Red Dust Tapes

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...

THIS IS THE FINAL EPISODE OF SEASON 1.

Whoah! It seems I achieved something that the great television interviewer and self-confessed cricket nut Sir Michael Parkinson longed for, but never managed – to not just meet, but to interview the legendary, world-beating cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman.

It was said that Don Bradman was ‘elusive’. Like a lyrebird in the bush, perhaps? But there was the great Don, graciously opening his...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 11

When I interviewed Ernest Skein in 1970, I was told he had recently been let out of jail. 

I didn’t want to close down an interview with a fascinating old-time prospector, so when I got the message that some subjects were not to be touched, I left that one alone. It remained just a giant elephant in the tiny, hot-as-hell tin shack in which I interviewed him in Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory.

Wh...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 10

In the Depression years Fred Teague had been a gold miner and fox shooter north of the road to Broken Hill. He drove trucks for the legendary Harry Ding to Innaminka, and up the Birdsville Track, in gruelling conditions, where if you got stranded you’d better have plenty of water; and where a wrong turn could mean the end.

Then in the early 1950s he opened Hawker Motors, which became a mecca for motoris...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 9

It was bitterly cold up there, in leather cap and goggles, in the open cockpit. Turbulence in North Queensland skies was often terrifying. Passengers could do nothing but hang on and bear it, hopefully holding something to catch the vomit.

And on landing, ‘sometimes the only edifice on the aerodrome was a little tin shed’, Sir Hudson  told me. ‘On a cold morning you’d see the poor passengers making a spr...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 8

One day 1970, in the Outback town of Broken Hill, I was standing on a street corner, tape recorder in hand, grabbing sounds for a radio documentary. A short, energetic little fellow wandered up and said, ‘Hello son, what are you doing here?’

It was Frank Bartley, born 1888, who like his father before him became a miner at the Broken Hill mines. 

Broken Hill, they say, is the richest source of lead, zinc a...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 7

Last edition we met Sis McRae, the all-night fiddler from the early part of the 20th Century. Sis had just one child, Margaret McRae, who married Jim Coad.

Both families had mining backgrounds. With Margaret and Jim this continued, with their barytes mine at Martins Well in the Flinders Ranges.

But it’s what they achieved above ground, out there in the back country of South Australia, that is truly remark...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 6

There are two distinct parts to this episode: first, more revelations about an early aviation legend. Then, we visit Ada (Sis) Mcrae, born 1889, who recalls the hardships and joys of life in a small Outback town.

SIR NORMAN BREALEY really made the dust fly with his biplane-era airline in Western Australia, but the maverick way he ran his business also raised the ire of our early aviation authorities.

In t...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 5

They wouldn’t let Brearley look at the bodies. A women said it was the first time she’d ever seen a man cry.

'I made all the rules, and I followed every one of them'.

World War One dogfighter Major Norman Brearley was the first off the ground with an airline in Australia, dramatically changing the lives of people in Outback Western Australia. 

Major Brearley had been ruthless and cunnin...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 4

Within a few short years after the First World War, over the heads of horses donkeys camels and bullock teams, a new sound could be heard in Australia’s interior: the droning and spluttering of aircraft.
 
 First it was the 'barnstormers' offering thrills and first flights to small country communities. Then came airmail services, then passenger routes were opened.
 
 It was Sir...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 3

Opal miner Franko Albertoni was born in 1883. He was 88 when John Francis interviewed him in 1971, but still jumping around in the crushing heat like a little pixie. 

In 1920 Franko and his brother were among the very early miners at the Coober Pedy Opal Fields in South Australia. Then in 1930 they were among the first 12 to dig for opal in Andamooka.

Franko was still living in the same mud and stone hut ...

SEASON 1, EPISODE 2

It was 1919, and Charlie Gill was 12 when he started work on a cattle station east of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. It was a tough but joyous life for a boy.

Charlie was an acute observer, with the memory of a steel dingo trap, and a great way with words. In  this 1968 interview he talks of sleeping rough when mustering, of dealing with cranky camels, on the dingo hunt, the joy of working with ...