Showing results by narrator "Steve Shanahan" in All Categories

Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia’s wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he’s found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area - or his ‘backup’ is about to put a bullet in him. He’s wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.

On 21 July 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance mission landed along the north-eastern coastline of Papua. It would soon turn into an all-out attempt to capture Port Morseby. This is the powerful story of the three weeks of battle by a small Australian militia force, the 39th Battalion, supported by the 1st Papua Infantry Battalion and the Royal Papuan Constabulary, to keep the Japanese at bay. Outnumbered by at least three to one, they fought courageously to hold the Kokoda Plateau - the gateway to the Owen Stanleys.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town but his community work - welfare checks and a light touch - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a vehicle and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful. Until he's called to an incident on Kitchener Street, a strange and vicious attack that sickens the community.

Winter in Tiverton, and Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women's underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls come in: a child abandoned in a caravan, filthy and starving. And a man on the rampage at the primary school. Hirsch knows how things like that can escalate, too. An absent father who isn't where he's supposed to be; another who flees to the back country armed with a rifle. Families under pressure can break. But it's always a surprise when the killing starts.

Hirsch's rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day's end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge. Today he's driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They're checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don't quite add up.

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous "escape-proof" wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to escape from the massive floodlit stronghold, by any means necessary.

A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night. Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother’s possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes. A year later, Kim Gillespie’s absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations on a rare break from work is federal investigator Aaron Falk, who begins to suspect that all is not as it seems.

London, 1837. Jack Maggs, raised and deported as a criminal, has returned from Australia in secret and at great risk. What does he want after all these years, and why is he so interested in the comings and goings at a plush townhouse in Great Queen Street? And why is Jack himself an object of such interest to Tobias Oates, celebrated author, amateur hypnotist and fellow burglar - in this case of people’s minds, of their histories and inner phantoms?

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged toward Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen—including several from Australia and New Zealand—were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution.

For two young brothers, a hidden cave a short walk from the family farm seems the perfect escape from their abusive, shell-shocked father — until the older brother goes missing. Fearful of his father, nine-year-old Kip lies about what happened. It is a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of Northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of ‘B’ Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud-covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia’s Thermopylae.

Adventure into the Australian outback with Kelso Hunnicutt who has bet he can dodge the police for the next week. A partner who frames him for murder. A beautiful wife who double-crosses him. An innocent bet that could cost him his life. A compelling thriller about a man and a woman who will stop at nothing to get what they want...and the man trapped between them.

Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly–the ultimate outlaw–and just below him, the tragic figure of Ben Hall, who joined a gang led by a man whose name today is less well known, but in his time was much more famous than any other: Frank Gardiner. Mastermind of the largest gold robbery in Australia’s history, Gardiner led an extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue. In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all.

With nothing to lose, including your life, you may as well turn up life's throttle.... Stephen Malek's just been sacked from his job as a hack journalist. He believes, due to illness, he has only a year to live. With diminishing sexual powers, an overprotective mother and a money-grabbing ex-wife, he's got nothing left to lose. Not even his life. In a desperate race against time, he embarks on an exhilarating and death-defying global adventure.... From the best-selling author of Bet Your Life comes a blistering tale of heart-stopping action.

Garreth Hoyle is a true crime writer whose destructive love affair with hallucinogenic drugs has sent him searching for ghosts in the unforgiving mallee desert of Western Australia. Heading north through Kalgoorlie, he attempts to score off old friends from his shearing days on Banjawarn Station. His journey takes an unexpected detour when he discovers an abandoned ten-year-old girl and decides to return her to her estranged father in Leonora, instead of alerting authorities. Together they begin the road trip from hell through the scorched heart of the state’s northern goldfields.

Powerfully written by Australia's leading military historian, Saving Port Moresby commemorates the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea. Japanese Major General Horii Tomitarō, commanding the South Seas Force, was tasked, after taking Kokoda Plateau in late July, with entering the Owen Stanley Range to capture Port Morseby. After the battles for Deniki and Isurava, his troops were pushing south through the mountains. The Australians under Brigadier Arnold Potts, however, were not in route, but were involved in a determined fighting withdraw.

Chris Flood – a married father of two with plummeting self-esteem and questionable guitar skills – suddenly finds himself in the depths of polyamory after years of a near-sexless marriage. His wife, Sarah – a lover of the arts, avid quoter of Rumi, and always oozing confidence – wants to rediscover her sexuality after years of deadening domesticity. Their new life of polyamory features late nights, love affairs and rotating childcare duties. While Sarah enjoys flings with handsome men, Chris, much to his astonishment, falls for a polydactylous actor and musician, Biddy.

It was the evening of 16 May 1943. Nineteen modified Lancaster bombers from 617 Squadron RAF, under the command of youthful Wing Commander Guy Gibson, roared into the night sky from their Lincolnshire base. They were on a top-secret Bomber Command mission, codenamed Operation Chastise, now regarded as one of the most dangerous and audacious bombing raids of World War II - an attack on the formidable, well-defended dams of Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Slung beneath the belly of each aircraft was one of the war’s greatest secrets - a bouncing bomb.

Lawyer Tom McLaren makes a trip to the outback, where he hopes to talk an Aboriginal community into giving up their land to his client, a mining magnate. Negotiations prove difficult and lengthy, and Tom and his colleagues take a weekend trip deep into the outback, where they hope to get some fresh ideas. To their horror, they become caught in a dangerous altercation with a deranged gunman, and their trip soon becomes a nightmare.

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy...weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories."