Grave Tales Australia: the series
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Grave Tales Australia: the series
Meet the people who were willing or unwilling participants in the events that made headlines. In cemeteries, gravestones hint at our history – tales of unsolved murders, love lost, mystery, tragedy, health epidemics, scandal and sacrifice. 'Grave Tales' reveals more than the headstone can ever...
Neueste Episoden
48 Episoden
The young letter writer
Dying young, Sylvia McArthur would make her mark, documenting in letters to a newspaper’s children’s page what life in rural Tasmania around the turn...
The death of the Clarke brothers
Some bushrangers became folk heroes, others were opportunistic thieves, but the Clarke Brothers were murderous thugs who hanged on duel gallows.
The grave with no bodies
Madam Weigel's patterns dressed the women of Australia for nine decades but in the large cemetery plot bought for three, there are no bodies.
The Gravedigger of Dead Island
Mark Jeffrey lived with the 1100 or so deceased residents on the Isle of the Dead, tending his own plot. But how did he avoid being buried there?
The Flynns of Tasmania
Little did Professor Theodore Flynn and his wife, Lily, of Sandy Bay, Tasmania, know that their son, Errol Flynn, would become Hollywood’s favourite s...
The plane that flew into a cyclone
A story that has passed into folk law – how bushman Bernard O’Reilly put his mind to finding a missing aircraft with seven people on board when no-one...
The Giantess and the Freak Show
In the days when ‘freak shows’ were entertainment, Mrs Augusta Rewald, a Queensland resident, was exhibited as the ‘biggest woman in the world’. But d...
The man on the advertising poster
For more than a century, Sam Knott was one of the best-known faces on advertising billboards. But how did this unconventional man find himself frontin...
Murder in the Botanic Garden
On a beautiful summer’s eve, January 1924, in the Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, five people's lives were about to change. A gunman was on the loose. A t...
The Bradman of Billiards – Walter Lindrum
If it wasn’t for a persistent father, Walter Lindrum might never have risen to World Champion. He was nicknamed the ‘Don Bradman of billiards’ and the...
The Murder of Chrissie Venn
On a Sunday afternoon in February 1921, 13-year-old Chrissie Venn left home to run an errand for her mother. Two days later Chrissie’s body was found...
Death on the beach – the Somerton Man
The man in a suit looked like he was resting in the sun on Somerton Beach, Adelaide, in 1948, until a couple of good Samaritans checking on him, disco...
Play on - Leo Rosner, the Jewish musician saved by Oscar Schindler
He was the Holocaust survivor saved by Oscar Schindler – this is the story of Leo Rosner, a talented Jewish musician who made a post-war life in Melbo...
The One Who Got to Live – George Witton
Many Australians know the story of the execution of Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and Peter Handcock—but there were other Australians charged with them, and...
Ladies of the Lighthouse
Years of isolation, deprivation and often the loss of children, even a case of madness; who were the stoic ladies who accompanied their husbands at th...
The plague comes to Australia
Sudden deaths from a plague caused panic in Sydney involving quarantining, demolitions and disinfecting. The year was 1900 and the nervousness will fe...
Girl Torque - the untimely death of Alice Anderson
Alice Anderson was one of Australia’s first female mechanics and her ideas and inventions were ahead of her time. But Alice’s life came to an untimely...
Death comes to Gracie's store
An unspeakable crime – two women murdered, a third left for dead, and a young killer on drugs on the loose. In Autumn 1964, the community of Coorparoo...
The Box Flat mine disaster
On Monday 31 July 1972, the residents of Ipswich in Queensland were awoken by a blast that destroyed the Box Flat Colliery and killed 17 miners. But w...
Bohemian Bea - from the asylum to the streets
What’s the real story of the bohemian who broke out of an asylum and was known for her ability to quote any passage from Shakespeare for money?
Once upon a wonder horse
Three men went into a pub … no it is not the start of an Irish joke, but it was the start of a syndicate that would turn racing on its head. This is t...
Life at the asylum
Mental asylums were often regarded as feared places of suffering – but for one young girl and her family who lived at the asylum, the inmates provided...
Back from the dead: the man who claimed to be Dan Kelly
Dan Kelly, brother of Ned, died in the 1880 Glenrowan shoot-out with police. So, who was the man living in Ipswich who claimed in 1933 that he was Dan...
The noose and the hands that shaped it
It was school holidays, December 1921 and 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke left home to run an errand in the heart of Melbourne. She was found the next day...
The eccentric dreamer - Ben Lexcen
The winged keel wonder – Australia II and the eccentric mind behind it – Ben Lexcen was the man who engineered the only win over the USA at their own...
Murder of the Murphy siblings_cold case
Queensland’s oldest cold case – three Murphy siblings from Gatton were slain late on Boxing Day, their bodies left for all to see. The investigation...
The Land of Lost Children
The drowning of two little girls who were attracted by water lilies in a pond at Walloon, near Ipswich, inspired Henry Lawson to write his classic 189...
The Stretcher Bearer's Bluff
How did an unarmed stretcher bearer manage to capture 18 armed German soliders in the trenches of France in World War One? You won't believe it!
The Great Bookie Robbery and the carnage that followed
A $15 million prize was hijacked in what was the nation’s most brazen and probably biggest cash robbery ever. And despite the ruthless criminals invol...
The Ladies' Man: murderer Frederick Deeming
The woman who escaped him was called the ‘uncemented bride’. But those who loved him called him the gentlest of lovers. Several of them were buried un...
Mr Eternity - the man, his chalk, his message
This is the story of the down-and-outer from a rough childhood who found redemption and why he spent his life writing the word ‘Eternity’ on Sydney st...
Lost to the sea - Jack and the wreck of La Bella
It was only his second sea journey, and a sailor's life is meant to be an exciting one on the ocean’s waves – adventure, mateship and the mysteries of...
The Pyjama Girl
Who really lies in a humble grave marked with a white cross in a Melbourne cemetery? Is it the woman they call the ‘Pyjama Girl’, Linda Agostini… or d...
Death by sister or a mister? The Schippan Sisters
The newspaper declared ‘startling disclosures’ would be revealed at the trial of Martha, 24, charged with killing her sister, Bertha, 14. Was it a jea...
The ute that went to church
A farmer’s wife inspired the design of the Australian ute, and its designer, Lewis Bandt, would take his last breath in it.
The Brownout Strangler: the soldier who wanted women's voices
Overpaid, oversexed and over here – US soldiers during World War II. This is the story of one GI who killed innocent Australian women to possess their...
Serial killer confesses to the hangman
Was Robert Francis Burns our first serial killer? Using the solitude of the bush, Burns hid his victims’ bodies, but when found guilty of one murder,...
Tea and sympathy: poisoner, Martha Needle
The inexplicable story of a mother who murdered her husband, her three young girls and her new fiancé’s brother with poison… and how one final cup of...
Death comes to Gracie's store
The three ladies, Grace, Rose and Meta, retired for the night on 22 March 1964 in the residence at the back of their little shop. After midnight, the...
Almost not famous: Charles Brownlow
His namesake is famous in AFL circles… yet Charles Brownlow played much of his footy for Geelong under an assumed name. This is the curious story of w...