over the centre of the city. Forgotten today, this fearless flier was a…
Nov 26, 2025 · 16:52
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…
Nov 23, 2025 · 16:17
In 1857, Sydneysiders awoke to the nightmare vision of their harbour bobbing with bodies. The great ship Dunbar been dashed against The Gap and there seemed to be no survivors.…
Nov 20, 2025 · 11:03
In August 1896, Aussies 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…
Nov 17, 2025 · 12:50
In 1824, two desperate convicts escaped the penal outpost of Macquarie Harbour, risking murder and cannibalism for a fleeting chance at freedom. It’s easy to get a free trial…
Nov 13, 2025 · 18:08
In August 1940, an RAAF 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…
Nov 6, 2025 · 40:47
Space dog Laika and Sputnik II were the green light for the Cold War missile and space races to accelerate at warp speed. With the Russians out in front, the Americans were…
Nov 2, 2025 · 40:21
The world would never be the same after the Russians launched Sputnik II into space and its cosmonaut canine Laika became the first animal to orbit the Earth. Aussies would have…
Oct 31, 2025 · 1:06:12
In 1932, horror movies are on the rise, reflecting fears of an uncertain age – and fair enough, too, because, in addition to the woes of the Great Depression, the rise of fascism…
Oct 29, 2025 · 38:16
While Hitler’s rise to power In Germany seems unstoppable and Mussolini celebrates ten years of fascism in Italy, Australia's homegrown New Guard numbskulls have already become…
Oct 27, 2025 · 46:19
From robots and rockets, to mad scientists, anti-democratic techbros and narcissistic fascist strongmen, a lot of what was making news this week in the Great Depression sounds,…
Oct 20, 2025 · 1:02:05
Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills, Freeman’s Chlorodyne, Hearn’s Bronchitis Cure, Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills – what was in these and other patent medicines and how much good and…
Oct 14, 2025 · 18:13
In July 1942, as Australia’s armed forces were about to begin what would become the legendary battle for the Kokoda Track, in another occupied part of New Guinea, the brave…
Oct 8, 2025 · 14:48
In July 1919, tiny-statured but huge-hearted youngster George Mendies won the Australian Flyweight Title. This was a crown he'd defend successfully again and again – until fate…
Oct 6, 2025 · 13:03
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…
Sep 29, 2025 · 27:58
At the height of the silent movie era, young Australian star Lotus Thompson set her sights on Hollywood. But she soon faced a problem: her legs were so beautiful that producers…
Sep 26, 2025 · 22:24
In July 1909, the world wondered what had become of the SS Waratah, last seen off coast of South Africa with more than 200 souls aboard. This grim mystery was even more…
Sep 23, 2025 · 18:53
William Chidley was an early 20th Century Australian eccentric with his own philosophies, which he preached and published - and for which he was relentlessly persecuted.…
Sep 21, 2025 · 51:13
The death of stuntman Dale Buggins, the arrival of Adam Ant in Australia and new ‘evidence’ in the Azaria Chamberlain case – it was a big week for sensational tabloid stories.…
Sep 15, 2025 · 30:17
In the third week of September 1956, a small number of Australians finally saw what all the fuss was about when regular TV broadcasts began. It was a quiet start - unlike the…
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