1 Australia’s Unbelievable True Stories & Things You Thought You Knew – Jim looks at the truth behind some of our most commonly believed Aussie myths and shares some of Australia’s oddest and most amazing true stories.
2 How Sydney Was Shaped By Disease – The history of Sydney’s hospitals from 1788 – how disease, quarantine, the plague, Florence Nightingale and an attempted Royal assassination are part of our history and helped shape the city of Sydney.
3 What Happened at Gallipoli? – Jim explains the reason for the Gallipoli Campaign, its geography and progress and reads extracts from Best Gallipoli Yarns and Forgotten Stories.
4 The Portuguese Discovery of Australia – A tale of intrigue, Papal decrees, international rivalry and the mystery of the ‘mahogany ship’. In 1522, a century before the Dutch arrived; the Portuguese Captain Cristavao de Mendonca charted the east coast of Australia from Cape York to Warrnambool. A copy of his map was on board the Endeavour. Who knew and why was it kept secret?
5 Star of The Southern Seas – The wonderful story of how a leaky old store ship called the Berwickwas transformed into the flagship HMS Siriusand went on to lead the largest migration the world had ever seen, save the colony of NSW by circumnavigating the world through arctic waters and end her life on a reef off Norfolk Island. This is also the story of a brave Scot named John Hunter and a remarkable and beautiful instrument called ‘K1’.
6 Convict Con Men – The amazing lives of four of Jim’s favourite convicts – artists, forgers, gypsies and businessmen who shaped our nation and gave us a wonderful legacy and heritage. How transportation made the egalitarian nation we all live in.
7 The Ones That Got Away – Tales of the great escapes from the convict colonies of Australia. The incredible return journey to Cornwall of bravest convict of them all, Mary Bryant, the VenusMutiny, the amazing Captain Swallow and the Cyprus BrigMutiny and the event that rocked the British Empire – the Irish Fenians’ successful escape from Perth to New York on the Catalpa.
8 Matthew Flinders – The Boy Who Read Robinson Crusoeand Named Our Land – The amazing true story of the brery, daring, imprisonment and romance of a village lad who ran away to sea and lived more adventures than we can dream of in his short life. A man who died young, almost forgotten by the British but never forgotten by the people living in the land he charted and named. Tales of war at sea, shipwrecks, intrigue and a love story for the ages!
9 Let There Be Light! – Shipwrecks That Changed Our History – The wreck of the Nevaand the death of 200 women and children hastened the end of transportation to NSW. The tragedy of Cataraqui seriously retarded the development of Melbourne and is still the worst civil disaster in our history. The wreck of the finest ship in the world, the Dunbar, shocked Sydney to its core, brought down a government, filled the harbour with bodies and remodeled the city of Sydney.
10 One Way Ticket – From convicts to ex-communicated Germans, £10 Poms and boat people, the fascinating story of migration to Australia. Who were convicts and other forced immigrants? Why were they sent? Who were the free settlers who chose to come in the 19th century? Where were they from? Why did they come? Where did they go and how did they become a vital component of our cultural melting pot?
11 Girt By Sea and Ringed By Menace – How many Australians know that the Japanese did land in Western Australia in WW2 and 28 Japanese submarines patrolled our east coast and sank over fifty ships? Or that the mother submarines that carried the 50 tonne so-called ‘midget’ subs were 120 metres long with crews of 100 men? Or that a German U-Boat visited the Coorong, east of Adelaide, in 1944, and German raiders laid mines along our east coast and operated off our west coast sinking dozens of ships, as well as HMAS Sydney? Find out what the wartime censors never told us in this frightening and enlightening presentation.
12 The Alcoholic History of Australia – The story of how alcohol has played a huge part in our history, shaped our accepted social values and politics and impacted on our everyday way of life. From the grog soaked British navy and use of rum as currency to the shameful Liverpool Soldiers’ mutiny of 1916, which led to the social evils, crime and long term cultural effects of the notorious ‘six o’clock swill’.
