Australian history, restored from the record.
Forgotten Australia rebuilds Australian history from records, newspapers, letters, and overlooked personal details. Its stories range from Teddy Flack at the 1896 Olympics to island families, wartime records, violent crimes, and strange national symbols.
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Forgotten Australia is a narrative history show that returns old Australian stories to their awkward, vivid, documented shape. It is not hurried. Episodes tend to begin with a person, a date, a clipping, a family record, or a reported detail, then widen outward until the surrounding world comes into focus. The result is history told as evidence in motion. Recent installments follow Teddy Flack through school sport, Melbourne athletics, accountancy work, club life, and the early Olympic Games, while also showing how newspapers misread or minimized the importance of Athens in 1896. The show has a good eye for the bad take. It notices when a heroic nickname arrives late, when a film smooths the facts for drama, and when national pride gets tangled in imperial habit. That corrective impulse is central to its appeal. Forgotten Australia also lingers with less famous lives, including Emma Murto, Brian Murtagh, Nora, Barney, Daphne, Garth, and the island circles named in the Death-Defying Destiny Deciders episodes. These stories can turn on illness, distance, letters, journalism, social gatherings, polio, sudden death, and the practical difficulty of making a life in a remote place. The tone stays calm, even when the material darkens. Crime and violence are part of the show, but the treatment is more archival than sensational. It prefers the slow accumulation of facts to a dramatic reveal. The same method applies to wartime stories, family research, Olympic myth, media history, and the strange story of the Australian flag. There is room for dry wit, especially when old newspapers or later screenwriters deserve a raised eyebrow. There is also a clear respect for names, places, and records. Forgotten Australia is best for listeners who enjoy long-form historical storytelling with a forensic streak. It rewards patience. Its pleasure lies in watching a half-remembered person or event become specific again, with all the inconvenient detail left intact.
Made for: For listeners who like patient narrative history, archival true crime, old newspapers, family records, and national myths tested against evidence. It especially suits anyone drawn to Australian stories that feel specific rather than generic.
What sets it apart: Forgotten Australia stands apart by treating archival research as the engine of the story, not decoration. It is strongest when it compares remembered legend with documented record and lets the messier version remain interesting.
Created by Michael Adams, author of The Murder Squad and Hanging Ned Kelly, Forgotten Australia delves deep into bloody crimes, dark histories, unsolved mysteries, eccentric personalities and bizarre happenings that are almost always stranger than fiction. Each episode brings to life people and events that were once known to everyone but are now barely remembered by anyone. Based on intensive original research, Forgotten Australia is crafted with a novelist’s eye for character and detail to create gripping narratives that sound so fresh it's like they're ripped from today's headlines. This is the history you wish you’d been taught in school. You can get early ad-free access and bonus Forgott…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Michael Adams places Australian crimes inside the fuller historical worlds that shaped their victims, witnesses, and aftermaths.
Forgotten Australia follows Michael Adams into the lives surrounding public events, using solo narration to connect individual choices with the records and attitudes of their time.
An 1896 newspaper called the Olympics a farce; Michael Adams takes you into the story it missed.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Teddy Flack's Olympic fame is rebuilt from medals, letters, and newspapers.
Forgotten Australia treats Teddy Flack's Athens success as a useful lesson in how sporting memory takes shape in print. Michael Adams moves through the marathon, the 800 and 1500 metres, the "Lion of Athens" label, and the Sydney Morning Herald's sour dismissal of the Games,…
A record-built portrait of Teddy on the road to Olympic contention.
Forgotten Australia follows Teddy through the hard evidence of a sporting life, moving from Melbourne Grammar and the Melbourne Harriers to work at his father's firm, Davy Flack & Co.
A record-driven history piece with travel, illness, and family detail.
Forgotten Australia closes on a steady documentary note, drawing on newspaper work, family records, illness, and travel while letting the facts carry the weight.
A patient historical portrait shaped by youthful bravado and wartime irony.
Forgotten Australia puts people back into history, using ancestry.com.au records to recover the facts of a life. It works best when Brian Murtagh's Daily Mirror column is set against the wartime reality that followed, so his youthful bravado can do its own quiet damage.
A strange week of Australian history links political violence, the Beaumont case and Keith Richards.
Forgotten Australia sets the Beaumont children's disappearance inside a strange week in 1966, then broadens into Peter Cocan's point-blank attempted shooting of Arthur Caldwell and the political aftermath around it.
A brisk, date-stamped look at Australia arguing over Vietnam in 1966.
This episode of Forgotten Australia takes on the 1966 fight over Vietnam with a clear eye for the political stakes. It follows Sir Robert Menzies' decision to send combat troops, the Gallup poll showing 37 percent opposed, and the public argument over whether Australia had…
True crime with raised eyebrows.
True crime with a messy-TV side channel.
Dark facts, loose wires, no reverence.
True crime from the investigators’ side.
Homicide cases, evidence first.
["This Week in 1966 \u2013 Part Two moves from the Palomares hydrogen-bomb crash, where The Sun ran \"Thousands flee.
This episode examines three major stories from February 1966 in Australia.
This episode of Forgotten Australia, part two of Shirley Butler: The Christmas Murder, includes an ad for Ancestry and a content warning before continuing the true crime story.
This episode explores the strange and contested history behind the design and symbolism of the Australian flag.
Part one of a true crime series investigating the unsolved Christmas murder of Shirley Butler in Australia.
Michael Adams tells the story of Edwin “Teddy” Flack in the Marathon at the 1896 Athens Olympics, where he was racing over 25 miles after never having run more than ten miles.
Forgotten Australia’s “Our First Olympic Hero – Part One: An Aussie’s Greek Odyssey” follows Edwin Harold Flack from a July 1874 passage on the Durham to Melbourne to the first modern Olympics in Athens in April 1896.
Forgotten Australia closes the Death Defying Destiny Deciders miniseries with Michael Adams linking Lord Howe Island family history to his own adoption story.
Nora Murto saves a man’s life at Sydney’s Gresham Hotel, then gets sent toward Lord Howe Island after a sales agent from Pine Trees guest house spots her on the window ledge.
This episode of Forgotten Australia is an advertisement for Ancestry, highlighting its military records used in the podcast.
This episode explores how to use Ancestry's military records to uncover ancestors' wartime stories, with examples from Forgotten Australia.
This episode explores key events from 1966, including the H-bomb incident and President Lyndon B.