One tells, one listens: Sydney's past, story by story.
Each episode of Stories From Sydney gives either Jed or Alistair the story and leaves the other to ask questions, make guesses and chase the odd tangent. The material runs from old aquifers and a half-surviving steam pump station to a suffragette who objected to women competing at public swimming carnivals.
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Stories From Sydney is local history told as a handover rather than a lecture. Each episode, either Jed or Alistair brings a story from Sydney's past and tells it to the other, who often knows little more than a clue or a heavy-handed hint dropped the time before. The format keeps the history conversational. Questions come mid-story, and guesses get corrected on the spot. Sometimes the roles flip: during a tale involving the Sirius caught in a gale, the teller has to ask what a lee shore is, and the other explains that the wind is driving the ship onto the shore. The storyteller admits to feeling like the wrong person for a sailing story. That candour is a large part of the appeal. Primary sources carry much of the weight. The Sirius story draws on the diary of Jacob Nagel, an American sailor who fought in George Washington's army before becoming a valued member of the Royal Navy. 'Thomas West of Barcom Glen' reads out West's own notice to the public, which boasts of the first water mill built in Sydney, an 18-foot wheel, and wheat ground at three pence under the windmills' price. The research reaches the Double Bay Library and at least one site visit, with photos from the trip. Season five was built around salt and fresh water. 'The Definitive History of Sydney's Water Sources' works through aquifers, the Tank Stream and spring-fed creeks from the years before any big river dam, then pauses on a steam-powered pump station that partly survives in the no man's land around Sydney Airport and the Eastern Distributor, heritage-listed but with its chimney lopped in half as a hazard to planes. 'Surfing at Freshwater' turns to a prominent suffragette who drove progressive reforms for women yet opposed their appearance in mixed public swimming competitions. The pair do not simply score a point against her; they weigh her position against its time and note that the same argument over display and objectification still surfaces. Elsewhere, 'Whale Tales' follows right whales hunted in Tasmania's Derwent Estuary, their calving ground, until the population was exhausted. 'Plant Stories!' looks at a slow-growing, fire-resistant plant that can be the oldest in its ecological community while looking the least impressive thing in it. The tangents are part of the deal. One cold open settles a question held over from the previous episode about why a Northern Queensland dam and a New York bridge share a name, and the answer turns out to be coincidence. The humour is gentle, with the occasional cheeky joke, and the show's own release schedule becomes a recurring gag. For a first listen, 'Thomas West of Barcom Glen' shows the source-reading at its fullest, while 'Whale Tales' best captures the asides.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes local history told as a conversation rather than a narration, with period documents read aloud and room for tangents about mills, whales, water supply and plants.
What sets it apart: Each story passes from one person to the other instead of being narrated straight into a microphone, so the questions, wrong guesses and detours of whoever is hearing the tale become part of the history. Primary sources such as a sailor's diary and a mill-owner's public notice are read aloud.
A fortnightly history podcast about the people, places, and events that have shaped the city of Sydney and its surrounds.
One minute it's Sydney's water supply; the next, you're considering a pump-station pilgrimage.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Jacob Nagel's lee-shore account gives this maritime history episode its pressure and shape.
A ship caught in a gale gives this single-episode review a tight, readable frame for a history story. Its focus is Jacob Nagel, an American sailor who fought in George Washington's army against the British and later served as a valued member of the Royal Navy.
Sydney's water history runs from aquifers to pumping works and an early Warragamba dam proposal.
Stories From Sydney follows the city's water supply as it shifts from small local sources and aquifers toward the larger infrastructure demanded by a growing colony.
A Sydney water story where sporting memory meets the limits placed on women in public life.
The episode works best as a water-season mystery that opens onto a larger history of public sport. Its central figure is remembered through statues in three countries and tied to a sport recently added to the Olympics, but the story soon widens into Sydney's swimming culture and…
A Sydney water mill turns an obscure archival clue into a grounded walk through the city's changed landscape.
West's Barkham Glen water mill gives Stories From Sydney a neat pocket of local history, shaped like a small research mystery. A clue leads Alistair to Double Bay Library, where the books he needs are waiting, and the discussion places the mill inside a landscape that no longer…
A lively Tasmanian whaling history with ecological loss, banter, and one cautiously hopeful calf sighting.
This Stories from Sydney episode traces southern right whales from the Derwent Estuary's once-large calving grounds to the shore-based whaling that helped empty them out.
Israeli public life, argued from Tel Aviv.
Miller Beach chaos, served breakfast-style.
Pennsylvania by county, landmark, and stone.
["A Sirius Supply Issue follows the First Fleet's Sirius and Supply as Sydney Cove runs short of grain, flour, and fresh food.", "Jed and Alistair contrast Sirius's 520 tons and 200-man crew with Supply's 55-man complement and Indigenous names, marie noe and narong noe.", "The episode moves from Supply's Norfolk Island runs and the failed flax plan to the kidnapping of two M\u0101ori men and the colony's attempts to make rope and cloth.", "It ends with Sirius's 168-day flour run to the Cape of Good Hope, a cargo of 127,000 pounds of flour, and a gale off Tasmania that nearly drove the ship onto a lee shore."]
Stories From Sydney follows Sydney's drinking-water history from the Tank Stream under Hyde Park to the Upper Nepean planning debate.
["Duke Kahanamoku is born in 1890 Honolulu after Hawaii's native population has fallen from about 300,000 at Cook's arrival to about 30,000.", "He breaks the 100-yard record in 55.4 seconds, gets doubted by mainland officials, and has to prove himself in a Chicago pool before Stockholm.", "The episode also follows Annette Kellerman from Marrickville through the Seine, the Danube, underwater ballet, and a Harvard Venus de Milo study, then into Rose Scott's fight over fitted swimsuits and Fanny Durack and Mina Wiley's road to Stockholm.", "It ends at Freshwater Beach, where Charles Patterson, Donald McIntyre, and Tommy Walker frame Duke Kahanamoku as the man who popularized surfboard riding in Sydney."]
Thomas West, born in Sussex in 1773 and transported on the Earl Cornwallis in 1801, ends up running the first water mill in Sydney after a June 1810 petition to Lachlan Macquarie.
["Stories from Sydney opens with a clue from Moby Dick that says Sydney was saved from starvation by \"the benevolent biscuit\" of whaling, then uses that quote to frame the whole episode.", "Jed and Alistair trace commercial whaling from the Basques in northern Iberia to Nantucket and New Bedford, where whale oil powered lighting and machine lubrication in Britain's industrial boom.", "The episode follows Samuel Enderby's London fleet, the 1775 American embargo on whale oil, and the 1788 Amelia voyage that took British whaling into the Pacific under the East India Company monopoly.", "Sydney's third fleet, Eber Bunker's voyages, Hobart's Derwent River hunts, John Macarthur's Argo, and Archibald Mossman's later shipping business show how deeply whaling shaped early colonial Australia."]
Jed and Alistair examine three Sydney-region plants—Lomandra longifolia, Xanthorrhoea, and Tetragonia tetragonoides—and the uses Indigenous Australians, colonists, and later industries made of them.
Stories from Sydney examines Bungaree, an Indigenous man probably born near Broken Bay who became a prominent Sydney figure with 17 known portraits.
Stories From Sydney examines Hawkesbury Nepean rocks, soils, and Aboriginal history through the Lapstone Creek area between Emu Plains and Richmond.
Stories From Sydney hosts Jed and Alistair read Watkin Tench’s accounts of British expeditions to the Hawkesbury-Nepean in 1789-1791.
Stories From Sydney hosts Alistair and Jed announce Jed’s documentary Following the Flow, which follows the Macquarie River from Oberon to the Macquarie Marshes near Brewarrina.
Hosts Alistair and Jed discuss a previous episode about the Sharkarm case and a Depression-era story, then introduce a new topic.
The hosts introduce a history podcast about Sydney, teasing an upcoming story about pubs and hotels across New South Wales.
The hosts introduce a cryptic clue about a group that moved due to rising waters and then racing autos, hinting at a historical Sydney story.
Hosts Jed and Alistair discuss listener feedback on a previous episode about Collett's Inn and tease a cryptic clue about an 1889 event in Darlinghurst.
The hosts discuss a historic pub in Sydney that has been serving beer for almost 200 years, hinting at a momentous event in 1823.
A history podcast episode where the host teases a story about newly discovered notebooks that changed historians' understanding of early Sydney colony.
Two hosts discuss a stadium in Rushcutters Bay that was demolished for a railway line, with personal anecdotes about concerts there.