That's Australia Season 1, Episode 22: Small Island Big History

1

Biggest Banana

One of the most important days of year for Tweed Valley Banana growers is Murwillumbah's King Banana competition. After the weigh in and judging the King Banana Proclamation is read out aloud and the winners including the Queen Banana are announced.

6 min

2

A Ringers Life

Boys as young as 15 and 16 leave home to become ringers out on the backblocks of stations like Mulla Bulla in the Kimberley. It's a tough life. Getting up at 3am and in bed on dusk. They spend all day in the saddle and get a feed of beef before going to bed under the stars.

6 min

3

Designer Bride

In an upmarket bridal salon in Melbourne all the gowns are designed and made in-house. 24-year-old Antoinette is the designer. We see her drawing sketches, the gowns being made and a fashion shoot of the finished product.

6 min

4

Wild West Frontier

As the only town in Australia to be exempt from the white Australia Policy, only male workers were allowed in. Broome has an exotic and colorful history. Riots, opium dens, grog and debauchery were the flavor of the day.

6 min

5

Rodeo Riders

Colin Fuller and Maxie Holt are True Aboriginal men of the Kimberley and live for that 8 seconds of fame on the back of a bull and have the scares to prove it.

6 min

6

Fastest Shearer

Hamilton is the wool capital of Victoria and hosts national sheep shearing competitions. Here we see some top local talent go head to head with Kiwi guns. Fast and furious shearing action and the crown goes wild.

6 min

7

Stone Shed

The Tohl family run a sheep station in the south west of Western Australia. While the kids are off to school inventor dad tries out his latest machine, a rock driller.

6 min

8

Mountain Men

In the Hills overlooking Murwillumbah two self proclaimed hill Billies live in an old shack. They spend most of their days in a daze.

6 min

9

Singing Cowbow

Wayne Swan is a Kimberley identity. As well as being a rodeo legend he's known as the singing cowboy. For work he drives massive trucks for the Argyle diamond mine.

6 min

10

Diesel Warriors

A small band of merry men take away old cooking fat and turn it into perfectly good fuel for their diesel vehicles in a backyard shed.

6 min

11

Shaddap Already

In conversation with the singer songwriter Joe Dulce on the eve of his hit songs 25th anniversary. The song is still the biggest selling song ever to come out of Australia.

6 min

12

Memory Vault

In Broome an order of catholic nuns has established an interactive computer archive project as a means of reconciling with the descendants of the "Stolen Generations".

6 min

13

Horsing Around

The Knight family from Walcott, NSW are obsessed with rodeo and travel thousands of kilometers in their giant horse float/caravan/home to compete. The youngest daughter is keen to be a trick rider and can already stand on her horses back at a trot.

6 min

14

Doug's New Dugout

In Coober Pedy sharing an underground dugout has become positively claustrophobic. Doug decides to look for new digs and finds the best solution is to dig his own dugout

6 min

15

Les Under the Bar

In Wyndham an abattoir attracted army of meat workers. One of them was Les Anderson. When he went to the great meatworks in the sky his mates made buried him under the bar.

6 min

16

Jandamarra

Known as the Aboriginal Geronimo, Jandamarra held police at bay for years preventing pastoralists from occupying rich pastures of the Kimberley. Today he is regarded as a folk hero and stories abound of his superhuman abilities.

6 min

17

Broome Air Attack

On the 3rd of March 1942 the unsuspecting town of Broome was devastated by continued strafing attacks by the Japanese. 29-year-old pilot Gus Winkle had little idea that he would become the only person to shoot down an attacking aircraft on Australian soil.

6 min

18

Disappearing Tribe

High Cliffy Island off the Kimberley coast was once home to the Yawijibaya people. Who lived here for about 7 thousand years. But soon after a French film crew visited in 1929 the Yawijibaya people vanished sparking one of the North West's greatest mysteries.

6 min

19

The Boab Story

Boab trees sit like ancient monoliths amidst the harsh Kimberley terrain of northwest Australia. But why are they here and where did they come from?

6 min

20

Iron Island

A little known fact is that many of Brome's pearling lugers carried tons of almost pure iron ore as ballast. The source of this rich mineral deposit is a few hundred kilometers to the north of Broome in the Buccaneer Archaopaeologo at Koolan and Cockatoo Island.

6 min

21

Firts Contact

Stumpy Brown is a Wangkujanka woman who lives at Christmas Creek in the Kimberley. Stumpy has seen many changes throughout her lifetime but nothing so dramatic, when as a teenager, she saw a white man for the first time.

6 min

22

Small Island Big History

The Lacepede Islands are small atolls rising out of the sea north of Broome. They were once a rich source of guano or phosphate fertilizer but they also played a fascinating role in shaping the north west including being claimed as part of America.

6 min

23

Cyclone Ally

From Nov to April each year Australia's North West is threatened by one of nature's most destructive and unpredictable weather systems, an intense tropical cyclone. This has earnt the coast between Broome and Port Headland the nickname "Cyclone Ally".

6 min

24

Kimberley Rock

Art Amidst the remote and inhospitable landscape of the North Kimberley coast lays the distinctive style of ancient rock art known as the Bradshaw Paintings. But what do the locals have to say about these Paintings created by "foreigners".

6 min

25

Bull Buggies

Some mustering jobs need a little more horsepower than others. Deep in Kimberley cattle country we meet Station manager Louie Dolby and his unique work vehicle - the Bull Buggy.

6 min

26

Broome Shacks

At the height of Broome pearling the hundreds of shacks that lined the shores were makeshift affairs often constructed from whatever was laying around.

6 min