Podcasts about cooktown

Welcome back to the Angler Profile, a short, sharp episode where we get to know our fishing guest of the week! This time, we're thrilled to have the legendary Paul Worsling on the show. Paul shares some incredible stories, from catching a 1,000-pound black marlin off Cooktown to the most unusual bait he's ever used. We dive deep into his favorite fishing spots, superstitions, and even the most embarrassing moments on the water.

This week on the program we head to Far North Queensland to hear about a grassroots First Nations response supporting remote communities impacted by ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper.We speak with Butchulla and Woppaburra woman Samala Thakialee Cronin in Gimuy Cairns about the work she and others undertook in collaboration with Meanjin Brisbane based, female-led, Blak small business Dreamtime Aroha in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone.Community worked together to to fly much needed supplies from Cairns north to Gungarde Community Centre Aboriginal Corporation in Cooktown with the help of Daintree Air Services to provide support for remote communities on the Cape impacted by flooding, including people evacuated from Wujal Wujal.Women on the Line spoke with Samala on December 28th. For the most up to date information on how to support the community response check out the Dreamtime Aroha facebook page or Instagram.

Christmas time and the school holidays would bring back memories of long train journeys to far flung parts of Queensland, for many people. The link between country and regional towns, and the smaller townships, was the railmotor. For many decades in Queensland, the small red painted 45 horsepower AEC motors (based on a London bus design), ‘red rattlers', or the later incarnations of the ‘Tin Hares', through to the streamlined 2000 class ‘Silver Bullets' provided an important connection for many Queenslanders to the railway townships. School children made their journey to school on the ‘RMs', special stops in regional towns were made for intending passengers, and places such as Cooktown, and Normanton became a ‘railmotor' dependent railway from the late 1920s. Our Queensland Rail History podcast, ‘Red Rattler's and ‘Silver Bullets', will look back on the distinctive petrol- and diesel-powered railmotors that were such an iconic part of the Queensland Railways throughout the 20th century.     In this episode of the podcast we talk with Glen Watson who at the time was Officer in Charge at Normanton and driving the Gulflander. He shares many stories and personal experiences to do with his time both in Queensland and around the world for Queensland Rail.You can find images to go along with the episode here: https://queenslandrail.intelligencebank.com/customshare/index/0MXzp?trackingId=JnpAl

Los habitantes de Wujal Wujal, en Queensland, van a ser evacuados a Cooktown después de que la crecida de las aguas limitara el acceso a alimentos y agua.

With Cyclone Jasper looking like crossing the coast between Cooktown and Cairns, probably sometime on Wednesday December 13, Ox and Marko remembered Couple of Blokes family member Dargz who's been on the pod a couple of times and lives in Port Douglas. We thought we'd give him a yell to check in and make sure he's doing okay and keeping safe.If you're up that way as well, stay safe, keep your ears on the radio and the BOM website here and take care of yourself! And remember, if you're in that part of the world, this pod was recorded at around lunchtime Tuesday, so the cyclone may well have changed path and intensity by the time you hear it.Make sure to follow a Couple of Blokes and get involved with the show on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, or send a voicemail to Ox and Marko here. Subscribe, rate and review the podcast - and tell a friend about the podcast and help spread the word. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ciclone Jasper se move para o litoral de Queensland entre Mackay e Cooktown. Grandes partes da Austrália do Sul, NSW e Victória em alerta contra incêndios florestais com a onda de calor. Helpline de violência doméstica agora poderá ser acessado via SMS. Governo e oposição enviarão integrantes para viagem diplomática a Israel. No Brasil, deputados paulistas aprovam lei para privatizar a Sabesp.

Non life threatening injuries were incurred after a 21 year old man was bitten off Cape Melville by what was believed to be a Bull SharkSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We set off from Cooktown and travel to Archer River Roadhouse, getting our first taste of the dirt roads, dust and corrugations, and meet up with our mate Tony who runs tag-along tours to the Cape. For the next 15 days we'll be hanging out with Tony and his tour group as we ‘tag-along' to the tip and take in all the highlights including Iron Range National Park, Weipa, Bramwell Station, the Old Telegraph Track, Gunshot, Palm Creek, the Jardine River Crossing, Seisia, Thursday Island, and of course the Tip of Australia! If you're dreaming of tackling Cape York and towing your caravan to the tip of Australia, this series will show you how to get yourself and your equipment up and back safely without damage or breaking anything! There's so much more to this incredible part of Australian than epic 4WD tracks and crazy river crossings, and we're excited to share the beauty of Cape York with you!   Get your hands on our new The Red Centre eBook and start planning your road trip to Uluru and Central Australia - https://thefeelgoodfamily.com/product/the-red-centre-ebook-the-ultimate-road-trip-to-uluru/ This episode is proudly brought to you by our mates at Stratus Outdoors, Protect The Adventure.  Keeping plastic bottles out of landfill by turning them into quality camp gear. Take advantage of our 15% Discount - https://www.stratusoutdoors.com.au/ (ENTER FEELGOOD DISCOUNT CODE) Listen to our Feel Good Road Trip Spotify playlist here -https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47S2LkmpBxztMEH8sw6Frt?fbclid=IwAR0Xk2BwpoAhbk5Xvl1cwadO2FzPVl2PHboIWNDPmtzW_F-1-4fKfw4AalU Be sure to Subscribe and join us for all of the road trip adventures! Check out the footage from our latest episodes on our Family Travel Australia YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@TheFeelGoodFamily Subscribe to Jasperoo - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCceGx3esRSQBYZfWvf4KVtw Our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thefeelgoodfamily has a new destination video every Sunday night at 6.30pm (AEST). We would love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram and our website www.thefeelgoodfamily.com  Our Family Travel Australia Podcast is now LIVE and available on all podcast platforms, with a new episode aired every Friday night 8:30pm [AEST].

This episode we travel to Mossman in beautiful Tropical North Queensland, before making our way further north to Rossville Retreat at Black Mountain National Park, just south of Cooktown on Cape York Peninsula. Paul has an unexpected accident and winds up in Emergency at Mossman Hospital – we're keeping everything crossed he will be fit and healthy to continue on our Cape York adventure over the next few weeks. Plus, we talk you through our exact off grid cinema set up including the products we have used for the past 3 years on the road, how we connect and use the system when camping remotely and our recommendations for an awesome movie night in for your next camping trip. OUTBACK CINEMA!https://youtu.be/pFhLAB__4HU?si=KIfKJILc1_gDU9o- Get your hands on our new The Red Centre eBook and start planning your road trip to Uluru and Central Australia - https://thefeelgoodfamily.com/product/the-red-centre-ebook-the-ultimate-road-trip-to-uluru/ This episode is proudly brought to you by our friends at Nakie – the world's first 100% recycled hammock! Relax wherever you go with the awesome range of Nakie products. Take advantage of our 15% Discount - https://www.nakie.co/?ref=feelgood (ENTER FEELGOOD DISCOUNT CODE).  Listen to our Feel Good Road Trip Spotify playlist here -https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47S2LkmpBxztMEH8sw6Frt?fbclid=IwAR0Xk2BwpoAhbk5Xvl1cwadO2FzPVl2PHboIWNDPmtzW_F-1-4fKfw4AalU Be sure to Subscribe and join us for all of the road trip adventures! Check out the footage from our latest episodes on our Family Travel Australia YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@TheFeelGoodFamily Subscribe to Jasperoo - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCceGx3esRSQBYZfWvf4KVtw Our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thefeelgoodfamily has a new destination video every Sunday night at 6.30pm (AEST). We would love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram and our website www.thefeelgoodfamily.com  Our Family Travel Australia Podcast is now LIVE and available on all podcast platforms, with a new episode aired every Friday night 8:30pm [AEST].

John MacKenzie chats with Peter Scott, Mayor of Cook Shire, about yesterday's visit by Shannon Fentiman, Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulance Services due to Cooktown still having no birthing services available for pregnant mothers. Mayor Scott was disappointed when Minister Fentiman did not even get in touch with him to discuss the return of the service to the region's hospital.   "The emergency chopper... comes in probably four or five times a week, costing $35,000 bucks each time it comes in... you're looking at seven or eight million dollars [over one year]" Mayor Scott explained. Birthing Services in Cooktown ceased in February 2022. Difficulties in recruiting staff are being blamed as the primary cause.

Last time we spoke about the final days of the first Sino-Japanese War, the invasion of the Pescadores Islands, Taiwan and the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Japanese had taken Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and were on the verge of marching upon Beijing. The Qing were slow to action on the negotiation front leading to three attempts to reach a peace agreement. However in the meantime the Japanese prolonged things for just enough time to allow their amphibious forces to invade the Pescadore islands and Taiwan. Li Hongzhang became the scapegoat for the entire conflict and was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki. However in the end it would also be Japan getting served a nasty deal because of the Triple Intervention of Germany, France and Russia. The balance of power in the east had dramatically changed, and with change comes movement, the movement of many people, all over the world.   #55 This episode is, Overseas Chinese   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I did not know when I was going to tackle this subject, but I figured after the first Sino-Japanese war would be a good place. The 1890's-1900 is a sort of odd window of time for China where a lot of change occurs. When I was doing my undergraduate in History, a requirement of my University was to take a certain amount of courses in specific fields of history, one was Canadian history as I am from Quebec and its just forced on you. In one of those courses I had to spend an extensive amount of time learning about the Chinese-Canadian experience, particularly during the end half of the 19th century. Now I know the majority of you listeners are American and probably know the general history of Chinese immigration to America during the 19th century. For Canada is quite similar, first thing that comes to mind for all of you I imagine is the railroad work. Its a fundamental part of both America and Canada's history, the building of some of the great railroads and unfortunately the terrible mistreatment of Asian immigrants. In this episode however I don't want to just talk about Canada and the United States, because in truth, Chinese immigration saw Chinese going to all sorts of nations, for various reasons. I also believe it gives us a better understanding of all the events we have spoken about and how they affect the common person. There are more than 50 million Oversea Chinese today, most of them are in Southeast Asia, in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and such. They represent one of the highest figures of immigration in the world. Their migration goes back to ancient times, roughly 2000 years ago during the opening of the maritime silk road. Chinese immigrants were moving mainly to Southeast Asia. When the 15th century came around, Chinese began moving to places like Sumatra and Java, establishing what we call today, Chinatowns. Where trade went, so did the Chinese and by the 16th century trade began to pick up with Europe. Europeans began to establish themselves in the Far East, looking to trade and in the process integrated numerous places within a world trade network. European powers began to compete with another to expand and develop colonies in places like Southeast Asia and this in turn increased a demand for Chinese merchants and laborers. When the 17th century rolled around, there was an estimated 100,000 or so Chinese scattered about Southeast Asia and 20-30 thousand perhaps in Japan. Many Chinese came over during the Wokou years, setting up bases in Japan to help raid mainland China as pirates. When the Manchu conquered the Ming dynasty, numerous Chinese refugees fled to Japan to escape Manchu rule.  Now its during the 19th century when we really begin to see massive movements to the far reaches of the globe. When the age of colonialism was at its height so too would Chinese immigration be at its height, and with it a diaspora began. By the starting of the 19th century, millions of Chinese pulled up stakes and left for unfamiliar and faraway places, why? During the final century of the Qing dynasty, China began to struggle with mounting challenges as I think we all have seen in this series. These problems were both internal and external in nature. Internally, the Qing had doubled their territory, incorporating areas in the north and west which were sparsely populated, adding ethnic and religious diversity to the empire. There were Manchu, Hans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Muslims and such. Alongside this, the population exploded because of new irrigation and water management techniques that were helping tackle China's most troublesome historic nemesis, floods and droughts. New crops had come over from the America's such as corn, sweet potatoes and peanuts. The new foodstuffs could be grown in areas of China that historically always had trouble growing stuff, allowing for new lands to be expanded upon such as the southwest and northeast. As the nutrition improved, China's population exploded. By 1740 the Qing dynasty numbered 140 million, but by 1850 this increased to a whopping 430 million. Population growth holds numerous benefits to a nation, such as increasing economic activity, but it can also cause great strain. China took a very very long time to industrialize. In the early half of the 1800s, most Chinese supported themselves through farming, but with the population booming, less and less land pushed more and more to find new lands. The Qing government meanwhile, as we have seen in this series, proceeded to become incredibly corrupt. Their officials neglected the common people and engaged in corruption purely to enrich themselves, and they gradually became more and more inept at governance. With a corrupt government and a booming population of dissatisfied people, 19th century China was ripe for conflict. The first major one was the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796-1804. It broke out in response to famine, overcrowding of land and from the harassment by corrupt Qing officials. The cult lashed out, resulting in the deaths of millions and costing the Qing dynasty nearly 100 million taels. Then the First Opium War broke out against Britain resulting in a humiliating defeat and the beginning of unequal treaties upon China. After this, the worst civil war in history, the Taiping rebellion broke out, yet again during a time of famine, with another cult, the Taiping led by Hong Xiuquan who nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty leading to the death of over 20 million or so people. Alongside the Taiping was the Nian rebellion and the second opium war, inviting more death and humiliating treaties tossed upon China. The Dungan revolt killed another 10 or so million people, causing countless Hui Muslims to flee into surrounding neighboring states.  The turmoil of the mid 19th century caused terrible suffering on the people of China whether it be from drought, famine, war, governmental harassment or simply incompetence and when this becomes your everyday life, what do you do to improve it? Well after witnessing such foreign barbarians nearly toppling your government multiple times, showcasing technologies you've never seen before, you might get curious what its like in their nations. Once the bans were lifted Christian missionaries were pouring into China from these nations. These people didn't not simply sail over to China either, in the mid 19th century the invention of steamships made sea crossings much faster and safer. With steamships came railroads, a much more efficient way to move raw materials and people across land. Steamships and railroads would have a profound effect on China. The construction of railroads required a lot of work, particularly dangerous work of clearing land and laying tracks. European colonies, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Oceania and other far reaching places had enormous demand for laborer, whether it be in construction, agriculture, mining, railway building, etc. Plantations for rice, rubber, fruit, sugar, tea, hell the mining of guano was huge, talk about a shitty job. Like we see today, companies sought cheap and exploitable pools of labor to fit their demands, many of them turned to China. China because of the Opium wars and later the First Sino-Japanese War had opened up countless treaty ports, she was burst open. Now there were fundamentally two rationales for Chinese migration, the first being flight and the second economic. Flight refers to those literally driven to flee where they were because of war, famine, disease, natural disasters, terrible government and persecution. Economic refers to the drive to just improve one's life, maybe the grass is greener on the other side as they say. Both of these rationales could lead to temporary move or permanent and it did not necessarily mean leaving China either, let's not forget a ton of internal moving was occurring.  Now during the Taiping Rebellion as the violence escalated countless people fled. Take for example the wealthy class, whenever Taiping entered an area, obviously these people feared losing everything as the Taiping confiscated all wealth. Therefor countless fled to newly opened treaty ports like Shanghai where foreign protection was to be found. They began dealing with the foreigners and discovered some mutual interests. This was a large reason places like Shanghai and Hong Kong were transformed into booming sophisticated cities. But for the countless common people, the Taiping-Qing war saw a large mobile population, wandering wherever seemed safe at the time. Many of these people fled to provinces in the southwest and southeast of China. When the war ended, major food and tax producing provinces were de-populated, take Jiangsu for example which saw 70% of its population of around 24 million people. Anhui and Zhejiang lost around 50% of their respective 15 million or so people. When the war was finally over, the flight migrants did not all return. Hubei, Hunan and Henan saw a ton of their people simply pack up and set up shop east. A lot of people also fled into Manchuria which had always been sparsely populated, even though it was one of the richest areas for agriculture and natural resources. The Qing had always limited migration to Manchuria, trying to protect the Manchu homelands, but beginning in the 1860's the Qing leadership had a change of heart. There were two major reasons for this; number 1 the Taiping rebellion had ravaged the governmental budget, prosperous agricultural regions that provided a ton of tax revenue were depopulated. China had indemnity payments to pay the British and French, money needed to be made, so the Qing began selling land in Manchuria and increased taxes upon it once it started to become more productive. The second reason was Russia. Russia was encroaching into Manchuria, and the Qing worried its sparse population would leave it vulnerable, so they opened the doors to the Han to help out. Now it was not just the Russian encroaching into Manchuria, the Japanese also had their eyes on the region. As I explained briefly towards the end of last episode, the Russians basically swindled the Japanese with the triple intervention, managing to seize a 25 year lease over the Liaodong peninsula in 1898. The Russians quickly went to work developing the region's agriculture, mining and crucially its railways. All of this required the pumping of money into Manchuria further building up the desire for Chinese migration to fill the large demands. Now this was all internal movements, what about the external? Millions of Chinese responded to the international demand for labor during the mid to late 19th century, taking them first to Southeast Asia, and then to all the corners of the world. The major reason they were able to do this in large scale was because of the new steamships and the increase of foreigners inside China telling them about the various nations they came from. The majority of early migrants came from the wealthy class, who sought to move their families and businesses abroad. These types of businesses were typically, Luandromats, stores, restaurants and such. They mostly came from Guangdong and Fujian as southern China was in turmoil due to the opium trade and Taiping Rebellion. Southern China had become fertile grounds for western companies to come over and recruit or even Shanghai laborers. The British picked up Chinese and brought them to build up their colonies in Malaya and Singapore, while the Dutch brought them over to Sumatra. They worked in sweltering hot plantations, for tea, rubber, rice, fruit or in the great tin mines of Malaya for example.  This all of course becomes quite dark, I briefly talked about the “pig trade”, the pigs being Chinese coolies who were either hired or kidnapped into indentured servitude overseas. Britain had outlawed slavery in 1807, but the experience for these poor souls would be very reminiscence of the western african slave trade. The term “shanghaied” comes from this time, when Chinese were sometimes drugged up or boozed up and tossed onto ships going to various places like Trinidad, British Honduras, Jamaica, New South Wales, British Guiana, Peru, Cuba, all over really. Now the Pig trade was quite reviled, take this passage from 1852 by foreign secretary Lord Malmesbury “iniquities scarcely exceeding those practiced on the African coast and on the African middle passage have not been wanting…the jails of China [have been] emptied to supply ‘labour' to British colonies…hundreds [of coolies] gathered together in barracoons, stripped naked and stamped or painted with the letter C (California), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Islands) on their breasts, according to destination.” It was actually the gradual abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself that rose the demand for Chinese coolies. The British were the pioneers on this front sending 200 Chinese laborers over to Trinidad in 1806 to quote “in an attempt to establish a settlement of free peasant cultivators and laborers” these initial shipments saw Chinese on vessels that had been used to transport African slaves in previous years. The Trinidad experiment failed, only 20 to 30 of the 200 Chinese remained on the island by the 1820's, however such stories inspired people like Sir John Gladstone to bring Chinese over to sugar plantation in British Guiana in the hopes of replacing the lost Afro-Caribbean workforce because the slave trade was coming to an end. Now the logistics of coolie labor were, murky lets say. Most in theory were under contract, paid, to be temporary, one would say consensual. Regardless many in Britain rightfully saw how horrible it was and tried to fight to end the trade or at least improve conditions for the Chinese coolies. Many of these humane reformers argued the Chinese would be tricked into signing employment contracts based on misleading promises, often kidnapped or even sold by coolie merchants within China. Yes a lot of these unfortunate men, had debts, like gambling debts and their lenders simply sold them off. But there were many who volunteered, because they were offered free passage and paid something like 20 cents per day. While I have been focusing on the British, everyone was in the game somewhat, take for example the Portuguese who held Macao which was the center of the coolie trade. It was said from 1848-1873 Macao's only real business was trading coolie slaves, and eventually it became so bad the British forced them to ban it. Spain sent Cuba two large shipments of Chinese Coolies in 1847 to work the sugar fields in Havana, these men came from Xiamen, one of the treaty ports that opened after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. When Guangdong opened up, Peru saw a ton of Chinese coolies come over to work in their silver mines and in guano cultivation. When their contracts were up, many integrated into the countries of Peru, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Before 1959 when the Cuban revolution broke out, Havana held latin americans largest Chinatown, a result of the coolie trade. South America saw around 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers come over between 1850 and the late 1870s. The most vulnerable would be those poor souls deceived by false contracts or kidnapped who saw themselves basically thrown into slavery. For the majority who went to Cuba and Peru this was to be the case. After a 4 month grueling journey crammed onto a ship like a sardine, they would arrive to be met with cruelty and abuse. Most would find their contracts were written in such a way that it would make it nearly impossible for them to ever repay the cost of their passage, which was not covered for, also housing and food. When reports began to surface between 1847-1854 about the abuse of those going to Cuba and Peru, British tried to take responsibility by closing ports sending these people off in China, such as Amoy, but this simply led Macao to become the largest coolie port in the end. Hell some of these Chinese participated in the War of the Pacific known also as the Saltpeter war, where they burned down many of the haciendas they worked for. 2000 Chinese coolies joined a Chilean Army in Peru helping the wounded and burying the dead. The Germans brought some over to German Samoa to work on their plantations which only ended during WW1 when Anzac seized such islands. The French shipping of Chinese coolies to Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, the French west indies and such, as this also involved Indian coolies. Then came the age of Gold Rushes, all around the world large scale gold rushes emerged, in Oceania, Africa, South American and North America. In Australia the population tripled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871, making Australia the first multicultural society during the gold rush period. The gold rush began in may of 1851 after a prospector named Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered gold in Ophir. Hargreaves had been to California's goldfields learning gold prospecting techniques such as panning and cradling. Victoria would see the first large goldrush in July of 1851 and word spread fast. 290,000 migrated to Victoria from British territories, 15,000 from European nations, 18,000 from the US, but not all were welcome. In 1855, 11,493 Chinese arrived in Melbourne, which saw Victoria enact the Chinese immigration act of 1855 in response. This severely limited the number of Chinese passengers permitted on an arriving vessel, but to evade the new law, many Chinese began landing in southern parts of Australia and would hike it sometimes 400kms across the country to get to the Victoria goldfields. In 1865 Richard Daintree discovered the Cape River Goldfield which soon attracted Chinese to Queensland for the first time. In 1872 James Mulligan discovered gold in the Palmer River around Cooktown, seeing 3 years of waves upon waves of Chinese prospectors. By 1977 over 18,000 residents were Chinese miners. I wanted to leave the United States and Canada for last if you were wondering, as I think they are the most well known stories of Chinese immigration. Also there are numerous nations I could not cover, this story is far too expensive I do apologize. So lets start with a very popular story, that of the great Californian Gold rush. In 1848 James W Marshall found Gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news soon brought over 300,000 people to California. While most were Americans, the gold rush also attracted thousands from Latin America, Oceania, Europe and China. The Chinese began arriving in 1849, the first major rush was to Gum San nicknamed “Gold Mountain” by the newly arrived Chinese. In 1849, around 90,000 people had come over, of which around 50-60 thousand were american. By 1852 20,000 Chinese had landed in the San Francisco area. Their distinct dress and appearance made them particularly recognizable in the goldfields and they were met with a ton of racism and violence. The American miners were frustrated with all the foreigners encroaching and the Chinese were easier target than other groups. Initially the Chinese worked for themselves or labored with other miners, but the American miners began to press upon the government to thwart more Chinese from coming over. The California legislature passed a foreign miners license law in 1850, charging non-US citizens 20$ per month. The law would be repealed within a year because of how exorbitant the fees were. This did not dissuade the Chinese who would go on to found America's first Chinatown in San Francisco, where by 1852 the Chinese now accounted for 30% of all immigrants. In response the California legislature passed another foreign miners tax now at 4$ per month. Many Chinese thrived during this time despite the hurdles they faced. Chinese mining companies like John China Placer Mining company and Hong Kong China Wing Dam company hired up to 20 workers and provided industrial equipment, expanding large scale operations. Small scale workers cooperatives amongst the Chinese also thrived in the 1850's which operated similar to the larger companies, using a share-risk system amongst workers. Many Chinese also chose to work for wages from white employers. Its estimated though it varies greatly, that Chinese miners were making around 39-50 dollars a month which would have been around the average wage for white miners. But as you can imagine there was much hardship, and the violence could get incredibly bad. Take for example what is known as the Hells Canyon Massacre. In 1887 two groups of Chinese miners headed to Oregon's Hells canyon to search for gold. On May 25th of 1887, 7 White Horse gang members, these were horse thieves, they robbed, murdered and mutilated between 10-34 of the Chinese miners who were employee's of the Sam Yup company. Its said they stole up to a possible 50,000$ worth in gold. Historian David H Stratton described the massacre as such,  “The brutality of the Snake River atrocity was probably unexcelled, whether by whites or Indians, in all the anti-Chinese violence of the American West. After the first day's onslaught at Robinson Gulch, the killers wrecked and burned the camp and then threw the mutilated corpses into the Snake River. The bodies of the other Chinese received similar treatment. Since it was the high-water stage of the spring runoff, the dead Chinese were found for months (some accounts say for years) afterwards along the lower river.” On the 26th more Chinese showed up to investigate the scene and 8 were shot dead by the gang. Later on in 1888 one Frank Vaughn confessed to taking part in the crime giving up the names of 6 associates. Most had departed america save for Vaughn and another man named Hughes. Their gang leader, Bruce Evan's known as “old blue” was blamed for everything, but he escaped custody. Now by the 1860's the goldrush was quieting down, leaving many Chinese looking for work and they found it in railway construction. The first major railway seeing Chinese workers was the first transcontinental railroad which linked up California to the eastern united states. Construction began in 1863 with terminal points at Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento. Despite the Goldrush raising California's population, a large number of Chinese were recruited in 1865 to help build up the railway. Many of these were former gold or silver miners and it was Charles Crocker a manager of the Central Pacific Railroad who was one of the first trying to hire Chinese. As he pointed out to his colleagues, hiring Chinese as opposed to whites as they cost a third of the salary. Crocker also pointed out they could hire the Chinese immigrants to do much of the grueling work and particularly the dangerous jobs. Crocker soon broke records for laying track, finishing the project 7 years ahead of time. This was due to the fact he worked the men to down to the bones. The central pacific track was constructed primarily by Chinese, Crocker initially hired every Chinese he could find in California, but soon began importing Chinese workers directly from China. The railroad had to pass over river and through canyons requiring bridges to be made and tunnels to be blown open. Many of the Chinese workers would be sent into tunnels to break through using hand tools and black power bombs. To tunnel through places like the the foothills of Sierra Nevada, the Central Pacific began to use the newly invented but extremely unstable Nitro-glycerine explosives, aka TNT. This greatly accelerated the rate of construction and deaths for the poor Chinese workers who used them. The work often saw Chinese workers tossed in large baskets with the explosives down to hard to reach areas, they would lit the fuse and the basket would be pulled as fast as it could away from the blast area, not safe. Over 11,000 Chinese took part in the project and they made up 90% of the work effort. A large portion of them came from Guangdong, recruited through a network of small firms and labor contractors. Its estimated around 1000 Chinese died building the Central Pacific Railroad.  Now as the Chinese came to the US for the Goldrush and then railroad construction, they were met with a lot of racism, violence and legislative efforts. I mentioned the American miners pushing for legislation against them, but when the Chinese began working on the railways this greatly expanded. In the 1870's various legal discriminatory measures were being made against the Chinese. In San Francisco Chinese school children from 1859-1870 were segregated, but in 1870 the requirement to educate them was simply dropped. Also in 1870 the Naturalization act which extended citizenship rights to African Americans specifically barred Chinese on the grounds they could not be assimilated into American society. Chinese immigrants were thus prohibited from voting, jury duty (which lets be honest is a blessing) and faced alien land laws prohibited them from purchasing property or establishing permanent homes or businesses. In 1873 the Pigtail Ordinance, you heard that right, targeted Qing dynasty immigrants based on their Queues. The law required prisoners in San Francisco to have their hair cut within an inch of their scalp and any Qing citizens who went to prison and had their queues cut, meant they could not go back home until it grew back. The law was passed with the idea it would dissuade Chinese immigration. Two years later came the Page Act of 1875, barring Chinese women from entering the US. This was justified under the guise many who came over were performing sex work. In reality it was another measure taken to dissuade Chinese immigration. This was followed up in 1882 by the infamous Chinese exclusion act which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. All of this was strongly driven by frustrated American workers who saw the Chinese as a threat to their jobs. Miners and railway workers pressed unions which pressed the legislatures to toss countless anti-Chinese laws trying to dissuade them from coming to the US. With so much discrimination and hurdles tossed at them, the Chinese began moving somewhere else to make ends meet. Chinese immigrants began arriving to the then Colony of Vancouver island in the late 1850's looking for gold. The colony of British Columbia, much like California was seeing a gold rush. The first Chinese community was established in Barkerville where half its population were Chinese. Soon other Chinatowns emerged in Richfield, Van Winkle, Quesnellemouthe, Stanley, Antlery and Quesnelle forks. By 1860 the Chinese population of Vancouver island and British columbia was around 7000. Then in 1871, British Columbia agreed to join the confederation of Canada and one of its conditions to do so was for the new federal government of Canada to build a railway linking BC to Eastern Canada, yes its basically the exact same thing as California with the Eastern US. Prime Minister John A Macdonald along with numerous investors realized the project would be unbelievably expensive. They also realized they could cut costs by employing Chinese laborers, as Macdonald told Parliament in 1882 “it is simply a question of alternatives either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway”. In 1880 Andrew Onderdonk, one of the main construction contractors in British Columbia for the new Canadian Pacific Railway began recruiting Chinese laborers from California. Learning from the Americans he also began importing Chinese workers from Guangdong and Taiwan. The Chinese workers were hired for the first 320 kms of the CPR which was considered to be the most difficult and dangerous segments, particularly the parts going through Fraser Canyon. Like their american counterparts they were paid much less than white Canadians, around 50% on the dollar.  Between 1880-1885, 17000 Chinese workers came to build the CPR with around 700 dying due to the terrible work conditions. The CPR's construction resulted in the establishment of Chinatowns along the rail line which further resulted in Chinese communities spreading across Canada. Following directly in the footsteps as the Americans, when the CPR was finished in 1884, the following year saw the infamous Chinese Head Tax. The Canadian government levied its first of many to come, anti chinese immigration acts, to discourage Chinese from coming to Canada. The head tax system stipulated all Chinese people entering Canada first had to pay 50$ ie: the head tax. This would be amended to 100$ in 1900, 500$ in 1903 and so forth. Because of this, basically no Chinese laborers could afford to bring over their families, though BC's Chinese communities still grew. In British columbia the perception of all the asians coming into the province, as it was not just the Chinese, many Japanese came over particularly for the fishing industry, well they perceived these people to be taking their jobs. Australia likewise had tossed up immigration restriction acts in 1901, the infamous “white australia policy” which eliminated asian immigration after their federation, and Canada would try the same. The Asian Exclusion League in Canada, yes there was a league just for this lobbied as much as they could to thwart Chinese immigration. I did not want to delve into the 20th century in this episode, but I did want to touch upon the violence that would occur in BC. In 1907 tension had increased, as more and more Asian immigrants were flooding over into BC from the US as a result of their anti chinese regulations, kind of a hot potato situation. By the end of October 1907 over 11,440 immigrants came over, 8125 were Japanese, 1266 Chinese and Sikhs made up 2049. Anti-Asian acts were blowing up and soon full blown riots spread.  The Asian exclusion league developed a new immigration act, but the federal government refused to back it. This led to outrage which led to its members starting a parade on September 7th of 1907. This parade turned into a mob riot where Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods were attacked. Asian owned businesses were vandalized, beer bottles were tossed at windows, fires were lit, the rioters were trying to destroy businesses. They came to Japantown where armed Japanese residents fought back, over 50 stores had their windows broken in and the entire riot only died down around 3am. Labour Minister MacKenzie King, yes the soon to be Prime Minister of Canada conducted a commission into the riots finding the damage to be worth around 26,000$ for the Chinese community and 9000$ for the Japanese. The riot directly led to the 1908 “gentleman's agreement”, one I might add not many people know about, not as notably as the head tax, but this was a secret agreement between Japan and Canada to restrict the number of passports issued to Japanese annually at under 400 peoples. It was a dark part of Canadian history. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. I do apologize if this episode is more on the gloomy side, but do not forget these asian communities are thriving today all around the world. I plan to do another episode on Overseas Chinese in the 20th century, so I hope you enjoyed this one and come back for some more!

Kiri Maru Bradley is an exceptional story-teller; this episode is guaranteed to sweep you away. She's a pro Muay Thai fighter with 32 fights, training out of The Pitt in WA. Kiri shares with us her upbringing in Cooktown (pop 2.5k), her notoriety in taking on anyone often at short notice, and her changed role at the upcoming Muay Thai League all-female card on Feb 18. Join hosts Smokin' Joe Coverdale and Bridget Thakrar as they interview some of Australia's best Muay Thai fighters, trainers and promotors.Please rate, review and share on your socials. It helps us get into more ears and hopefully helps get you more fighting opponents. If you have a guest suggestion or any feedback please dm us on Instagram or email femalefightexperience@gmail.comYou can find us on Instagram here:The Female Fight ExperienceSmokin' JoeBridget Thakrar Join hosts Smokin' Joe Coverdale and Bridget Thakrar as they interview some of Australia's best Muay Thai fighters, trainers and promotors.You can find us on Instagram here:The Female Fight ExperienceSmokin' JoeBridget Thakrar

Rob Mercer joins Mark to reminisce about his 2004 expedition from Cooktown to Cape York, across 900km of pristine coast in the far north of Australia.A yarn about remote paddling in big fast following seas, with the ever-present threat of crocs and stingers in the water.

Eddie's Elim Beach Campground is a must visit on your North Queensland itinerary, with its wild and untouched environment, absolute waterfront camping and spectacular coloured sands to explore.  Then we find another hidden gem nestled beside the spectacular Black Mountain range south of Cooktown, and camp off grid on a private airstrip at Rossville Retreat.  Get your hands on a copy of our Ultimate Road Trip Ready Pack: Lessons from a Lap Year and start planning your dream travels -  https://thefeelgoodfamily.com/product/ultimate-australia-road-trip-ready-pack-travel-guide/ Check out the footage from our latest episode on our Family Travel Australia YouTube channel –https://youtu.be/3fE3vcAk-ws  Subscribe to Jasperoo - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCceGx3esRSQBYZfWvf4KVtw  Our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thefeelgoodfamily has a new destination video every Sunday night at 6.30pm (AEST). We would love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram and our website www.thefeelgoodfamily.com.au  Our Family Travel Australia Podcast is now LIVE and available on all podcast platforms, with a new episode aired every Friday night 8:30pm [AEST].

We camp off grid at a fantastic new bush camp just out of town, and spend a week discovering the rich history, hidden gems and must do experiences of this remote North Queensland town.  Plus we have a yarn with a local family who have taken their own leap of faith, upending their lives and moving from the Sunshine Coast to Cooktown, to create their own sanctuary and share it with the world.   Get your hands on a copy of our Ultimate Road Trip Ready Pack: Lessons from a Lap Year and start planning your dream travels -  https://thefeelgoodfamily.com/product/ultimate-australia-road-trip-ready-pack-travel-guide/ Check out the footage from our latest episode on our Family Travel Australia YouTube channel –https://youtu.be/SkMWeUkeA5M Subscribe to Jasperoo - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCceGx3esRSQBYZfWvf4KVtw  Our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thefeelgoodfamily has a new destination video every Sunday night at 6.30pm (AEST). We would love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram and our website www.thefeelgoodfamily.com.au Our Family Travel Australia Podcast is now LIVE and available on all podcast platforms, with a new episode aired every Friday night 8:30pm [AEST].

We stay at some amazing off-grid campgrounds in some spectacular locations along the east coast, before setting up camp in Cooktown ready to explore the far north region. Judging by the campgrounds and destinations we've already experienced, Season 7, our off-grid lap of Australia, is going to be a cracker! Get your hands on a copy of our Ultimate Road Trip Ready Pack: Lessons from a Lap Year and start planning your dream travels -  https://thefeelgoodfamily.com/product/ultimate-australia-road-trip-ready-pack-travel-guide/ Check out the footage from our latest episode on our Family Travel Australia YouTube channel –https://youtu.be/u5R9XrLaM20  Subscribe to Jasperoo - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCceGx3esRSQBYZfWvf4KVtw Our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thefeelgoodfamily has a new destination video every Sunday night at 6.30pm (AEST). We would love to connect with you on Facebook, Instagram and our website www.thefeelgoodfamily.com.au  Our Family Travel Australia Podcast is now LIVE and available on all podcast platforms, with a new episode aired every Friday night 8:30pm [AEST].

John MacKenzie chats with Peter Scott, Mayor of Cook Shire, about the historical significance of World War II after a memorial was recently restored. The state government recently reversed its decision to remove a war memorial erected to commemorate David Ellerton of the Royal Australian Air Force who was killed in 1942 around 100km from Cooktown. Peter Scott brought the story to light and elaborated on other interesting facets surrounding the history of the Second World War and Far North Queensland.

The radio scene at the end of the highway: Cooktown, Queensland - part 2. More about the B22 High Frequency Coordination Conference in Sofia Bulgaria. Bangladesh DX report from Salahuddin Dolar.

The radio scene at the end of the highway: Cooktown, Queensland - part 2. More about the B22 High Frequency Coordination Conference in Sofia Bulgaria. Bangladesh DX report from Salahuddin Dolar.

Hoy te traemos una entrevista exclusiva con Juliana Jaramillo Castrillón, la colombiana que estuvo perdida durante cuatro días en una zona de bosques tropicales, cerca de la localidad de Cooktown, en el extremo norte de Queensland. Juliana comparte con la audiencia de SBS Spanish los detalles de esta angustiosa experiencia. Escucha el programa del jueves 15 de septiembre de 2022.

Murray Jones from 4CA chats with Interventional Cardiologist Dr Anthong Brazzale about his work, and the benefits to the community of the funding provided by the Cardiac Challenge bike ride from Cairns to Cooktown

Shane Ross is a unique character to say the least. Expedition leader, Tracker, Bushman, Photographer, Writer and more. After growing up in Cape York amongst the indigenous communities his career in the Bush has taken him all over the world. He spent over 5 years in Africa running his own private tours of some of the most wildest terrain know to man. When Covid hit, he returned to Australia and found himself embarking on his dream adventure. A kayak trip which lasted two months and over a 1000kms from Cooktown to the most northern tip of the Australian mainland. Dodging crocs, encountering big sharks, running out of water completely, severe isolation and exposure to the harsh tropical sun were just a few factors that make this yarn such a wild one. These yarns were to good, we had to do this podcast in two parts. Part 2 is just as cool! We trust you'll enjoy. We certainly did! Cheers --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bushyarns/message

Part 3 of 3Question: you've just killed someone; what's the quickest way to dispose of the body? If you live in northern Queensland, Australia, a simple answer presents itself. Dump the corpse in a crocodile-infested river. The "salties", as Australians call them, will do the rest.That was Matthew White's plan after he murdered Donna Steele in Cooktown. But the plan backfired spectacularly thanks to advances in forensic science and a one-in-a-million DNA match.The third and final part of our series about familial DNA looks at the 2017 murder of Donna Louise Steele and how familial DNA helped crack the case.

In Queensland, Australia is where this episode of The Mountain Mysteries takes us. The Land Down Under is magical, beautiful and sacred. With a culture that is as unique and diverse as it is beautiful. It can also be extremely dangerous and unforgiving. To the Aboriginal people of Queensland Australia, Kalkajaka, is a sacred battlefield of both spirits and warring clan groups. To tourists, Kalkajaka is Black Mountain — an eerie and striking landform along the Trevathan Range that many feel compelled to stop at on their drive from Mareeba to Cooktown. But this Mountain, has it's own secrets, and it may kill to keep them. Known as the Bermuda Triangle of North Queensland, we see if there is anything to Kalkajaka, and hear about the stories of those who've died, or never been seen or heard from again. Visit Us Become a Patron! The Mountain Mystery Artwork, Social Media, Family Outreach, and Voice Over in some episodes and the opening and closing is performed by Ali (Cody) Slone Wilson. Website maintenance, orders of merchandise, technical support research and writing are performed by Aro Wilson. Hosted, Produced and co-written by Christopher Shelby Slone. This episode is also dedicated to Madison Blankenship, stay mysterious Maddy. The Mountain Mysteries are dedicated to the enduring memory of April Renee Pennington. We love and miss you. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/chris-slone1/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/chris-slone1/support

Originally from Paris, Alienor's heart lies in adventure. She has lived in Brazil for 18-months managing a boutique hotel, has trekked across Mongolia on horseback twice and has travelled from Siberia to Paris in a motorbike sidecar.But her most recent and all-encompassing trip was here in Australia. Passionate about advocating for the plight of the Aussie wild horse, Alienor trekked the Bicentennial National Trail with her three brumbies – an expedition that took 13-months across 5,330km.Alienor started in Victoria's Healesville and ended in Cooktown, Queensland. Around 50 people have completed the trek – more people have walked on the moon. She was the second woman to complete the trail, and the first with wild horses.Her Australian story started 16-years ago, when the then 20-year old Alienor landed in Melbourne for a three week holiday. She never took her flight home, and ended up in Central Australia working in remote Indigenous communities.Thank you to our Sponsor for this episode MaiaGrazing.

In the early 2000s Corey Bousen located in Hong Kong called his father in Cairns to ask if he wanted to go into business owning what was then the Torres Newspaper, based on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. Both Corey and his father Mark are journalists, though Mark was retired at the time. Over the next twenty years they bought up other papers in Arnhem Land and in the Cape. With Corey's mother Meg working on the accounts, the three of them, with additional help from journalists and editors, published newspapers that covered an area larger than the UK but with a population around 25,000. With the difficulties running regional newspapers that are now well documented and with COVID, Corey and his parents have parted with the newspapers. Corey is now farming in northern Tasmania, quite the change. Here he reflects on the news in the top end of Australia.

Ports North is responsible for the development and management of the Ports of Cairns, Cape Flattery, Karumba, Mourilyan, Skardon River, Quintell Beach, Thursday Island, Burketown and Cooktown. Manager of Sustainability and External Policy, Paul Doyle, joins the podcast to talk about Ports North’s operations in the Wet Tropics, the Cairns shipping dredging project, and recent work on their environmental sustainability strategy.

Episode 77CreepyAustraliaG'day mates! Tonight on the Midnight Train we've decided to take another creepy trip! Last time we stayed stateside and headed to Texas, where they seem to have an inordinate amount of haunted bridges. This week we are heading to The Land Down Under! That's right Australia here we come. Not only can pretty much all the wildlife in Australia kill you… It's also chock full of creepy places as well! So, without further ado, throw another shrimp on the barbie, wrestle yourself a croc, pull out all the other Australian cliches you can, and take a trip with us to some of the creepiest, craziest places in Australia. No bridges… We promise!      We'll start off with a nice refreshing swim...OF DEATH!!! Local legend states that at the Babinda boulders, aka The Devil's Pool, there is something sinister going on. Legend has it that a long time ago, when the Yidinji tribe lived in the Babinda Valley, there was a tremendous upheaval that created these unusual shaped Boulders. In the tribe was Oolana, a very beautiful young woman.  Also in the tribe was Waroonoo, a very old, wise and respected elder. It was decided that these two should be given in marriage to one another, and so it was done.  Some time later, a wandering tribe came through the valley, and as was the friendly custom of the Yidinji, they made the strangers welcome, inviting them to stay.  In the visiting tribe was Dyga, a very handsome young man.  All eyes were upon him for his grace and beauty.  At first sight, Dyga and Oolana fell in love. Knowing full well that their desire for each other would never be permitted, they ran away.  Oolana knew she could now never return as she was rightfully married to Waroonoo.  They journeyed well up into the valley; spending wonderful, happy days together and they camped under Chooreechillum, near the water’s edge. The two tribes had been searching for them and it was at this spot, they came upon the two lovers.  The wandering tribesmen seized Dyga, forcing him away, calling how they had been shamed and how they would travel far away and never return.  The Yidinjis had taken hold of Oolana and were dragging her back, forcing her to return with them to the rest of the tribe.  Suddenly, she broke away and violently flung herself forward into the gentle waters of the creek, as she called and cried for Dyga to return to her, but the wandering tribe had gone, and with them her handsome lover. Would he ever return?  Just at the very instant Oolana struck the water, a tremendous upheaval occurred.  The land shook with terror and sorrow as Oolana cried for her lost lover to come to her.  Her anguished cries spilled out as rushing water came cascading over the whole area.  Huge boulders were thrown up and she disappeared into them.  Oolana seemed to become part of the stones as if to guard the very spot where it all happened. It is said that to this day her spirit resides at the Devil's Pool and lures young men to their deaths. Since 1959 almost 20 young men have died there. Is it a result of the restless siren spirit of Oolana or just a result of carelessness on behalf of these young men. As we are the Midnight Train, We'll go with the daunting spirit of a broken-hearted & scorned woman.        Next up we'll take you to a place that kinda hits closer to home right now. We are heading to the North Head quarantine station. Not because of Covid… But because it's fucking haunted of course. First, Jeff's favorite, a bit of history. The Quarantine Station was established primarily to regulate the risk of disease importation through the migration of free and convicted Europeans, and the arrival of merchant shipping. Up until the 1830s, the majority of ships requiring quarantine were convict transports, and being under government contract, the somewhat informal proclamation of quarantine by the Governor of the day was easy to enforce. One reason for the introduction of formal statutory regulation for quarantine in NEw South Wales in 1832 was the increasing rate of free immigrant vessels entering port. The initial quarantine practice of housing the sick on board the vessel in which they arrived, was dispensed with after the experience with the long detention of the Lady Macnaghten in 1837, and the subsequent heavy demurrage claimed for that delay. After that time the sick were removed from their ship and housed ashore, while the ship was fumigated and scoured for return to the owner with the minimum delay. A consequence of this decision was the construction of permanent accommodation and storage buildings at the Quarantine Station at North Head. The alarming experiences of quarantine in 1837 and 1838 prompted a review in the colony of the organisation and conditions aboard immigrant ships. The final report, arising as a NSW initiative, pricked the sensitivities of the British emigration officials, but nevertheless had positive outcomes. The review indicated that there was insufficient checking of the health of the emigrants before boarding; there was insufficient concern with diet during the voyage, especially for the needs of children; and that the formula of three children equalling one adult when allocating food and berth space aboard required reconsideration, as it led to excessive number of children in cramped spaces, with inadequate food. The subsequent reorganisation of the system resulted in interviews and medical checks on would-be emigrants before embarking them; vaccination for smallpox of all emigrants; the signing of undertakings to follow the directions of the surgeon-superintendent on voyage and better definition of his role and powers; improvements in diet and hospital accommodation aboard; and moves to prevent overcrowding. The arrival of the Beejapore in 1853, with over one thousand passengers, at a time when the Quarantine Station could accommodate 150 persons, triggered a new building phase. As a temporary measure, the hulk Harmony was purchased and moored in Spring Cove as a hospital ship. The Beejapore was an experiment in trying to reduce migration costs by using two-deck vessels, and the outcome was judged not to be a success. Fifty-five people died during the voyage, and a further sixty two died at the Quarantine Station, from the illnesses of measles, scarlet fever and typhus fever.  As a result of this downturn between 1860 and 1879 only 138 immigrant vessels arrived [compared with 410 between 1840 and 1859], and of these 33 required cleansing at the Quarantine Station, but few required their passengers to be landed and accommodated. In the same period 29 merchant or naval vessels were quarantined, but again mainly for the cleansing of the ship rather than the landing of diseased crews. The run-down Quarantine Station had become unsuitable for passenger quarantine, and particularly for first and second class passenger accommodation, by the time the Hero was in need of quarantine for smallpox in 1872. The passengers were kept aboard the ship, because the station could not adequately house them. The inadequacy was further publicised during the quarantine of the Baroda in 1873, when first class passengers had to do their own washing. The growth of the other states also meant that shipping was more evenly distributed in terms of destination than had been the case in the nineteenth century. In the period 1901 to 1940, Sydney and Melbourne had roughly similar numbers of assisted immigrants (134,864 and 115,988 respectively), and the other States had, in combination, more immigrants than either Sydney or Melbourne, totalling 174,526. By 1958 there were 39 "first ports of entry" into Australia. Thirty-two sea ports had staff capable of carrying out quarantine inspections, ten ports were "landing places" for air entry; major quarantine stations with accommodation were established at five ports, and there were three minor quarantine stations at other Ports. The impact of improved medical science, immunisation, and quarantine procedures in the twentieth century is perhaps shown most dramatically by the fact that though the post-WWII immigration was vastly more than had gone before, the number of ships or aeroplanes quarantined plummeted proportionately. Sydney received nearly 700,000 assisted immigrants between 1946 and 1980, or nearly double the number it had received between 1831 and 1940, yet only four ships were quarantined in that period and at least one of those was a tanker. In all, between 1828 and 1984 at least 580 vessels were quarantined at the Quarantine Station. More than 13,000 people were quarantined at the station of whom an estimated 572 died and were buried there. Now with that compacted and somewhat confusing history out of the way, let's get into some creepiness.     Since records were first kept, reports of the ghosts of the doctors and nurses returning to haunt the station have flooded in. The National parks and Wildlife Service regularly conducts a three hour ghost tour after sunset, where visitors are led by tour guides through the winding unlit streets and buildings of the North Head Quarantine Station. Every building and open area on the site is believed to be haunted by at least one ghost. Visitors have reported seeing apparitions walking in front of their cars as they leave the site at night, as they are driving down North Head Scenic Drive. Psychics have claimed to have been led around the station by ghostly nurses, and long dead patients all still remaining within the confines of the complex. TV's Ghost Hunters Team visited the site and found enough evidence to suggest that the site is haunted by several different entities, who have remained at the site, but you know how we feel about those tools... One of the more common accounts you may hear while on the ghost tours are that of the ghostly girl with blonde braids who occasionally holds a tourists hand and leads them along the pathways. Some visitors see her hiding behind bushes or even tugging at their jacket sleeve. Guests have said she speaks to them or sees her as a child on a tour, only to be told later that there were no children on their tour. In the Asian quarters visitors have reported seeing the ghost of a Chinese man dressed in authentic period robes. Other paranormal experiences at North Head Quarantine Station include: lights turning themselves on and off in locked buildings, strange sounds and footsteps coming from the verandas, and the feeling of being touched by an unseen force. Many people have felt uncomfortable and have frozen on the spot of the old cemetery where a lone gravestone now is the only remaining evidence of the hundreds of bodies buried below. Several buildings on the site were destroyed by fire in 2001. One of the buildings was the station's original hospital. Several ghosts were seen here before the fire; these were either laying in the hospital beds, or wondering around the wards. There are plans in the future to reconstruct this building because of its historic importance, and of course, its haunted history as well. There is a corrugated-iron structure on the site that houses the station's shower block. Paranormal events here include: doors slamming shut, lights turning on and off, bangs against the walls, and the sounds of footsteps. There are many many stories from this place which is also now a hotel. There's tons more history and tales that you can find on your own but we must be moving along, now. We head next to Uluru also known as Ayers Rock. Uluru/Ayers Rock, is a giant monolith, one of the tors (isolated masses of weathered rock) in the southwestern Northern Territory, in central Australia. It has long been revered by a variety of Australian Aboriginal peoples of the region, who call it Uluru. The rock was sighted in 1872 by explorer Ernest Giles and was first visited by a European the following year, when surveyor William Gosse named it for Sir Henry Ayers, a former South Australian premier. It is the world’s largest monolith. There's an ancient history to the rock. On the northern top of Uluru are a series of caves that are informally called “the Skull”. The Aborigine, the peoples of the Mala, or Hare Wallaby group (both the Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjara belong to it) well, they believe that they represent the camp made by their ancestors in the Dreamtime, when they came to Uluru from the Haasts Bluff region, some 200 miles north, to initiate their youth. The Dreamtime is the era in which these forebearers created 'The Earth' through their adventures along trails that cross the desert. Many of these paths merge to crossroads at important features of the desert landscape, such as Uluru. The caves to the right of the Skull are said to mark the camps of the fathers and uncles of the initiates. In the uncles' camp lived the eagle chick, which would be used to provide feathers for this important ceremony. Other caves represent the camps that male elders, not involved in the ceremony, resided, and a series of flat rocks to the east, stand for the camp of the women. Whenever the tribes of the area gather at the Rock for these ceremonies, they still camp precisely in this pattern. In the northwest corner, separated from the main body of the Rock, is an immense pillar that locals call the Kangaroo Tail. To the Aborigine this is the ceremonial pole (naldawata) stolen from the midst of the Mala camp by a 'Devil Dingo'. The Dingo, a species of dog, is believed to have come to Australia with the aboriginals across land bridges and shallow seas that existed between Australia and Indonesia before the melting of the glaciers toward the end of the last ice age. This particularly savage canine, who stole the ceremonial pole, had been sung into existence by the elders farther west in the mountains now called the Petermanns, and sent into the camp at Uluru to punish the Mala group for refusing to supply eagle feathers to their cousins. This devil dingo put the Mala, and their guests from the southwest side of Uluru, the Carpet Snake people, to flee. There are enormous writhe marks and paw-shaped caves at the base of Uluru that represent the escape route of the Hare Wallaby and Carpet Snake people, their panic quite legible in the rock.  The Mala group are still aware of that devil dingo, which they believe dwells somewhere on the crest of Uluru.  Then there's the stories of the curse of Uluru. While climbing the rock is now banned there are many stories of folks who went to see the sites and decided to bring a piece of Australia home with them only to be met with bad luck and misfortune. Steve Hill talks about his experience. He had taken a small rock from the site. Here's the short version found on an Australian website:  The moment I put it back, it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” explains Steve Hill, who recently made a 3000km road trip from Canberra to return a small rock to Uluru. Hill, who pilfered the match box–sized rock from the base of the landmark inselberg in 2017, admits he was “a complete idiot for taking it in the first place”. In the weeks after, he claims, he was struck by a “long run of bad luck”, including car accidents and expensive repairs to his four-wheel-drive. He's not the only one to have stories like this. “I wanted to take away some of your magic with me for the rest of my travels, for the rest of my life even. I realise it was wrong to do so, therefore I am sending it back to you. Forgive me for being foolish,” wrote one French tourist who returned a rock via mail in January 2014. Another tourist wrote "To Australia, I'm so sorry I took this piece of Uluru. I wanted a piece of Australia to take home with me. This was the wrong thing to take. I hope Australia can forgive me and welcome me if I ever come back. signed, An Unwise Traveller"  One British tourist wrote: "Things were good in my life before I took some of Ayers Rock home with me, but since then my wife has had a stroke and things have worked out terribly for my children – we have had nothing but bad luck." The national park receives at least one package a day from remorseful rock thieves who are seeking to return pieces of the monument. In an even more bizarre twist, recent research indicates that 25 percent of those packages contain apology notes claiming that the stolen stone has brought misfortune upon its abductors; by returning it, they hope to undo the curse. While most of the returned pieces of Uluru are pocket-sized, officials once received a 70-pound chunk from a remorseful couple in South Australia, and packages have come from as far away as Germany.  So what to you guys think? Do you believe in curses? I don't need a rock or sand that bad! And now like Vanilla Icev were gonna keep on pursuing to the next stop. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of film, television, sound, radio, video games, new media, and related documents and artefacts. The collection ranges from works created in the late nineteenth century when the recorded sound and film industries were in their infancy, to those made in the present day. Doesn't seem spooky… Until you find out the building to which the Archive moved in 1984 was the home of the Australian Institute of Anatomy from 1931-84. Originally it held the anatomy collection of Sir Colin MacKenzie. A little more creepy. The Australian Institute of Anatomy was a natural history museum and medical research institute that was founded in 1931 and disbanded in 1985 located in Acton, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. MacKenzies collection included the heart of the celebrated Australian racehorse Phar Lap, Australian outlaw Ned Kelly's skull and a mummy from Papua New Guinea. MacKenzie became the founding director of the Institute on Anatomy, and on his death in 1938 his ashes were placed behind a commemorative plaque in the building's foyer. Buildings constructed during this phase were 'built to broaden national interest and establish the city as a centre of archives and collections'. The building housed human skeletons, animal specimens and artefacts, and was the site of scientific experiments. "The NFSA building is regarded by many ghost hunters or paranormal aficionados as not only one of the most haunted in Canberra, but also one of the most haunted in Australia," cryptonaturalist Tim the Yowie Man said. "It's not because it houses spooky movies. The ghosts that are reported in the building stem from the period when it was the Institute of Anatomy."  "During the '30s most of the research was on childhood nutrition; during the '40s when the war came that evolved to general nutrition, nutrition for the troops," Mr Kennedy said. "In the '50s and '60s there was a liver dissection section and animal testing laboratory." There have been many reported sightings of MacKenzie's ghost."It's one of the more extraordinary apparitions," he said."It's been described by some people like a genie out of a bottle.They're in the building in the late afternoon and they see an outline of an elderly man, dressed well, come out of the wall near where his ashes are.He just appears there, doesn't move much, and then suddenly sucks back into where the ashes are behind the wall."  Another of the commonly reported ghost sightings is that of a little girl that would pop out through a grate in the old theatrette and make visiting school students laugh. There have also been reports of poltergeist activity, particularly where the dissection laboratories used to be. Since the NFSA moved in, that space has been used as an office with two sound recording booths. "Quite often staff would have meetings in that room, and they would hear noises coming from the [recording booths] and they would see things flying around in there," Tim the Yowie Man said. "All these tapes had fallen out of anti-gravity tape decks, which can't happen unless someone or something had forced them out." A group of ghost hunters from the New South Wales south coast stayed overnight at the building ."They set up their equipment and it all went crazy," Mr Kennedy said. "One of the things ghosts or spirits apparently do is suck energy, so they'll suck the life out of batteries. They had six of these pieces of equipment set up in a row, and we all watched all of the batteries drain from full down to empty at the same time, which was pretty creepy." Most of the reports of spooky activity come from NFSA staff, with an employee who worked there in the 1980s coming forward with an experience just last week. "In the Film and Sound Archive it seems you don't need to be a true believer — you can be a sceptic, or sitting on the fence — to have an experience there," Tim the Yowie Man said. "There just seems to be a higher-than-normal proportion there of really credible eyewitnesses seeing things they can't explain."  Again these are just a few of the crazy stories floating around about this place and it bc send like a pretty cool haunted hotspot! And now like Fred Durst we're gonna keep rollin rollin rollin and head over to the Adelaide Gaol. A brief history from the website states the following: Adelaide Gaol is one of the oldest remaining colonial public buildings in Adelaide and is the site of some of South Australia's more interesting, grisly past and important history of Adelaide.  In 1840, George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design Adelaide's new gaol. The architectural plans for Adelaide Gaol were based on the latest in European gaol designs and were said to be radical for the time. The original cost estimate for Adelaide Gaol was £17,000, but by 1841 costs had already reached £16,000 with only half the planned works complete. The final bill was more than double the original quote and the expense of construction sent the fledgling colony of South Australia bankrupt. As a result, Governor Gawler, who was considered responsible for this situation, was recalled to England and replaced by Governor Grey. Governor Grey halted work and Adelaide Gaol construction languished for over six years. The full extent of Kingston's original design was never delivered, but there were all kinds of additions and modifications made to the Gaol during its 147 years of operation. In 1879, Adelaide Gaol was packed to capacity and the New Building was constructed using the prisoners as labour. Approximately 300,000 prisoners passed through Adelaide Gaol during its working years and 45 people were executed. Their bodies are buried within the grounds of Adelaide Gaol. The first public hanging took place in November 1840 while the site was still under construction. It was decided in the early 1980s that Adelaide Gaol would be closed and on 4 February 1988, was officially decommissioned.  Here's a little more on the prison. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1840, the first prisoners, some fourteen debtors, were transferred from the old temporary gaol to occupy the first yard to be completed at the new Adelaide Gaol. Remaining prisoners at the old gaol were transferred in early 1841, as further building work was completed. From 1867 to 1869 Sister Mary MacKillop, foundress of the Australian Sisters of Saint Joseph and later canonised as Australia's first Saint, regularly visited the gaol and along with members of her order tended both male and female prisoners. The first attempt at escaping occurred in August 1854 when two prisoners were caught in the act with each receiving 36 lashes. The first "successful" escape was in 1897 when three prisoners made it as far as Blanchetown before being recaptured. In 1942 the "New Building" was taken over by the military for use as a detention barracks. The gallows located in the building were used for a civilian execution on 26 April 1944. Following public protests over the unsanitary conditions at both Yatala Labour Prison and Adelaide Gaol, extensive renovations were carried out in 1954–55. A toilet block was constructed in 4 and 6 yards and a semi-circular wall built in "The Circle" to allow more privacy for visits. Previously, prisoners would line up toeing a brass rail in the Sally port of the main gate with visitors standing opposite and no closer than 2 metres (6.6 ft) which required the raising of voices to be heard over adjacent conversations. Former prisoners have stated that after a few minutes the noise level would be so high that no one could be heard. In 1961 a shower block was constructed and a bakery established which would supply bread to both Yatala and Adelaide Gaols. By this time the gaol was badly affected by salt damp and throughout the 1960s many prisoners were kept busy repairing it. In 1963 the Deputy Keeper's rooms in the Governor's residence were converted to administrative offices and a new residence was built in the forecourt, adjacent to the Gaol entrance. In 1965 it was announced that the gaol would be demolished and all but essential maintenance work ceased. In 1969 this decision was reversed and the gaol's female inmates were transferred to a new facility at Northfield. Throughout the 1970s considerable modernisation of the old buildings occurred with one building (6 Yard remand prisoners) demolished and rebuilt. In 1971 all staff housing on the site was vacated with most of the guards former residences demolished. In 1980 it was announced that the gaol would be closed once new facilities were completed and the only major work that took place until it did close was the installation of security cameras in 1984. Later that year the remand prisoners were transferred to the new Adelaide Remand Centre. The remaining Adelaide Gaol prisoners were transferred in 1987 when Mobilong Prison opened. Adelaide Gaol was decommissioned in 1988 and the site taken over by the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage and reopened as a museum and tourist attraction with overnight accommodation in cells for tourists. In 2007, the gaol was found to not comply with the relevant safety regulations for accommodation, ending the option. The Deputy Keeper's residence, built in 1963, was later considered not in keeping with the overall architectural style of the complex and demolished in October 2009. Until an Act of Parliament in 1858 mandated private executions, seven hangings were held in public outside the gaol walls with the first occurring in November 1840 while the site was still under construction. Joseph Stagg was the first prisoner to be executed for his involvement with a cattle duffing gang. From 1861 to 1883, 13 prisoners were executed on portable gallows erected between the Gaol's inner and outer walls. Executions were moved to the "New Building" in 1894 where a further 21 prisoners were executed. The "Hanging Tower" was converted to that use in 1950 and used for the last four executions before capital punishment was abolished in 1976. From 1840 to 1964, 45 of the 66 people executed in South Australia were executed by hanging at the Gaol. William Ridgway was the youngest at 19 in 1874, Elizabeth Woolcock the only woman in 1873 and the last was Glen Sabre Valance in 1964. Possibly one of the most haunted places in Australia. Adelaide Gaol is said to be regularly visited by some of the inmates and prison officers who once wandered its halls. It is believed that these ghost sightings are possibly innocent people who were hanged, seeking exoneration still to this very day. More ominous is the reported sightings of Adelaide Gaol's hangman. Ghost sighting of Frederick CarrFrederick 'Fred' Carr was hanged at Adelaide Gaol on 12 November 1927 for the murder of his wife, Maude. He protested his innocence, even up until the final moments before his death. Maude Carr was found with her throat cut. Medical experts at the time noted the wound could not have been self-inflicted because of the angle of the cut. Interestingly, Maude's previous two husbands also died from wounds to the neck and Maude tried to commit suicide the day before she died. Carr is said to have exclaimed, while in the condemned cell, 'the law requires my body, but it cannot have my soul, as I am innocent."  Fred is said to appear regularly near the stairs leading to the upstairs cells of the New Building. He is reported as a happy spirit, always neatly dressed in dark clothes and taking a polite interest in visitors wandering through his former 'home'. Fred's spirit was thought to appear without a face. That is, until November 2000, when his spirit apparently appeared with a face - a smiling, happy face. Why Fred's face was restored is a mystery, but he remains one of the many fascinating folklore ghost sightings of Adelaide Gaol. Ghost sighting of Governor William Baker AshtonWilliam Baker Ashton was the first Governor of the Adelaide Gaol and despite being a reasonably fair man, he was accused of wrong-doing. The ensuing scandal is said to have hastened his demise. William was a very large man and when he died (in office) in 1854, his body could not be manipulated down his apartment's steep, narrow staircase. Instead, he was unceremoniously lowered out of the front window to the undertakers waiting below. Three months after his death, William was exonerated. Too little, too late to pacify a disturbed spirit. On warm, still nights with a hint of thunder in the air, his footsteps are said to be heard (through walls of solid stone) as he struggles to move furniture in an empty room. Ghost sighting of Ben Ellis - the hangmanBen Ellis was the Adelaide Gaol hangman for 10 years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1870s. He lived at Adelaide Gaol in a small apartment below what became the female dormitory. Ben took pride in his work and approached each task with complete professionalism. Each of Ben's executions was precisely - and expertly - carried out. Except in the case of the execution of Charles Streitman in 1877. In his haste to get the job done, Ben neglected to prepare his prisoner properly and Charles not only dropped but rebounded, getting caught on the platform. Instead of instantaneous death it was a further 22 minutes before he finally died. Ben never questioned the right or wrong of his profession until 30 December 1873, when he was required to hang a female prisoner, Elizabeth Woolcock. She was to be the first and last woman executed in South Australia. This event changed the way Ben viewed his profession forever. Ben's restless spirit is said to appear often throughout Adelaide Gaol, perhaps seeking forgiveness for a job too well done.On top of this we found a personal experience posted online. It goes like this:              The tour starts with a walk around the entire gaol. Straight away you get a feeling that you are being watched. The immense grounds and the stillness set the scene for a night of ghostly encounters. For those that love their history they will surely learn a lot from Alison in regards to the Gaol’s dark past. From stories about ex prisoners through to information on Adelaide history – you surely get your moneys worth. My Adelaide Gaol ghost story began while walking around (and this was before dark) I could hear voices as well as footsteps. I felt like someone was following the group. It was in the museum that I experienced my first paranormal encounter. While Alison and another tour participant were in the Gaol wing I could here footsteps in the museum. Instead of joining them in the wing I instead investigated where the noises were coming from. At the same time Alison and co were trying to close one of the cell door slots. After looking around the museum (I couldn’t see anything) I decided to join the others in the wing. To my amazement as soon as I reached the wing I could see a hand coming from the cell door slot. This hand forcefully smashed the slot down. You can guess what happened next. I ran for my life. I have never been that scared in my life. Well little did I know what laid ahead for the group. After the tour we made our way back to the old Visiting Justice Room. Here Alison played us examples of EVP and voices from the ghost box. After my experience (I was still shaking like mad) these samples just put me further on edge. Next was the investigation. The investigation itself lasts around two hours. Here you are able to use equipment to track the paranormal as well as visit any location in the prison. Alison took us to places around the prison which have had vast paranormal events. Alas those places would not be the ones that would make me doubt my own sanity. The induction centre looks to be just another building. But by day or night this is indeed is a dark place. As soon as I entered the building I began to feel light headed. It was like it was an extremely hot day. The temperature gauge at that stage read only 22 degrees. That was all about to change. When we sat down on the bench in the induction centre the gauge jumped to over 40 in a little over a few minutes. I then asked if any spirit could lessen the temperature on the gauge. I got a response almost straight away and the gauge dropped by 25 degrees. The group then decided to give the ghost box a go. This is where you ask questions and some times you might get a response. I’m not a great fan and neither is Alison, but I will give anything a go once. During this period the temperature gauge read 68 degrees. All the others in the room were now all complaining about feeling light headed. Alison then asks if anyone present could give us a sign they were there or touch us. Well they did surely show us they were there. It went on for a few minutes. The noise could be best described as footsteps walking through dried leaves. It was the same noise that I had heard all the night. What made this experience worse though was they kept getting closer and closer. Alison tried to radio her husband so that he could bring the video camera but the walkie talkie wouldn’t work. My nerves were shot at this stage. Thank gawd everyone wanted to leave the room. After regrouping outside we checked all the equipment. Both the temperature gauge and walkie-talkies needed their batteries changed. What is weird about this is both of them had just been refreshed before the investigation. These batteries should have lasted days. Another weird thing is another group members recording device stopped when the noises got closer. There was no one near the device. On the way back we heard the jail bell ring twice (Alison stated that it never had happened before) and also the between yards buzzer went off. Very unusual indeed. Let me state that all the above did happen and is real. No gimmicks or pranks. We have audio evidence that all this took place. Thank you Alison for an amazing night. For one that has been searching for such an experience for years, I owe you and the Gaols inhabitants big time. This tour is indeed worth it. Give it a go when you are next in Adelaide. You never know what ghostly things you may encounter.” This account was written by a Nicholas Bishop and posted to Adelaidehauntedhorizons.com. Fu Manchu once told us: King of the road says you move too slow, so it's with great haste we move along to our next stop. We are now heading to Black Mountain! Black mountain national park is a 781 hectare(roughly 1400 acres) protected area in Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. The main feature of the park is the mass of granite boulders, some the size of houses. The absence of soil between the boulders and rocks create a maze of gaps and passages, which can be used to penetrate inside the mountain. These rocks can become extremely hot. The area has a bad reputation as numerous people and those searching for the missing have disappeared without trace. That's why we're heading there. Is it supernatural? Bad luck? Maybe something else sinister? Let's see what we can find. First a bit of Cultural history. The National Park's "Black Mountains" are a heavily significant feature of the Kuku Nyungkal people's cultural landscape known locally to Aboriginal Australians as Kalkajaka (trans: "place of spear"). Queensland's Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been advised of at least four sites of particular mythological significance within the "Black Mountains" as follows: There are at least four sites of religious or mythological significance on the mountain. These are the Kambi, a large rock with a cave where flying-foxes are found; Julbanu, a big grey kangaroo-shaped rock looking toward Cooktown; Birmba, a stone facing toward Helenvale where sulphur-crested cockatoos are seen; and a taboo place called Yirrmbal near the foot of the range. The Black Mountain also features strongly in local, more non-Aboriginal cultural landscapes, some of which has also been described by Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management as follows When European colonists arrived late last century, they added to the many Aboriginal legends of the area with a few of their own. Stories abound of people, horses and whole mobs of cattle disappearing into the labyrinth of rocks, never to be seen again It is believed that those who vanished most probably fell into one of the chasms under the rocks or after entering one of these places became lost. It is estimated only three in ten would survive such falls, wandering below the Earth's surface with only ground water streams and insects to nourish them. Disappearances are centuries old at Black Mountain with stories beginning as the white settlers began arriving and did not respect the Kuku Yalanji’s warnings. For example, in 1877 a man went out towards the Black Mountain to locate an escaped calf. When the man failed to return searches were conducted for days but no trace of the horse, cow, or man was ever discovered. Several years later Sugarfoot Jack and his criminal companions decided to take refuge near the mountain after a shootout, knowing not many people would venture there. Despite an exhaustive police search in the following days, no bodies were ever recovered. Mr Harold Ludwick believes in Black Mountain's dark forces, which is why he warns people not to enter the site: a mistake his friend from Sydney made during a visit. "I told him, 'Don't go in there', because I know there's a bora ground, but he was headstrong and wanted to go," Mr Ludwick recalled. "After being in that place, he got home and was tormented by what he said was devils and spirits. "After he got better, three or four months later, he came back and said to me, 'I know I've done something wrong on Cape York'. "I said, 'Bloody oath you did, and I told you!'" Some other early stories of disappearances are as follows:        November, 1882: two cattlemen Harry Owens and George Hawkins disappear while looking for stray cattle around Black Mountain, as does one of the police trackers searching for the missing men. A second tracker returns 'completely unhinged' and unable to provide a coherent report.          1890: Constable Ryan tracks a fugitive to a cave at Black Mountain. He enters to see if the fugitive might be hiding inside. According to those present he never came back out.          1892: prospector James Wren vanishes while fossicking at Black Mountain.        Circa 1920: two young explorers determined to solve the mysterious disappearances go missing themselves, along with some of the trackers who go looking for them.        1928: prospector Q. Packer goes missing while fossicking at Black Mountain. His body is later found next to his rifle with a bullet wound to his head.       1932: traveller Harry Page goes missing while hiking on Black Mountain and was later found dead from unknown causes. Well into modern times Black Mountain has been ground zero for a wide variety of high strangeness. It is said that animals are spooked by the mountain, and that it exudes some evil force that has been reported to disrupt the navigational equipment of airplanes flying nearby. In fact, planes mostly avoid flying near the mountain due to these unexplained anomalies as well as the strange air turbulence that is experienced within the vicinity. A 1991 aerial survey conducted by the Bureau of Mineral Resources to test for magnetic disturbances and radiation levels on the mountain turned up nothing unusual, yet the reports of these phenomena from pilots persist. It may not be so surprising that Black Mountain is also home to a good amount of UFO activity and reports of strange lights.  Black Mountain is also said to have cavernous underground chambers that are purported to hold everything from alien bases to lost civilizations, ancient tombs and priceless lost treasures. Some of the treasures said to reside within the depths of the many caves are lost stockpiles of gold, historic artifacts, and ancient texts. One of the stranger things said to lie under the mountain is a secret alien base from which UFOs emerge and which is inhabited by a race of reptilian alien humanoids that keep human slaves. Those who buy this far out idea further explain that the arrangement of the boulders is obviously artificial and that the entire mountain was built by the aliens themselves. Others speculate that the boulders were laid down by some ancient lost civilization millennia ago, and that this society thrived deep under the mountain in an enormous hollowed out domain. Some think such a civilization is still there. Other bizarre tales revolve around the strange beasts said to inhabit the mountain. Although it is true that the area is home to many unique and endemic species, there are tales of creatures lurking here that are far weirder than one might imagine. Within the craggy maze of intertwined boulders are said to lurk enormous pythons that are not shy about attacking human beings. There is also an enigmatic large, cat-like predator known as the Queensland tiger that is thought to prowl the area and has been blamed for cattle mauling and mutilations that have occurred in the surrounding area. Occasional reports of large, reptilian humanoids emerging from the underground tunnels and crevices have also surfaced from the mountain. Additionally, there are numerous stories of fleeting, shadowy shapes that stalk the mountain, but it is unclear whether these represent some type of real animal, a more supernatural phenomenon, or merely a trick of shadow and light upon the black boulders. One experienced bushman who penetrated into the mountain armed with a pistol and flashlight gave a harrowing account of his experience within: I stepped into the opening, like other Black Mountain caves it dipped steeply downwards, narrowing as it went. Suddenly I found myself facing a solid wall of rock, but to the right there was a passageway just large enough for me to enter in a stooping position. I moved along it carefully for several yards. The floor was fairly level, the walls of very smooth granite. The passage twisted and turned this way and that, always sloping deeper into the earth. Presently I began to feel uneasy. A huge bat beat its wings against me as it passed, however I forced myself on, to push further. Soon my nostrils were filled with a sickly musty stench. Then my torch went out. I was in total darkness. From somewhere, that seemed the bowels of the earth I could hear a faint moaning which was then followed by the flapping of wings of thousands of bats. I began to panic as I groped and floundered back the way I thought I had come. My arms and legs were bleeding from bumps with unseen rocks. My outstretched hands clawed at space, I expected solid walls and floors, but could not find it. At one stage where I had wandered into a side passage, I came to the brink of what was undoubtedly a precipice-judging by the echoes. The air was foul and I felt increasing dizziness. Terrifying thoughts were racing through my mind about giant rock-pythons I have seen around this mountain. As I crawled along, getting weaker and loosing hope of ever coming out alive, I saw a tiny streak of light. It gave me super strength to worm my way towards a small cave mouth half a mile from the one I had entered. Reaching the open air I gulped in lungfuls of it and fell down exhausted. I later found that I had been underground for five hours, most of the time on my hands and knees. A King’s ransom would not induce me to enter those caves again.  Damn! One more tale for you:   In 2001 a tale of a man that had an interesting experience arose. A man named Ivan and his friend Danny decided to camp at the bottom of Black Mountain while on a journey to a different destination. While setting up camp both noticed the complete silence of nature that surrounded them and noted it was a bit off. As the two friends drifted to sleep they were awoken when the sounds of rocks crumbling shattered the silence. Then, they started to hear footsteps that got closer and closer in every step. In a moment of adrenaline-inspired bravery, Danny rushed outside to scare whoever (or whatever) was stalking them away. Ivan, not wanting to leave his friend alone, followed behind him. When they left the tent they saw a huge black mass ambling towards them. Then, it disappeared in front of their eyes. Despite it being the middle of the night the camp as quickly as they could and left the Black Mountain. Any up for a trip to Black mountain? There are many many many more places in Australia we can talk about, which is why we will be working on a creepy Australia part 2 in the future. Given the Aboriginal history and culture and the circumstances with which the country was founded, and just the age of since if these structures, it's no wonder there are tons of creepy haunted places in Australia. For now though.. As ozzy said Mama I'm comin home! Thanks for the memories!Australian horror movieshttps://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-australian-horror-movies/The Midnight Train Podcast is sponsored by VOUDOUX VODKA.www.voudoux.com Ace’s Depothttp://www.aces-depot.com BECOME A PRODUCER!http://www.patreon.com/themidnighttrainpodcast Find The Midnight Train Podcast:www.themidnighttrainpodcast.comwww.facebook.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.twitter.com/themidnighttrainpcwww.instagram.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.discord.com/themidnighttrainpodcastwww.tiktok.com/themidnighttrainp And wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Subscribe to our official YouTube channel:OUR YOUTUBE  

Racing Qld Cooktown Racing Club Daryl Paradise chats to Andrew Kuuse

Geoffrey Blainey, historian, academic, philanthropist & commentator, joins Michael on the anniversary of the HMB Endeavour leaving Cooktown on August 10th 1770.   The Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef on June 10th 1770.  Severely damaged, it took 23 hours before the crew was able to haul the ship off the reef on a high tide.   After heaving her off the reef, the leak was finally slowed becoming manageable with only one pump, but it was more than a week before they found a safe harbour to repair the Endeavour.   Cook spent seven weeks on the mouth of the Endeavour River which would be the expedition’s longest land base during the East Coast expedition finally departing on August 10th 1770. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Today I spoke to Peter Scott, the Mayor of Cook Shire, about the Premier lifting travel restrictions at midday this Friday, July 3rd. 

Ecco a voi Gabriele Dagrezio, protagonista della puntata di Why Not Café di Mercoledí 29 Aprile.Gabriele è musicista a Hobart e ieri, nella puntata a lui dedicata, ci ha anche deliziato con due performance.L'esperienza di Gabriele in Australia é iniziata nel nel 2013 quando é arrivato per cercare un cambiamento nella sua vita.La sua avventura é iniziata a Melbourne per poi spostarsi nella favolosa Cooktown, in Queensland a fare le farm.A Cooktown ha anche vissuto anche un'incredibile esperienza in una comunità aborigena!La Tasmania e il conseguente innamoramento, è avvenuto in seguito ad un viaggio.La natura, presente ovunque, lo ha rapito e gli ha fatto riscoprire la passione per la musica.La passione è tornata così forte, che Gabriele è riuscito a trasformarla in un lavoro, iscrivendosi anche al conservatorio all'Università della Tasmania, dove ora frequenta il terzo anno.Ha creato una band e ha da poco dato vita ad un suo canale YouTube, dove proprio ieri ha postato il suo primo video.https://youtu.be/cPZln81n1SEEcco alcuni dei momenti più importanti della nostra chiacchierata:00:16 apertura di puntata con Ain't No Sunshine cantata da Gabriele; 03:23 il percorso di Gabriele tra Melbourne, Cairns, Tasmania e Nuova Zelanda prima di stabilirsi a Hobart;05:30 fare basking (l'artista di strada)07:25 l'incontro con il padrone di un locale che lo ingaggia per suonare09:50 l'apertura del canale Youtube https://bit.ly/GabesMusic14:15 il primo video di Gabriele: https://youtu.be/cPZln81n1SE e il sito per sostenerlo nelle sue attività artistiche https://ko-fi.com/gabrieledagrezio17:42 il lavoro di Gabriele in Italia19:50 l'idea di trasferirsi in Australia 22:00 l'esperienza in farm a Cooktown (Queensland) 25:00 l'esperienza nella comunità aborigena27:00 il momento più difficile dell'esperienza in Australia (quello attuale)34:09 l'esperienza in conservatorio dall'Università della Tasmania44:33 "l'ambiente che ti circonda da forma al tuo cambiamento"51:50: la chiusura con Drive degli Incubus cantata da GabrieleBuona visione o ascolto!

Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage, Author provided (No reuse)Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series here and an interactive here. Editor’s note: This is an edited transcript of an interview with John Maynard for our podcast Trust Me, I’m An Expert. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people. There are a multitude of Aboriginal oral memories about Captain James Cook, right across the continent. As the research from Deborah Bird Rose shows, many Aboriginal people in remote locations are certainly under the impression that Cook came there as well, shooting people in a kind of Cook-led invasion of Australia. Many of these communities, of course, never met James Cook; the man never even went there. But the deep impact of James Cook that spread across the country and he came to represent the bogeyman for Aboriginal Australia. Even back in the Protection and Welfare Board days, a government car would turn up and Aboriginal people would be running around screaming, “Lookie, lookie, here comes Cookie!” I wrote about Uncle Ray Rose, sadly recently departed, who’d had a stroke. Someone said, “How do you feel?” And he said, “No good. I’m Captain Cooked.” Cook, wherever he went up the coast, was giving names where names already existed. Yuin oral memory in the south coast of NSW gives the example of what they called Gulaga and Cook called “Mount Dromedary”: […] that name can be seen as the first of the changes that come for our people […] Cook’s maps were very good, but they did not show our names for places. He didn’t ask us. Cook has been incorporated into songs, jokes, stories and Aboriginal oral histories right across the country. Why? I think it’s an Aboriginal response to the way we’ve been taught about our history. Read more: Captain Cook wanted to introduce British justice to Indigenous people. Instead, he became increasingly cruel and violent Myth-making persists but a shift is underway I came through a school system of the 50s and 60s, and we weren’t weren’t even mentioned in the history books except as a people belonging to the Stone Age or as a dying race. It was all about discoverers, explorers, settlers and Phar Lap or Don Bradman. But us Aboriginal people? Not there. We had this high exposure of the public celebration of Cook, the statues of Cook, the reenactments of Cook – it was really in your face. For Aboriginal people, how do we make sense of all of this, faced with the reality of our experience and the catastrophic impact? We’ve got to make sense of it the best way we can, and I think that’s why Cook turns up in so many oral histories. I think wider Australia is moving towards a more balanced understanding of our history. Lots of people now recognise the richest cultural treasure the country possesses is 65,000 years of Aboriginal cultural connection to this continent. That’s unlike anywhere else in the world. I mean no disrespect, but 250 years is a drop in a lake compared to 65,000 years. From our perspective, in fact, we’ve always been here. Our people came out of the Dreamtime of the creative ancestors and lived and kept the Earth as it was in the very first day. With global warming, rising sea levels, rising temperatures and catastrophic storms, Aboriginal people did keep the Earth as it was in the very first day to ensure that it was passed to each surviving generation. There was going to be a (now-cancelled) circumnavigation of Australia in the official proceedings this year, which the prime minister supported. But James Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia. He only sailed up the east coast. So that’s creating more myths again, which is a senseless way to go. A painting of Captain Cook and the Endeavour journal on display at the National Library of Australia. AAP/ALAN PORRITT ‘With the consent of the Natives to take possession’ Personally, I have high regard for James Cook as a navigator, as a cartographer, and certainly as an inspiring captain of his crew. He encouraged incredible loyalty among those that sailed with him on those three voyages. And that has to be recognised. But against that, of course, is the reality that he was given secret instructions by the Navy to: With the consent of the Natives to take possession of the convenient situations in the country in the name of the king of Great Britain. Well, consent was never given. When they went ashore at Botany Bay, two Aboriginal men brandished spears and made it quite clear they didn’t want him there. Those men were wounded and Cook was one of those firing a musket. There was no gaining any consent when he sailed on to Possession Island and planted that flag down. Totally the opposite, in fact. And the most insightful viewpoint is from Cook himself, who wrote that: all they seem’d to want was for us to be gone. Cook’s background gave him insight James Cook wasn’t your normal British naval officer of that time period. To get into such a position, you normally had to be born into the right family, to come from money and privilege. James Cook was none of those things. He came from a poor family. His father was a labourer. Cook got to where he was by skill, endeavour, and, unquestionably, because he was a very smart man and brilliant at sea. But it’s also from that background that he’s able to offer insight. There’s an incredible quotation of Cook’s where he says of Aboriginal people: They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition… they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air. Now, Cook is comparing what he is seeing in Australia with life back Britain, where there is an incredible amount of inequality. London, at the time, was filthy. Sewerage pouring through the streets. Disease was rife. Underprivilege is everywhere. In Australia, though, Cook sees what to him looks like this incredible egalitarian society and it makes an impact on him because of where he comes from. But deeper misunderstandings persisted. In what’s now called Cooktown there are, at first, amicable relationships with the Guugu Yimithirr people, but when they come aboard the Endeavour they see this incredible profusion of turtles that the crew has captured. They’re probably thinking, “these are our turtles.” They would quite happily share some of those turtles but the Bristish response is: you get none. So the Guugu Yimithirr people go off the ship and set the grass on fire. Eventually, there’s a kind of peace settlement but the incident reveals a complete blindness on the part of the British to the idea of reciprocity in Aboriginal society. Read more: 'They are all dead': for Indigenous people, Cook's voyage of 'discovery' was a ghostly visitation A collision of catastrophic proportions The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions. The whole impact of 1788 – of invasion, dispossession, cultural destruction, occupation onto assimilation, segregation – all of these things that came after 1770. Anything you want to measure – Aboriginal health, education, employment, housing, youth suicide, incarceration – we have the worst stats. That has been a continuation, a reality of the failure of government to recognise what has happened in the past and actually do something about it in the present to fix it for the future. We’ve had decades and decades of governments saying to us, “We know what’s best for you.” But the fact is that when it comes to Aboriginal well being, the only people to listen to are Aboriginal people and we’ve never been put in the position. We’ve been raising our voices for a long time now, but some people see that as a threat and are not prepared to listen. An honest reckoning of the reality of Cook and what came after won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a starting point, from which we can join hands and walk together toward a shared future. A balanced understanding of the past will help us build a future – it is of critical importance. New to podcasts? Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here. Additional audio credits Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks. Marimba On the Loose by Daniel Birch, from Free Music Archive. Podcast episode recorded and edited by Sunanda Creagh. Lead image Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, a film by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage.

Published Dec 21, 2018 VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Chris Hogan - Good day world, Chris Hogan coming to you from Burleigh Heads here on the Gold Coast and I'm here with a special guest today Ben Southall, who you may know as the Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, won that competition. Was it The Best Job in the World in 2009? Ben Southall - Yeah, nearly 10 years ago now, so that was I suppose my introduction to Australia. That was back in the days when Tourism Queensland were trying to market the Great Barrier Reef to the world and I'd just gone around Africa in a Land Rover and run a website and a blog and that was the criteria they needed to do that job and 34,000 people later, I was the winner. Easy isn't it? Chris Hogan - So, hopefully you're not best known for that anymore because you've got some cool stuff coming up and you've been doing some really cool stuff ever since. So, bensouthall.com is pretty much the old placeholder for the old biography I guess in the life before now and now you have bestlifeadventures.com which is about to go live, probably go live by the time we actually launch this. Ben Southall - I've fingers crossed if it goes and be up by the end of the week, that's the plan. Chris Hogan - So, what is Best Life Adventures? Ben Southall - Okay, so I suppose the whole Best branding started nine years ago with The Best Job in the World and ever since then, we've tried to sort of encapsulate my passion for travel and adventure, sharing physical challenges in the great outdoors with, what started as a local audience, has become an international audience now. It started off at first, I suppose, a spawn of Best Life in the World was the Best Expedition in the World, which was for me getting in a kayak for four months retracing Captain Cook's route all the way up the east coast of Australia through the Great Barrier Reef all the way to Cooktown, that was a project for Tourism Queensland, so that was The Best Expedition in the World. And then in 2015 my wife Sophie and we drove from Singapore all the way back to London in my old Land Rover. That took a year, and we called that The Best Life in the World. And that was to go and find people on that journey who had smiles on their faces every single day, love what they did whether they were a taxi driver or a CEO of a company, what are the criterias in life that give people a smile on their face and make them want to get out of bed in the morning? That was The Best Life in the World. And we have these lovely theories about what it is. Whether it's family or friends or money or the best job. Whatever it is, what are those things that give people that recipe for life. And a lot of it will revolved around interaction with family and doing great things in the great outdoors. So every time I've come back from one of my various adventures, there always is at least one, maybe 10, maybe 50 people that say. I would love to go and do an adventure like that. What do I have to do to go and do it? So I knew there was this gap in the market. There was a niche there were people, they've got cash, they're time poor, they wanna go on these adventures. So why don't I start curating them, making it from scratch, making them left of centre for anything you're gonna get from a standard travel brochure and do the extremes of life and the extremes of the world because people like entrepreneurs are adventurous in their mindset, they love what they do, they love challenges, they love innovation. So I can find innovation in the adventure space, package it up, market it and take people out there, small bespoke groups of people, there's a gap in the market that means there's business opportunities there. And hence, Best Life Adventures was born. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, so one of the common things I see run through all of your adventures is building resilience. Ben Southall - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Why is that so important and how does it transcend from going on a holiday or an adventure back into business? Does it actually, is there a crossover? Ben Southall - Well yeah, I mean we deal with a range of clients now. We deal with government clients, we deal with corporate clients, we deal with private groups and all of them, all the people that come on these seem to be people that want to achieve the most that they can out of life. They wanna prove to themselves that they can do the best that they can in their personal life and their business life and they can go out there and suck as much as they can out of this short limited time that we get on planet earth. They're people that wanna get up and do things. They're not people that lay in bed until 11 o'clock in the morning on the weekend, they're up at sunrise, they utilising their day. They're making the most out of it. They're building great friendships. And that sort of reflects from the personal development into the business world because what we're finding and I believe this is the truth is that the people that really wanna achieve lots in their personal life are the ones that are gonna achieve a lot in their business life. So, the world of adventure and entrepreneurship I think are very closely entwined in the fact that adventurous people love to get out there and do things and entrepreneurs love to get out there and do things. We started off Best Life Adventures really with the Advance Queensland Initiative of the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur. So Mark Savey and I, good friends, sat down and talked about the idea of going and proving to yourself that you can achieve something with a physical adventure in the great outdoors, makes you realise that you're able to take on these hurdles that you think you're gonna struggle to clear but by the time you've gone out there and given it a go and you've cleared that hurdle and you've realised, I didn't think I could run a half marathon and you sit down at the end of the half marathon and go, wow, I'm a lot better that I thought I was, maybe I'll do a marathon. And you set your goals and you move those benchmarks and you keep going further and further and further. And so the idea of resilience is if you can develop a strong mindset as an individual, based in the great outdoors where you've got no distractions from mobile phones and you can take people's laptops away and you can stop notifications. If you can focus on being in the moment and concentrate on achieving something for yourself, you can translate that back into your business life. When you get home and realise, okay, we've got tough times coming up as a business. I know that I can go through the shit and come through the other side and be better off for it. And that's why The Best Life Adventures' theme is all about building resilient individuals in the great outdoors to make them better people in life and ultimately better business people. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, is it just through their experiences and I guess, those tough times that people learn through these adventures or is it actually a bit of a classroom scenario? What's going on on these adventures? I mean, I've read Aaron Birkby's blog from the Everest Base Camp Trek. Ben Southall - He went through the ringer. He really did go through the ringer. Chris Hogan - He totally did. He kind of scared the pants off me a little bit. Ben Southall - And off himself quite literally. if you read the blog. Chris Hogan - Yeah great blog, actually we'll link to it in our comments but is there a classroom scenario? Is there time to sit down and share with other entrepreneurs? Ben Southall - Absolutely. Chris Hogan - Do people just dump on each other, you know? Ben Southall - It's different horses for different courses, it really is because we are running a very different catalogue of experiences, really. If you're on a private group and you wanna go and trek to every space camp that's all about the experience of meeting new people. Walking through a tough challenging environment, seeing some beautiful landscapes. But at the end of the day, at the end of what could be a six to eight hour trek for a day, sitting down and having those conversations with people. So that's the sort of private group side. The idea of the government programme, the adventure programme that we do through the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur is very much about building community. It's about not just building the resilience of the individual, but about building the resilience of the Queensland Startup Community because better connected people have better opportunities and can problem-solve a lot easier. If I know that 11 o'clock at night on a Friday, I'm trying to punch through to a deadline and I'm thinking, how the hell do I get 3D printing done to get this product off the line by Monday? Oh my God, I remember Chris, I was sitting with him by a campfire in Tasmania, we had that conversation, I now feel comfortable enough to pickup the phone, call Chris and ask for some advice on it. So, for the government programmes, some of the best parts that we have, we don't push people to 110% of their physical abilities during these programmes, we push them 99%, but we leave space that in the evenings, the campfire conversations that people have are the biggest benefits to the individuals and the community as a whole. Those open networks that are formed through using adventure as an engine and as a medium for breaking down I suppose the barriers that sometimes normal networking events might have. You know, you stand there with your glass of beer and you say hi, what do you do, and what's your business all about, what do you study? It's very shallow, single dimension. If you put someone through a physical adventure as part of a group, so and so, maybe Cody will pull John up the hill cause he's really struggling that day. Or John will turn around the next day and say, okay Cody, I saw you had some emotional issues but can I help you through this? The community that is built up through this programme is so much deeper and longer lasting than anything that I've seen in terms of networking. I think there needs to be a study in what is an effective networking tool. And I will put my hand up to say that shared adventures are one of the best ways of really connecting on a much deeper level than I've certainly ever seen before. I think that's what we're really trying to do. We've built up out of the back of the venturer programmes that we've done, we've done four now. We've done the Whit Sundays, we've done Tasmania, New Zealand, we went up to the far north Queensland to Wujal Wujal and we're off to another one in the end of March in Mongolia. The people that have been through this programme all are natural members to come into the society of extraordinary adventurers. So what that does is that open up other events that we go and do, so we might do walks up in Springbrook National Park, we might do a sunrise sup down at Burleigh, we might go and do an evening drink session up in Fortitude Valley. What it does is it opens up that group of 20 people that came on one trip to this whole cohort of 80 to 100 people now that we've built up through the Venturer programme. The longer it goes, the more IP allows you to develop because you're building up that network of friends who down the line, are gonna be not just your buddies and the people that you've gone through the mud and shit with but ones that are gonna help you in your business. That's my theory. Chris Hogan - Sensational, the mission to Mongolia, Mission Five to Mongolia looks absolutely sensational. I've watched all of the shows on Genghis Khan and all that sort of stuff and I've always dreamed about a trip to Mongolia. Is that it's ideal for, people like me who dreamed about that or should people that are dreaming about sitting on a beach at the end of the business year in Fiji to really relax and wash out all the year that's been, are they suited to the Mongolian trip? Ben Southall - Mongolia is a real buzz word at the moment. I think there is a lot of interest in the slightly left of centre destinations. And I think there's an air of mystery to Mongolia. It's sort of that far off land that we know is covered in snow for a lot of the year. We don't really know much about it because not many people go there. To go to somewhere as remote as Mongolia for Venturer programme is a bit of a step outside of my comfort zone as well. I think it's not just about challenging ourselves physically on these, it's about challenging ourselves emotionally and culturally and this trip yes, there will be a physical element to it, not nearly as much as we've done in the some of previous programmes because we're gonna be challenging people culturally. We're gonna be living on the Mongolian Steppe which is at the end of the Mongolian winter. It's gonna be five degrees probably in the daytime. We're gonna be rugged up in reindeer coats. We're gonna have thick winter boots on. We're gonna be moving with the Nomadic herders who herd these vast flocks of reindeers, I don't know what a collective term for reindeers are but it's called a flock for now. Chris Hogan - Probably just a herd. Ben Southall - A herd of reindeer. So we're gonna be moving with the Nomadic herders as they move from their winter pastureland to their spring pasturelands. We are gonna be learning from the eagle hunters out there that use eagles obviously for sourcing their food. We're gonna go and find a local mountain that's at least 2000 metres above sea level so much higher than kosciuszko will be or is. So there's a physical element, cultural element. And ultimately, because we're taking people who've been involved in the Queensland Startup Community from not just in Australia this time, but from overseas. The opportunities it will offer to people from the Queensland Startup Community to network with other people who've successfully migrated their business to say San Francisco, or to London. Those people are gonna come, we've got a really good cohort that we're working with from our own Birkby Startup catalyst. We're recruiting from over there overseas to bring some more people back, we're all on foreign land. We've all gone somewhere slightly different. We all don't have the ability to just call up our friends in the evening because we'll be disconnected. So to have that cohort learn from each other, from an international community is one of the biggest sell cards that we've got for this. We've got adventure capitalists coming, we've got Leanne Kemp, Queensland's Chief Entrepreneur for this year coming along as well. We've got three or four female founders and it's always been a tough gap to fill. The female founders, sort of age 25 to 35, quite often they're looking after families, so we try to really recruit a lot more from that area now to try and get a level playing field of people. We've got people coming from corporate backgrounds. We'll have two or three coming from university scholarship winners that really have got that injection of life and that youth element to them. So we're trying to build this complete circle of the Queensland Startup Community so that people can learn from each other. And cherry pick who they sit down with that night for a campfire conversation, who they decided to go and do the eagle hunting with. So it's gonna be a really interesting group with between 15 and 20 people. We're gonna have seven days, eight nights out there in the Mongolian Steppe and it's just gonna be an absolutely whack sensation. Chris Hogan - It certainly would, I would love to do that Venturer programme for sure. Bit of a toss up between Everest and that one because they're a month after another. Ben Southall - Yeah they're a month apart, so we now do sets of every space camp trips every year. The next one that comes up over the Easter window, so the seventh to to 21st of April. Yeah, for me it's a bit of time out of the country at that time of year but that's when you've got that wonderful transition in the Northern Hemisphere from winter coming to spring and that's when you really find the people on the ground, this is what we're gonna learn a lot as well, resilience is not just about what we get as a group of people involved in the startup community. For those Mongolian herders to go through the toughest times of harsh Arctic winters and to come through and see spring on the other side, it's that sort of corelation between tough times in business. and when all of a sudden every tree is in fruit, every flower is coming out and the good times are there. I think we're gonna learn a lot from the Mongolian herders when we take people there. And the same with the Everest Base Camp Trek, going there in April, in the tail end of the winter, all of the trees are coming out into flower, everything is looking good, it's getting healthy. It's a lovely time of year to be in high altitude Himalayas just as it is in the Mongolian winter on the Steppe. That's gonna be great. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, we, me media are huge supporters of mental health and sharing I guess experiences and even our own stories around mental health challenges and how maybe we've overcome them. So LIVIN is the charity we choose to support and I wear it openly on my sleeve. Mental health, resilience, they go hand in hand, right? Ben Southall - Yeah, I think the mental health thing, especially the great outdoors, I think that's one of the things these days. And I think I've been guilty of it. The Best Job in the World was all about telling your story via social media and that was the early days. There was no Instagram when Best Job in the World days. It was very much just the early days of YouTube, Facebook was there, Twitter was there. I think the further it's gone social media wise now, I'm starting to back off it more so, just because I'm seeing that it is almost more detrimental. For me, I use it as a marketing tool for my business. But in terms of constantly storytelling, constantly looking at how many likes you've got or constantly having to get that feedback, it is a mental health issue and it's gonna be a stronger and stronger one in the future as people look to stylize themselves based on what other people are thinking online. I think that's definitely detrimental to people's long term health. Using the great outdoors as that disconnection time is our best time to realise who we are as people to build up those real friendships. I'm sitting here looking at you in the eye. I'm gonna shake your hand physically. To be able to help that person up a hill. That sort of thing, that real human interaction is something that is slowly but surely drifting out of our lives as we use up more screen time as we sit there and we double tap on our images to like them. That to me, yes I still have to use it for marketing but I think the more we can back away from that in the future, and the more we can reconnect with our planet and people out there in the great outdoors, the better that is for mental health around the world. Chris Hogan - Absolutely, I'm 100% on the same page. I use it for marketing, I don't use it a hell of a lot for myself, in fact, sometimes I find myself in the scroll and it tends to last about five days for me. A whole week I'll realise that this isn't healthy. I'm spiralling, ya know? Ben Southall - It's very easy to do, it's such a simple, it's almost this scheduled thing of what is the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up? I rollover, I put my phone in my hand and I check what's happened in the time that I've been offline overnight. And that's a really bad habit to be and I've really considering now, putting my phone downstairs in the kitchen and physically walking down to it in the morning as one of the last jobs that I do in the morning. I'll get up, I'll have my run, I'll go for a shower and then maybe I'll come back onto my phone an hour later. Let's see if I can make it stick. Chris Hogan - Well, I kind of do that already, but it's for kids though, right? I think it's super important to teach them the importance of understanding the emotion behind what people say on social media. Why are they choosing to say that there? That they're really stuck in their own mind and actually, it's almost like verbal diarrhoea through thumbs. Not getting no emotional feedback from anybody else on what they're saying so they can say whatever they like and they can be as mean or as nice as they like. And then they hit send. Ben Southall - It's gone and you caused the problems. Chris Hogan - And causes all these issues, right? Ben Southall - So, this is one of the sort of things I used to talk about. When, in the early days of Best Job in the World, it used to be very easy for somebody to come on your blog and leave a comment. And it was a throwaway comment. They could write it in 30 seconds, like you say, and press send and it was done. If you rewind, now I'm gonna prove my age here, if you rewind to the days when there used to be a comments page in a newspaper, if somebody really wanted to have a negative comment they would sit down with a notepad. They would handwrite a letter, they'd put it in an envelope and they'd post it off to the editor of the newspaper and it might be printed a day later. So that was early feedback, that was your comment. So you would actually stylize a letter and you'd think about what you were saying. You'd probably have a rewind, delete, go back again. Whereas now it is so instantaneous. Being able to press send, that unfortunately, everybody and it's usually the worst of the worst will put their message out there, press send. And alienate or give somebody an issue or knock somebody's ego and it's not a great way. Bullying, online bullying is a really problematic thing these days. And with my 18 month old son, I really am trying as hard as I can not to constantly put photos up and publicise it, I don't want him to live life in front of a camera like I had to do for five years. Chris Hogan - It's funny that we got onto this topic. The love and hate relationship with social media and how it affects mental health. I think we're not alone here, there seems to be a lot of people going through the same thing. What I love, I love the reference to the campfire entertainment. Campfire entertainment, there should be more of it. Ben Southall - Yeah. Chris Hogan - If you've got the opportunity to light a fire in your own backyard, I encourage you and all your family to go and enjoy that as many nights of the week as you can. Ben Southall - We did this on Saturday night, exactly that. We had the fire-pit going, we had friends down at our place on Saturday night and we sat around and chewed the fat and it was just wonderful being able to be out there, hear the sounds of nature, looking up and just about see the stars on Saturday night. But it just was a really grounding experience and I think I then felt on Sunday morning like I was more connected to the people I'd sat there with than I would have been if we'd just gone down to the pub or sat on the beach and watched the sunset. We were there, we were immersed in the moment. No one had their phones and you were forced in a good way to be there with your best mates. Chris Hogan - Yup, so if you can't do that, light a candle. Light some candles, turn the lights down. Ben Southall - Or like we did on venturer one, cause it was fire ban on the wet Sunday, everybody got their head torches, and there was one that had a red head torch we put them in the centre and everybody stood around for three hours around a red head torch thinking it was the embers of a fire. And it still worked. Chris Hogan - Beautiful, where do I go from here, you know? I'm on board, I wanna go and do one of these. If I can't do this one, if I can't do that one then I'll plan for the one after. You're running multiples. I know you wanna get tickets sold. I want you to get tickets sold because to be honest, the more people that have mental health clarity around life that are in my community, the better my community is gonna become, so it's absolutely selfish. Ben Southall - I think as entrepreneurs, we struggle with that a lot because we are so focused and fixed and so driven as individuals that we want to make something work at all costs. And that could be we apply ourselves so much in our business that we don't leave time for friends and family and just us and making time and I think Aaron Birkby's Peak Persona Programme is a really good one on that where you take stock of where you are, you look at the things you do in a day and you assess who you are as an individual. You put those building blocks in Place to better prepare your mind, to line your life with the things that are important to you, to take time out. The venture programme is very much about that. That's what we've tried to build. The first one started off as just an adventure. We didn't really do much in the way of mindset coaching or workshopping, and as we've gone on and developed this we realised there is more and more value to be taken from sowing seeds of conversation with people and letting the conversation flow naturally. We're not there as a therapy session. We're not trying to go out there and be a, ya know. Chris Hogan - I like the sowing the seed, though. Ben Southall - It's just literally drop a question in the start of the night, have three or four that you'll populate the night with. Then everybody just takes the conversation from there. And there's no alcohol involved, apart from the last night cause you gotta have a sendoff. So it's just those good natural conversations that just flow and as we've gone from Venture one now through to delivering Venture five, I know that we're gonna have a really good one with this one because actually bringing a group called the Nomadic School of business in to help us with all of this. So, they basically correlate the relationship that the Nomadic herders have with their pastureland and you with your business. So look at the Nomadic herders over the course of 12 months. What are the threats that attack them over the course of 12 months. It could be a lack of pasture ground. It could be wolves, it could be extreme temperatures. They're the threats that they struggle from every day much like in business, you're struggling with your staffing. You're looking cause there's more competition coming around. How do you deal with those threats? Aligning those two mindsets and learning from the Nomadic herders as they will learn from us as business people, is that really interesting journey that we're gonna take people on through Mongolia. So it's gonna be five days on the Mongolian Steppe, five days worth of mindset coaching, of head space engineering so that everybody comes back having had a great adventure, yes. Having gone to a new country for culture experience, yes. But connected better to your community and maybe just a little bit more streamlined in your thought process of what you are as a business, where you want to go as an individual and how the next 12 months are gonna pan out. Chris Hogan - Fantastic Ben Southall - Is that sold? We're done. So, bestlifeadventures.com is the website that will be up by the end of the week. There will be an apply now box in there. If not, if you wanna apply for the Venturer programme, the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur website has got great links in there. Or me, benbestlifeadventures.com is the best place for, we're cycling the world's highest road next year. We're motorbiking the world's highest road next year. We're going to Everest Base Camp twice. We're going to Mongolia for the Venturer programme. There's a whole load of new stuff rolling out. I would love people to get on the Best Life Adventures Facebook page, like the page and we will put some great content out for you. Chris Hogan - Fantastic, thank you so much Ben. Ben Southall, bestlifeadventures.com bensouthall.com if you like. That's it for episode 106 here at me media. You can see that the content is changing, why not? If there's a message, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's factual, we're gonna share it. Keep watching, you can see all the episodes on memedia.com.au, cheers. Ben Southall - Nice one, mate.  

Black Mountain is located in Kalkajaka National Park, just south of Cooktown. Mysterious disappearances have plagued the mountain for over a century, and there’s no shortage of strange sightings in the area. Aliens? Lizard people? Plain old ghosts?

Coral reef flats are famous for being home to a massive number of different lure crunching species. From various coral trouts to reef jacks, GT's, wrasse, emperor and many, many more..... this style of fishing is rarely boring! Mackay fishing personality Andrew Susani is a regular on the Cookwotn coral flats scene. Those who follow his exploits are mesmerised by albums of photos of large and colourful fish, many taken on his hand made lures. In this episodes of the Australian Lure Fishing podcast Andrew explains the secrets to successfully fishing these amazing coral flats. From tackle to technique he goes through what you need to know to get the best from your own coral flats expeditions. Be sure and download Andrews show notes at https://doclures.com/cooktown-coral-flats-andrew-susani/

In this episode you’ll hear from Tiffany - a nurse at Boongarry Veterinary Services in Cairns. She works with the legendary Dr Annabelle Olsson a consulting vet for wildlife, zoos, and the various government agencies that manage endangered animals. As well as being a busy general practice Boongarry also treats thousands of wildlife cases a year, pro bono.Wildlife cases in Far North QLD are different to wildlife anywhere in Australia. The wet tropics region (which is two million hectares between Townsville in the south and Cooktown in the north) is just 0.26% of Australia’s landmass but the highest combined biodiversity of plants and animals in the country. We’re so lucky to have this amazing variety of animals up here, many of which are rare or threatened and found literally nowhere else on the planet.Tiffany does some crazy exciting nursing at Boongarry Vet which is purpose built to treat a huge variety of patients including big crocs – how big? Up to 4.5m. Yep, it takes a pretty unique skill set to be a vet nurse in a practice like this. Tiffany started working at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures when she was 14. She’s been looking after wildlife since she was 10, and caring for macropods for 17 years. It’s easy to be impressed by Tiffany, not just as a vet nurse. She recently bought her own house, which as a young, single mum on a vet nurse wage is something to be really proud of. I’m proud of her for sure, and the part of our story that she represents.

Highlights Include:The Orange Debate, Cooktown adventures, Facebook Updates, Nick With Corey Oates and Ashes Cookies. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Vexed. The Far North QLD town of Cooktown raised, Cairns based hip hop artist, Vexed, chats to Andrew about his new EP for 2017, A Fact of Life. 

Cassie Cohen & Jackson Bursill are running from Cooktown to Melbourne. 4000kms in 100 days. I happen to be in Wangaratta the same day they were and we caught up for a chat. They are doing some amazing things and just being in their presence for an hour was amazing. They shared some ripping tales and I know you'll enjoy this latest ep of TMYT. For more information on TMYT Podcast hit www.bradythrelfall.com Opening and Closing Music is by Benny Walker. Track: Ghost. More information on Benny Walker's music can be found at: www.bennywalkermusic.com or Facebook. www.facebook.com/bennywalker

Cooktown RC Daryl Paradise speaks to Andrew Kuuse re annual Race day

Imagine a rainforest critter, a huge flowing beard, a storytelling wizard who commands the attention of walkers by…… surely he was a candidate for the Renegade Economists? This was Australian swagman culture in living form, those living on the land, enjoying the commons and a (somewhat) free life. Well here is Pirate Rick, a living legend up here in Tropical North Queensland, living the Byron to Cooktown coastline. He was part of the 70s awakening at the Aquarius Festival (Nimbi) which led to the establishment of Tuntable Falls. Pirate Rick was a frontiersman who then travelled north with many others to enact life as a custodian of our precious rainforests. Show notes - www.earthsharing.org.au

Sonja Dechian's, 'An Astronauts's Life' is a short story collection exploring social issues and different realities.Cooktown has had an interesting history and is the setting of Di Morrissey's 'Rain Music', telling about a musician who will not find his music until he deals with his past.

In June of 1770, the British vessel HMS Endeavour was sailing along the far north Queensland coast. Captain James Cook and his crew had travelled far since leaving England in August 1768. Their luck was not with them this day and the Endeavour struck a […] The post THE JAMES COOK LANDING RE-ENACTMENT 2013 – COOKTOWN FNQ appeared first on Richard Dinnen.

Cooktown is one of my favourite far north Queensland towns. It sits on the banks of the Endeavour River, about a four hour drive from Cairns on the now sealed-all-the-way Mulligan Highway. The town began as a port for the Palmer River gold rush in […] The post IF THE DEAD COULD SPEAK – COOKTOWN CEMETERY REVEALS FNQ HISTORY appeared first on Richard Dinnen.

In 1951 Russell Drysdale spent a number of months travelling throughout northern Queensland and the Cape York Peninsula. In response to this trip he painted Boy running, Cooktown. This painting combines a number of characteristic Drysdale motifs: a long street leading to a vanishing point on the horizon, a building with veranda in profile and a dramatic sky balanced by a vast foreground. There is an inherent drama in this image of a young Indigenous boy running across the street, his action rupturing the stillness of the picture. Drysdale depicts the boy in dynamic movement, yet he seems suspended in time and space. His activity in the isolated street begs the question: where is he running? In his paintings of Australia’s remote towns and settlements Drysdale conveyed a sense of life lived in connection with the land. He explored the spatial, environmental and personal elements that contribute to our experience of place. As in so many of Australia’s remote country towns, the main street in this painting includes the iconic structure of a war memorial. In contrast to the youthful potential of the boy, the memorial is a reminder of history and the loss of many young Australians in wartime.