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 oral history
Recent Episodes
The grit-faced bushie who loved a drink, and the thrill of finding fl…
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 sea...
Who’s the nutty one? Chasing a bus, or serenely alone?
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 work...
An Aussie engineer’s adventures in Antarctic: Pt 2
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 Internation...
A madman, and a death in the snow
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 ...
A rare and exclusive interview with the legendary Sir Donald Bradman
THIS IS THE FINAL EPISODE IN SEASON ONE. 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...
As a kid, he skinned cats and sold the meat. What happened years late…
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 ...
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