Backyard Battlefields

In 1925 during a charity ball at Perth's Government House, in front of hundreded of witnesses, Cyril Gidley was shot in the chest at point blank range and killed. The assailant was his 20 year old former fiance Audrey Jacob. It was one of the more dramatic trials which took place at Perth's Old Courthouse. What appeared to be an open and shut case became a legal and media sensation.

The Old Perth Courthouse is the city's oldest surviving building. It was built in 1836 to assert the supremacy of British law in the Swan River Colony and soon became integral to legal and civic life. It was designed in a classical 19th century Greek revival style and is one of two remaining examples of the work of Colonial Engineer Henry Revelly. It was also the scene of the infamous 1925 'Murder on the Dancefloor' trial of Audrey Jacob.

In 2016 two Russian MI-24 attack helicopters were buried at the Darwin tip. The story of how they came to be there is a tale involving spies, diplomats, mutineers and mercenaries in a scandal that came to be known as 'The Sandline Affair'.

Built in 1870 in a Victorian Gothic and French Second Empire Architectural style the Perth Town Hall was designed by Architect Richard Roach Jewell and James Manning. It is the only Town Hall in Australia built primarily by convict labour.

On the 10th of June 1940 Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on Great Britain and France. That day the Italian Motorship 'Remo' was in the Western Australian port of Fremantle. It was loaded with cargo and carrying 229 passengers. It was siezed by Australian authorities as a 'Prize of War' and drafted into service.

In 1932 the Australian Army was deployed with machine guns to 'fight' thousands of Emus (large flightless birds indigenous to Australia) destroying crops in the Western Australian wheatbelt town of Campion. The operation became known as 'The Emu War'.

St Albans Church in the Perth suburb of Highgate was named for the first British Christian Martyr, Saint Alban. Built in 1889 in a Romanesque style, it was an early design of soldier Architect Lt. General Joseph John Talbot Hobbs.

On the 17th of August 1832 a duel was fought on the shores of the Swan River in the newly established colony of Western Australia. The combatants were two prominent citizens, 28 year old Solicitor William Naire Clark and former Naval officer and merchant George French Johnson.

The Baudin Expedition 1800 - 1803 was a French Scientific journey to chart the coast of 'New Holland' (Australia) It was approved by Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul of France and began with two warships Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste. The expedition charted large parts of the Australian continent and 'discovered' more than 2000 animal and plant species unknown to European science.

Perth's 'Barracks Arch' is all that remains of the 'Pensioner Barracks'. It was a Tudor style bulding designed by colonial architect Richard Roach Jewell in 1863. It is located at the Western end of St Georges Terrace, Perth and once housed the members and families of the 'Pensioner Guards'. These were ex-soldiers who served as guards on convict ships en-route to Australia and were given employment and land on arrival to continue in this militia role. The building was demolished in the 1960s to make way for Perths Mitchell Freeway.