Australian History: Brilliant stories from Australia's past.
Australian Rules Football and the earliest clubs formed to compete, are said to be the oldest established football clubs in the world. Started in the late 1850s, initially based loosely on the Rugby School game, within 20 years it had evolved to become the basis of Australia’s very own, different...
Early in World War 2, German Raiders were laying sea mines around Australian & New Zealand coastal waters. Here we tell the story of one ship that was sunk by those mines, and the exceptional salvage operation that was undertaken to recover precious cargo that had gone down with the...
In 1796, the Calcutta merchants Campbell & Clark, sent a boat load of attractive goods, including much needed home and personal wares, and much desired rum, to sell to the isolated people in the new penal colony at Port Jackson (now current day Sydney). The Sydney Cove foundered and the...
This episode concludes the series exploring the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme; the vast hydro electric, and irrigation project, that began in 1949 and was under construction for 25 years. As well as providing much needed electricity and irrigation water to a soon to be booming Australia, the international workforce helped...
Today we turn our attention the workers’ arrangements. At the peak of construction, over 1959/60, there were 7300 people employed on the project. So that’s a lot of people to keep fed & watered, and entertained. But it was hard and sometimes dangerous work, so we consider some of the...
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme began construction at Guthega, with a Norwegian contractor, and before too long, power was being delivered to the people. Workers and families got used to the new environment and the working conditions as the construction projects multiplied across the project sites, while others had to...
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme was underway. Now they Authority had to acquire the land across the Alps, and recruit a workforce, to survey, plan and construct the many parts of the project; not an easy thing to do in booming post war Australia. Part 2 gives an overview of...
The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, took nearly 30 years to complete in the post war period, and was an astounding engineering feat. It remains one of the “engineering wonders of the world”. It created thousands of jobs and drove the development of increased home-grown Engineering expertise in large civil projects....
In the early 1930s the post WW1 Soldier Settlers in Western Australia were doing it hard, trying to make a living growing wheat in a tough economic climate. When the native Emus descended on their crops on mass, they called on the Commonwealth Minister of Defense to come to their...
Australia has a number of massive continuous barrier fences, built by farmers and pastorlists from the late 1800’s, to try and control the movement of native and introduced pests that were threatening the land and stock. We’re going to look at the development & operation of the massive Dingo Fence,...