Episodes

Red Dust Tapes rocks and rattles back into the early days of Australian rail. You’ll hear: A 1914 account of the flies, the dust and the mind-numbing isolation, by a man who was right there with pick and shovel for the building of the 1,710 kilometre Nullabor Railway, the Transcontinental. We visit the tiny railway settlement of Cook, in the middle of that desolate track, in the later days of diesel. It’s deserted now, but back in 1970 when I recorded there, it had a school, post office, a lock-...

I’ll never forget roll-yer-own, coughing, cursing, tell it as it was, Nicholas Tallack. He was a bushman of wide experience, and with a swag of stories for every one of them. Nick Tallack was my favourite yarn spinner, and in this episode of Red Dust Tapes Nick will wax lyrical about camels and donkey teams. And later, we’ll chuff/clunk/whistle our way at a leisurely pace in the boiler room and wheelhouse of Murray River paddlesteamers, in the jolly good company of stokers and captains, and hear...

Hop on your horse, let's go. And be warned: your bottom will be rubbed raw after just one a day in the saddle. And you could be heaving and swaying up there for several months. I have some fascinating people to introduce you to. Like the late, legendary Bill Gwydir, who used to drove thousands of cattle thousands of kilometres, through the sweaty monsoonal mud of Queensland, then through the heat and cold and endless sand of South Australia. Bill's stories, of a childhood raised in the saddle, a...

Now Red Dust listeners, I have no interviews to present to you this episode. Rather, let’s head back in time, to before recording devices were invented. Australia, as with the rest of the world, right now is in the midst of turmoil, over the significance of immigration. Our first Anoriginal immigrants trickled in while in the midst of the last Ice Age. But much, much later came a flood, of the second wave … ah ha! So here we go … In this episode … The Great South Land is dumped with rubbish from...

Two States, one Territory. Three isolated women, each with totally different backgrounds and motivations, tell tales about goats and ghosts and tin mines, that go back to early 20th Century Outback Australia.

Now I want to present to you a time capsule. It’s a radio documentary I prepared in 1972, for the ABC. Back then it’s title was, ‘The Urban Aborigine’ , and you’ll find the word 'aborigine' features strongly thoughout For many Aboriginal people, that word is no longer considered appropriate. Because of historical connotations, to use that word for indigenous Australians seems to lengthen the distance between ‘them’ and ‘us’, between me the white person, and you the black person. It’s considered...

This episode has everything: A road trip. (Well, on mainly dusty tracks) across three quarters of Australia. Memorable encounters with remnants of Aboriginal tribes – two of whom were the last speakers of a number of ancient languages. The horrifying squalor of a fringe dwellers' camp, and the grief of young parents whose children were taken. The endless, almost bendless Nullabour Railway, A fascinating interview with an anthropologist – Kato Muir – who is also the descendant of some of the las...

Ned Conroy, the craggy-browed Scotsman with the missing teeth and a dusty face the colour of the red earth he dug in, loved the bush, and the chase for floaters – those bits of gold on the surface – and then the dig-down search for the hidden reef. And he wasn’t perturbed by the near-miss when, in the pitch black after his lamp snuffed out, several tons of earth collapsed right in front of him. Or the time when a large snake tumbled down the mine shaft and landed on his shoulder. When I visited...

From the age of 12 Les Craigie was a professional boxer. In our interview he compared an easily bruised apple with the delicacy of a pummelled human brain. At 21 he’d had enough of the risks, and for the next 25 years he worked deep underground in the Broken Hill silver-lead mines – to face different but equally real dangers. In 1948 Les climbed up out of the deep shafts and headed west, taking up his own silver-gold claim in the Barratta Ranges. From miner, he became a prospector. Oh sure, that...

Welcome to Season 2 of Red Dust Tapes. We commence this second season as far as you can possibly get from the usual Red Dust Tapes territory, in The Land of the Blizzard, Antarctica. It’s also just 67 years ago – so far more recent than most of my tales. But John ’Snow’ Williams is a great storyteller. In this case recalling his time at Wilkes Station, in 1958, during the International Geophysical Year. This was deep into the Cold War era, with the US and Russia trading frightening threats. But ...