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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 stories from his illustrious sporting life.
This was in about 1972, when Sir Donald was a stockbroker batting share prices rather than a cricket ball, having played his final Test game against England 24 years earlier. In that match the great man was just four runs short of a 7,000-run career, but was sent walking with a duck.
With a what?
In this episode of Red Dust Tapes I offer a brief introduction to this weirdest of games, that in it’s ‘first class’ form can keep going for six hours a day for three, four, and in present times, five days.
But we’re really here for the anecdotes and musings of the man many regard not just as the greatest cricketer of all time, but possibly the greatest sportsperson.
Sir Donald was a delight to sit with, freely sharing on career highlights, the lows of the dangerous bodyline era, and tales of other legendary cricket characters.
So no, this edition of Red Dust Tapes is not about the Outback. And yes, it is all about cricket. But offered to you in a way that I hope you will enjoy regardless of your interest in sport.
By the way it’s also the end of the first season of Red Dust Tapes. I guarantee you’ll be delighted with the content and variety of the next season, when we spend time with cattlemen, railway workers, isolated Aboriginal people, prospectors, paddlesteamer captains; when we hear more anecdotes from our first airmen, and meet assorted Outback loners.
All of these characters were born towards the end of the 19th century or early in the 20th, so all are long, long gone.My interviews are Australian oral history you won’t hear anywhere else.
To stay informed, and to be alerted when the new season starts, please subscribe, at www.reddusttapes.au
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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. It involves a shocking incident that occurred at the Dolly Pot Mine in Tennant Creek, way back in 1939.
I relate what little I know of this incident at the end of this edition of Red Dust Tapes. But for the most part, this is the story of a north Queensland butcher who got his start selling cat meat, and ended up as a gold miner in the Northern Territory, with a whole lot of rough and tumble along the way.
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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 Teague so special though, was his encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural and human history of the Flinders.
Fred’s formal education had been limited, but over the years he gathered a comprehensive book collection. It was from the Bush though, that he learned most – through experience, intense observation, and through association with people like Aboriginal elders, and visiting geologists and paleontologists.
I interviewed Fred at his Hawker Garage in 1967. My interview at that time focussed on the Flinders, not the man. So I was grateful, in early 2024, to learn Fred’s fascinating personal story, from his son John Teague.
This episode features both father and son, interviewed 57 years apart.
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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 the Australian flagship airline, Qantas. I interviewed him in 1970. This was a year before the first 747 Jumbo took to our skies, and three years before Concorde first flew.
We spoke to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his scrappy little airline that started in the red dust of inland Queensland not long after World War One, and quickly grew to take on the world.
Sir Hudson was a natural storyteller. He shared insights into the rugged flying conditions for passengers and pilots alike; the emotions of those early passengers who in many ways were like guinea pigs; and the lows and highs of running an airline between the world wars – including the romance of the flying boats – and on into the jet age.
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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-running workers’ strikes, that after tough battles, created Australian industrial relations history.
Frank Bartley was a lively encyclopaedia for the rich history of Broken Hill. He gave highly memorable, graphic descriptions of the tough working conditions, the illnesses from bad mine practices and poor hygiene, and the bitter, protracted struggles between workers and bosses.
We also hear excerpts from my old Broken Hill documentary, going deep underground, and visiting a School of the Air classroom when isolated Outback children were taught via radio.
We finish with the title song from a new album, ‘Threeways’, by Australian Country singer-songwriter Kevin Sullivan.
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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-instrumentalists. Including Peter, Virginia and Lynette. As Peter Coad and the Coad Sisters, these siblings – with the addition of fellow South Australian musician Jim Hermel, are almost constantly on the road, mixing and matching to form four bands, writing and performing Australian bush ballads, Bluegrass and Rock.
But what is most dear to their hearts is the Australian sound, drawn from Australian outback stories, many reflecting their own isolated bush upbringing.
As you will hear in this episode of Red Dust Tapes, Granny Sis McRae’s violin, dating from the 18th Century, plays on, in the talented hands of this intriguing family.
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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 business antics.
SIS McRAE in Hawker, South Australia, was the big-bodied, big-hearted grandmother of Australian Country Music legends Peter Coad and the Coad Sisters.
In this 1967 interview with Sis, she shared with me some of her swag-full of yarns about small-town life over a century ago. And through the Coads’ song, ’Sing Me That Old Song, Granny’, we hear the ancient violin Sis would play all night at country dances in the Flinders Ranges.
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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 second episode on his establishment on Western Australian Airways, two researchers from the Old Flyers’ Group in Perth entertain and inform us by uncovering what one of them describes as the ’naughty bits’ of the story of this great pioneer.
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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 airline status, with a route from Geraldton to the far north-west of Australia's largest State.
As he told John Francis during an interview in 1971, Sir Norman, born 1890, was 13 when the Wright Brothers first took to the air. In the early days of World War One after less than two hours instruction, when his flight instructor refused to go up with him again, Norman said he 'taught myself to fly'.
By June 1916 he was in action on the Western Front, during which time on what was considered a 'suicidal mission' he shot down an observation balloon, and later with another pilot attacked seven enemy aircraft, before being shot down in No Man's Land with a bullet through both lungs.
Sir Norman's many aerial adventures and later prominent role in military pilot training, saw him awarded a Military Cross, a Distinguished Service Order, and the Air Force Cross.
As you will hear in this first of a two-part series – and even more so in the second part to follow – Sir Norman Brearley was a fighter, both in the air and later in establishing his airline. -
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 chair, and so dark, he cooked over his open fire by feel. His prized possessions were his button accordion and tin whistle.
Franko was scathing of his ‘lazy’ older brother George, a womaniser who lived in the city and made a lot of money gambling. Citing the poem, ‘Paddle Your Own Canoe’, he preferred the simple joys of digging for potatoes in earth so dry and hard he had to use a use a pick, and drawing a little muddy water from the well he dug when he was 70.
Also in this episode, goat carts and drought years in the Flinders Ranges. And before we meet Franko, we go underground in search of opal.
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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 Mr Gill joined the police force. He recalls the hard line he was forced to take with the hordes of desperate swaggies heading west during the Depression years.
This is the first edition of Red Dust Tapes, where former radio documentary maker John Francis takes us on a journey through Outback Australia to meet now long-gone, colourful characters whose lifestyle has now all but disappeared. -
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.
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