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Description
OVER 55 YEARS AGO multi-award-winning journalist John Francis interviewed ageing Australian Outback characters, before their voices were lost in the red dust.
THIS IS UNIQUE Aussie history.
NEARLY ALL lived largely solitary lives, in the harsh and lonely inland, on the edge of deserts, in a world of searing droughts, and occasional fierce floods.
THEY WERE prospectors, sheep and cattle men, boundary riders, drovers, railway workers, truck drivers, Aboriginal groups, and isolated but hardy women.
AUSTRALIA'S AVIATION HISTORY also started in the red dust. You'll hear interviews with some of Australia's most famous pioneer airmen (many of whom started flying in the First World War), who used aircraft to make the Outback a little less lonely.
JOHN ALSO interviews the descendants of other unique characters, reads fascinating tales from Australia's Outback past, and spins tales of his own red dust adventures.
WEBSITE: www.reddusttapes.au
18 Episodes
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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 per...
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 des...
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...
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 s...
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 thre...
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 office door to me, welcoming me in, and cheerfully sharing so many s...
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. What I’ve found out recently deepens the mystery of Ernest Skein....
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 motorists heading up into the Flinders Ranges and beyond. What made Fred Tea...
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 sprint for this little tin shed.’ Sir Hudson Fysh was co-founder of...
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 and silver in the world. It was also the site of three long-runn...
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 remarkable. Seven children, seven highly talented multi-instrumental...
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 this final instalment on Sir Norman, we hear of more of his brazen bu...
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 cunning in the skies over the Western Front, and was the same in business. In this seco...
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 Norman Brearley, with his Western Australian Airways who first made it to a...
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 they had built there. A hut so tiny he just had room for one ch...
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 cattle, and why donkeys are sweeter than mules. As a 21 year-old...
Are you intrigued by Australian oral history? You’ll really love RED DUST TAPES. Soak up the voices and the stories of Outback old-timers who were born over 130 years ago. Here's a quick trailer of RED DUST TAPES, which will be available weekly from mid-April. For more information and to SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER, go to: reddusttapes.au
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 was achieved, that had many significant, and shared, outcomes...
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