After “Mr Bridge” is caught red-handed with the $1m Woolworths ransom, the suspect tells Task Force detectives he’s only a courier hired for the job. The mastermind’s name? Benny. From that moment on, Sydney’s police, press and public are all on high alert for this flashy character, who has threatened four more store bombings and for whose capture Woolies is offering a $250,000 reward.

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As 1980 ends and the New Year begins, Woolworths and the NSW police wage a war of nerves with Mr Dunmore over arrangements for the $1m ransom handover. While the extortionist bomber has a cunning plan to get away with the loot, the Task Force’s massive undercover Operation Alpha has set an elaborate trap that’ll end in a showdown on Sydney Harbour.

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After the Christmas Eve bombing of Woolworths' flagship Sydney store, the company awaits contact from the extortionist calling himself Mr Dunmore. Meanwhile, Woolies receives dozens more threats, a beer carton bomb is found in a store and a sensational leak splashes the terrorist’s secret $1m ransom demand all over the media. But what crime reporters don't know is that undercover detectives are already on the trail of man fitting the description of a Woolworths suspect — a man just released after a long prison sentence for Sydney gelignite bombings…

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On Christmas Eve 1980, young constable Allan Duncan responded to the Woolies Town Hall bomb threat and would be inside the building when the device detonated.

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On Christmas Eve 1980, the Woolworths’ head office in Sydney gets a phone call from the man already responsible for two regional store bombings in the past week. An explosive device has been placed in the flagship variety store opposite Town Hall. It's going to detonate in 10 minutes. What follows is like something out of a Hollywood movie. But with its Holden utes and safari suits, beer carton bombs and pub rock gigs, this true-blue true-crime yarn could only have come from Australia.

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On Christmas Eve 1859, Margaret Douglas and Beverley Howard started their epic 1500-mile walking match in Melbourne — which the city’s newspapers did their very best to ignore. Despite such hostility at home, our first sporting heroine would be appreciated by English reporters when she performed her walking feats in London and Liverpool. In this episode we also trace Margaret’s likely identity — and learn how she inspired a rival in Emma Sharp (pictured), who in turn nearly 150 years later inspired a distant relative to undertake a stirring long-distance charity walk in Canberra.

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Melbourne’s Margaret Douglas was an endurance pedestrian every bit as remarkable as her Sydney contemporary The Flying Pieman. After stumbling upon a passing reference to her in an 1878 newspaper, I took a deep dive to shine a light on her completely forgotten achievements and examine how she was deliberately excluded from many newspapers of the time and then from a seminal history book that provided a chronology of pedestrianism. In part one we look at the colourful history of women who walked long distances in England and America, the abundance of coverage given to a man who walked 1000 miles in 1000 hours in Melbourne in 1858 and how Victoria's newspapers treated Margaret’s attempts to conquer the same challenge in the city six months later.

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Having made his dazzling pedestrian comeback, The Flying Pieman takes another tilt at politics in typical comedic fashion before jolting the Sydney establishment with one last audacious stunt. Feeling his mortality as he enters old age, William Francis King makes a public pledge of love — only for heartbreak to follow.

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In September 1847, after crashing out during the challenge to walk 192 miles in 48 hours non-stop, The Flying Pieman takes a second tilt at this epic feat of pedestrianism. But he won’t stop there because he has much bigger dreams that include walking 250 miles in 250 hours, spilling his soul in lectures on social issues and finding a damsel he can call Mrs Pieman.

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In the 1840s Australia was amazed by the epic pedestrian feats of William Francis King, who was known far and wide as The Flying Pieman. Our first sporting hero, this eccentric celebrity was every bit as famous for his non-stop talking as for his non-stop walking. In this episode we delve into his incredible accomplishments, the larrikin streak that saw him lampoon colonial politics and the tragedies that turned his life into legend. We begin with The Flying Pieman taking on his greatest challenge — walking 192 miles in 48 hours… without stopping for a moment.

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