Red Dust Tapes

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 197...

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 paddlesteame...

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 So...

In this chapter:

The convict who tried a ‘fool’s gold’ trick – twice;

The real gold rushes and the birth of the swaggie;

The arrival of the Chinese goes off like fireworks, so here comes the White Australia Policy;

Grog and mayhem on the goldfields;

Duck for cover! It’s the bushrangers;

Defiance, death, and Justice – the Eureka Stockade;

… And to finish, a delightful interview I had with an old bloke who in the late 1890’s used to tramp u...

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...

It was a tremendous pleasure sharing with each of the women in this chapter. 

Auntie Kath Nichols, who lived in what was destined to be a ghost town in the northern South Australia with Twiggy Minupus, a kitty Aunty Kath claimed was affected with radiation from atomic tests to the west.

Maud Close, with stories of working in tin mines with the Chinese in 1907, the Top End railway, and the bombing of Darwin.

And The Goat Lady of Bulong...

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...

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 anthro...

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...

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 Ba...

Woops. Once again, we’re a long way from the usual Red Dust Tapes Outback territory.

This is the second of the two-part anecdotes of John ’Snow’ Williams, who first went to the Antarctic in 1958, at the end of the International Geophysical Year.

In this era the world was gripped with the fear of nuclear war, with the United States and Russia flinging threats at each other. So it was remarkable that a year of scientific co-operation w...

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...