Posts relating to Dr David Murray’s Coal River True Crime Series of Creative Non-Fiction.
CASE 15: A CIVILISED ENDING In front of a low hanging, blood-orange sunset the shadow-puppets of two convicts dragged a decomposed body from its grave onto a canvas sheet. Convicts and soldiers watched silently under the shade front of nearby huts. The scene transpired at a compound marking one boundary of the riverside township of … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: A CIVILISED ENDING
CASE 14: WHEN I GET BACK TO PORT PIRIE Thomas Batterham cursed the growling stray dog circling his sulky and nipping at his horse’s heels. The dog had been attacking cyclists and startling horses for weeks around the Lookout on the new Cardiff-New Lambton Road. It was around 3:30 pm and Batterham was hurrying to … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: WHEN I GET BACK TO PORT PIRIE
Coal River True Crimes – By David Murray Special thanks to author David Murray and Dark Stories for providing the following podcasts. This is a short introductory episode to fill you in on what this podcast is and what our podcasting format will be going forward. LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE Coal River True Crime – LISTEN … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME PODCASTS
CASE 13: LET’S SPEND A LIFE TOGETHER Podcast Available Here – Let’s Spend a Life Together (28:21) Dark Stories True Crimes CARDS In February of 1925 George Gershwin’s jazz experiment Rhapsody in Blue performed to mixed reviews in New York City. Across the Pacific in the small city of Newcastle, 19-year-old Mona May Mary Beacher met … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: LET’S SPEND A LIFE TOGETHER
Podcast Available Here- Not a Reserved Girl (19:15) – Dark Stories True Crimes CARDS CASE 12: NOT A RESERVED GIRL We are born into this world without a map. Each new life is a relative soup of random possibility drawn together from family, animal intellect, health and adaptability. If fate is brutally unsympathetic dealing … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: NOT A RESERVED GIRL
CASE 11: PATRICK COLLINS AND DENNIS DONOVAN PART ONE: MOTHER MATHERS CREEK The Hawkesbury’s final bay is a quintessence of white beaches and small islands whose water sparkles even on cloudy days. Upstream this turns from ultramarine blue to the colour of weak tea, but still clear to the bottom. The banks become thick with … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: PATRICK COLLINS AND DENNIS DONOVAN
CASE 10: FIVE OF A KIND The barque Swanhilda elbowed through a crowded Newcastle harbour in the wake of two muscular, iron hulled steamers transporting chancers to the gold rush towns of West Australia. Taking in the midmorning breeze on deck was master mariner Captain Lee Weller, who had hurriedly signed on as general crew … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: FIVE OF A KIND
Podcast Available Here- Johnny’s Gone Mad Again (28:28) – Dark Stories True Crimes CARDS CASE 9: JOHNNY’S GONE MAD AGAIN By the late 1800s, Newcastle was trading with San Francisco, South America and Europe and the port’s internationalism made it a volatile, if predictable, crime locus for drunken fighting, standover gangs, escaping convicts, prostitution and … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: JOHNNY’S GONE MAD AGAIN
Podcast Available Here- Unholy Love (33:50) – Dark Stories True Crimes CASE 8: UNHOLY LOVE A day’s walk southwest from the river town of Morpeth brought colonisers to the modest valley of Mulberry Creek, where the red-moon faced John Thornton moved with his wife Mary Baker in 1842 to work on a small farm lease … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: UNHOLY LOVE
Podcast Available Here- When I Finally Sleep Tonight (28:26) – Dark Stories True Crimes CASE 7: When I finally sleep tonight Just a few train-miles from the port of Newcastle, The Borehole village grew up around two profitable mine shafts in the 1850s. Its patchwork of hut-hugging streets, small factories and a gas works … More COAL RIVER TRUE CRIME: WHEN I FINALLY SLEEP TONIGHT