Australian History Stories

Bushranger Book Two: Bold Jack Donohoe

Three decades after the colony’s first bushranger, the settlement was larger, harsher, and more organised — and so were its outlaws. Along the roads west of Sydney, a transported convict named Jack Donohoe moved from escape to armed resistance. In a colony now governed by patrols, proclamations, and printed rewards, bushranging was no longer improvisation. It was becoming a crisis the government could no longer ignore.

The Beaconsfield Mine Collapse

During Australia’s gold-rush era, miners were drawn not just to rivers and fields, but to deep quartz reefs locked inside hard rock. At Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania, that discovery led to a mine that would operate, in different forms, for more than a century. In April 2006, a seismic event underground interrupted that long history, turning routine work into an uncertain crisis beneath the surface.

Bushranger Book One: Black Caesar

Before Australia had roads, towns, or a stable food supply, the colony was already producing its first outcasts. In a settlement governed by hunger and discipline, one transported convict—known to history as Black Caesar—crossed the line between containment and survival. Unknowingly, he set in motion the earliest form of bushranging, before it had a name and before the colony knew how to respond to it.

The Thalidomide Scandal

In the early 1960s, a new "wonder drug" swept through Australian pharmacies—promising relief from morning sickness and sleepless nights. It was hailed as safe, gentle, and modern. But behind its glossy packaging, something sinister was unfolding. The truth about the drug would take years to surface—and when it did, it would reveal one of the darkest and most avoidable medical disasters in Australian history.

The Batavia Shipwreck

In 1629, the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia wrecked on the treacherous reefs of the Houtman Abrolhos, off the coast of Western Australia. What followed was one of history’s most horrifying tales of survival, mutiny, and mass murder. Stranded on the lawless barren islands with no immediate rescue, a power-hungry merchant named Jeronymus Cornelisz seized control, unleashing a brutal reign of terror that saw over 100 men, women, and children slaughtered.