Ratbags & Roustabouts

In this episode, we meet up again with convict highwayman Dicky White as he faces the tyranny of Major Foveaux on Norfolk Island, builds a pub in Launceston, and gets locked up in a madhouse in London.
After the trials of the voyage to New South Wales on board the Hillsborough convict ship, Dicky White finds himself first in the settlement of Port Jackson and then shipped off again to Norfolk Island.
There, under the harsh rule of Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Foveaux, he fights to survive. But it is there that he also meets the love of his life, Sarah Clayton. Except she already happens to be married.
When the settlement is closed down, Dicky and Sarah, as well as Dicky’s son John and Sarah’s son Henry, start a new life in Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land. There, Dicky builds the Launceston Hotel — and also builds a name for himself as a generous, albeit eccentric, businessman and centre of the community.
But things take a turn when he decides to return to England, with his reception not what he had envisaged. Will he manage to escape London a second time?
00.00 Introduction
02.26 Life in Port Jackson
05.27 Dicky gets sent to Norfolk Island
10.29 Dicky and Sarah meet
17.12 Norfolk Islanders sent to Launceston
28.05 Dicky returns to London
29.07 Dicky is put in a madhouse
31.40 Wedding bells
33.19 Preview of next episode
Credits:
Theme music: ‘Wellerman Epic Shanty’ by EBunny via Jamendo
Sound effects: Pixabay

Hosted by Marion Langford. Follow on Instagram or check out the website at ratbagsandroustabouts.com. Do you know a story that the history books forgot? Let us know about it!

All kinds of Australian inventions throughout history have changed the world. This episode we talk about four of them — from inventions that saved lives to icons of Outback Australia.
On a hot day in January 1907, two boys got in trouble in the surf at Bondi. Luckily for them, a new invention, the rescue reel, had just been installed on the beach. Invented by Lyster Ormsby among others, it was a standard piece of equipment on beaches across Australia and continued to be used, almost completely unmodified, until 1993.
In 1932, a letter to Ford was about to change the country forever. When draughtsman Lewis Bandt saw the request for a vehicle that could take the family to church on Sunday and the pigs to market on Monday, he got to work, creating one of the most iconic vehicles the nation has ever seen: the ute.
It was James Harrison’s work as a newspaper man that gave him the idea to create an ice-making machine, when he noticed that the chemical he used to clean the news type left the metal cold. His work in refrigeration would help the Australian export trade more than anything else.
But during the Gallipoli campaign in World War One, William Beech’s invention was created really just to help save the Anzacs from being picked off by Turkish snipers. His periscope rifle helped them achieve the impossible at Quinn’s Post and saved lives in the process.

03.25 Lifesaving rescue reel
10.53 The ute
15.33 Refrigeration
25.00 Periscope rifle

Hosted by Marion Langford. Follow on Instagram or check out the website at ratbagsandroustabouts.com. Do you know a story that the history books forgot? Let us know about it!

When notorious bushranger Thomas Jeffries took a young family hostage in 1825, he performed an act so despicable, he had the entire island of Van Diemen’s Land calling for his execution.
It was New Year’s Eve in 1825 when John and Elizabeth Tibbs with their five-month-old baby were visited by a group of bushrangers. The leader was Thomas Jeffries, a killer who had earnt himself the nickname, The Monster.
The outlaws turned their house inside out as they helped themselves to the family’s possessions, before marching them, along with five other prisoners, for miles through the Tasmanian bush. And the truly horrific acts the bushrangers committed that day would see every person in that part of the country baying for blood.
But in the end, it would fall on the shoulders of 19-year-old Elizabeth Tibbs to bring The Monster down.

00.00 Introduction
02.43 Meet the Tibbs family
04.49 Meet the bushrangers
08.48 December 31, 1825
14.30 Tibbs and Isaac taken away
18.26 Elizabeth is left with the bushrangers
22.37 Bushrangers go on their way
25.32 Trial of The Monster
28.56 Aftermath

Hosted by Marion Langford. Follow on Instagram or check out the website at ratbagsandroustabouts.com. Do you know a story that the history books forgot? Let us know about it!

In a world of spies and con-artists, deceptions and double-crosses, Baron Rudolf von Koenig conned, manipulated and blackmailed his way around the world. But the fraudster also played a vital part in helping the Allies crack the German Enigma code and win WWII.
In a nondescript hotel in Belgium in 1931, a transaction takes place between a seasoned spy and his new contact. The contact opens the briefcase he has carried on the train from Berlin; it is full of documents, including one that will change the course of a war that won’t begin for another eight years. The manual for the German Enigma machine.
The contact was Hans-Thilo Schmidt. The spy’s name, however, was up for debate. He had been known as Rudolf Stallmann, Rudolf Lemoine and the Baron Rudolf von Koenig. To Schmidt, he was known simply as Rex.
But he was at the end of a long career that had its own amazing story. He had been a petty thief, a con-artist, a blackmailer and a jewel thief. Naturally charismatic, he had an amusing anecdote for any occasion, though should you play cards with him, you were dicing with danger.
But there was one game that he loved playing above all else — the game of espionage. Would the Germans track down the leak in their ranks? Would they be able to find the agent helping him? And what would happen to them if they were caught?

00.00 Introduction
02.20 Belgian connection
04.42 Agent Rex’s real name
07.03 Dubious beginnings
13.11 A Wilde link
19.26 Waiting out WWI in Spain
22.03 Interwar espionage
23.50 Solving the Enigma puzzle
28.19 Wire-tapping and Gestapo
30.44 WWII is declared
32.27 Koenig is captured
34.00 Shadow of an elite agent

Hosted by Marion Langford. Follow on Instagram or check out the website at ratbagsandroustabouts.com. Do you know a story that the history books forgot? Let us know about it!

This is the tragic tale of John Basham, a young farmer in Van Diemen’s Land in 1825 who was caught in the crossfire when Governor George Arthur began a personal war with bushranger Matthew Brady.
In March 1825, John Basham and his stockman Joseph Hindes were tending their sheep on the banks of the Tamar River when they looked up and saw two men holding shotguns walking towards them. The men were outlaws Matthew Brady and James McCabe.
They held them captive for three days. But on the third day, there was a knock at the door from a group of three soldiers. The hostages thought salvation had finally come.
But the bushrangers weren’t going down without a fight.
What should have been an easy arrest for the soldiers quickly turned into a shambolic mess as one thing after the next went wrong. And the consequences for Basham were devastating.
00.00 Introduction
03.00 Who was John Basham?
09.40 George Arthur vs Matthew Brady
13.00 Bushrangers come to Basham’s Hut
16.23 Three soldiers arrive
17.50 A gunfight begins
19.39 Wounded man is carried away
21.13 Aftermath

Hosted by Marion Langford. Follow on Instagram or check out the website at ratbagsandroustabouts.com. Do you know a story that the history books forgot? Let us know about it!