The Perth Mint Swindle - The Perfect Crime? In April 1982 somebody broke into a building in Perth, stole a pad of blank cheques, and burnt the place to the ground on the way out. Five weeks later they did it again.

Ten weeks after that, sixty-eight kilograms of gold walked out the front door of the Perth Mint in broad daylight.

Nobody was threatened. Nobody was hurt. Nobody raised their voice. The thief built the entire robbery out of honest strangers: a clerk, three armoured couriers, a temp on her first morning, and a bloke following instructions over a CB radio. Every one of them did their job properly. Not one of them could describe him.

Forty-four years on, the Perth Mint swindle has never been solved.

Sources:

ABC News 2008, Mickelbergs to receive $1 million ex gratia payment, 16 January, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-01-16/mickelbergs-to-receive-1-million-ex-gratia-payment/1013980

ABC News 2008, Mickelberg brothers vow to fight on, 19 January, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-01-19/mickelberg-brothers-vow-to-fight-on/1017342

ABC News 2013, Mickelberg matriarch dies of old age, 28 August, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-28/peggy-mickelberg/4917362

Mayes, A 2023, The other Perth Mint scandal: The Mickelberg brothers and the great gold swindle, ABC News, 1 April, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-01/the-other-perth-mint-scandal-of-the-mickelberg-brothers-swindle/102113790

Pallaras, S 1999, The Mickelberg Saga and the Public Purse, Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory, Seventh Biennial Conference, Kuta, Bali, 27 June to 2 July, https://clant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/the-bali-conference/1999/Pallaras-Stephen-The-Mickelberg-Saga-amp-thePublic-Purse-BampW.pdf

Perth Mint, 2025, Iconic Moments in the Perth Mint's History. https://www.perthmint.com/news/stories/history/iconic-moments-in-the-perth-mints-history

Western Australian Government 2002, New evidence on Mickelberg case referred to Police Royal Commission, media statement, 10 June, https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Gallop%20Labor%20Government/New-evidence-on-Mickelberg-case-referred-to-Police-Royal-Commission-20020610

Western Australian Government 2008, Ex-gratia payment to Ray and Peter Mickelberg, media statement, 16 January, https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Carpenter%20Labor%20Government/Ex-gratia-payment-to-Ray-and-Peter-Mickelberg-20080116

Wikipedia, Perth Mint Swindle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Mint_Swindle

The Luna Park Ghost Train Disaster - Part 2 of 2

For years the most talked about aspect of the Luna Park fire was a photograph of a six year old boy standing next to a man in a horned mask, taken hours before he died. People called it the Luna Park demon.

But the material that actually mattered was being collated for over thirty four years by the artist who painted the face over the front gate. The contents of this collection inspired an ABC documentary that brought the truth to light in 2021.

In this episode we analyse the documents, the witness testimony and the other evidence that has been unearthed to try to answer the question that has haunted a nation: What started the Luna Park Ghost Train Fire?

Exposed - The Ghost Train Fire - https://iview.abc.net.au/show/exposed-the-ghost-train-fire

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Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Anderson, K.S. (Coroner), Fire Inquiry and Inquests: Luna Park Ghost Train, Coroner's Court of New South Wales, Glebe

• Tiffen, R. and Masters, C., ABC Editorial Review 25: Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire, August 2021.

• Meldrum-Hanna, C., Begley, P., Karagic, A. and Balendra, S., "Accident or arson? The mystery of Sydney's Luna Park Ghost Train fire", ABC News, 16 March 2021.

• Meldrum-Hanna, C., Begley, P., Balendra, S., Karagic, A. and Barilla, N., "'Luckiest boy alive': Luna Park Ghost Train fire survivor breaks his silence", ABC News, 10 March 2021.

• Bramston, T., "Allegations Wran involved in Luna Park fire condemned", The Australian, April 2021.

• Muller, D., "How Ghost Train Fire exposed remarkable police corruption, yet also failed ABC's high journalistic standards", The Conversation, 2021.

• "Luna Park Ghost Train fire: Coroner asks police to review evidence", Sydney Morning Herald, April 2021.

The Luna Park Ghost Train Disaster - Part 1 of 2 On a cold Saturday night in June 1979, a rail strike had left Sydney's Luna Park almost empty. Three passengers rode past the imitation fireplace inside the Ghost Train and saw real flames in it. Every one of them assumed it was part of the ride.

But in the two and a half minutes that followed, seven people tragically lost their lives. Six of them were children. By three o'clock the next afternoon the police had announced a cause, ruled out anything suspicious and released the site. Nobody had examined the wreckage at all.

This is part one of two in which we outline the events of the night in question and the original findings of the coroner.

Exposed - The Ghost Train Fire - https://iview.abc.net.au/show/exposed-the-ghost-train-fire

Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast

Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Anderson, K.S. (Coroner), Fire Inquiry and Inquests: Luna Park Ghost Train, Coroner's Court of New South Wales, Glebe

• Tiffen, R. and Masters, C., ABC Editorial Review 25: Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire, August 2021.

• Meldrum-Hanna, C., Begley, P., Karagic, A. and Balendra, S., "Accident or arson? The mystery of Sydney's Luna Park Ghost Train fire", ABC News, 16 March 2021.

• Meldrum-Hanna, C., Begley, P., Balendra, S., Karagic, A. and Barilla, N., "'Luckiest boy alive': Luna Park Ghost Train fire survivor breaks his silence", ABC News, 10 March 2021.

• Bramston, T., "Allegations Wran involved in Luna Park fire condemned", The Australian, April 2021.

• Muller, D., "How Ghost Train Fire exposed remarkable police corruption, yet also failed ABC's high journalistic standards", The Conversation, 2021.

• "Luna Park Ghost Train fire: Coroner asks police to review evidence", Sydney Morning Herald, April 2021.

The Unsolved Murder of William Mullins

The fourth of July, 1913. Four men stand shin-deep in the Tyne River in the north-east of Tasmania, in snowmelt coming off the range, turning a prospector's dish.

The method is sixty years old in that valley. Gold came out of Black Horse Gully in the 1850s and every man standing in the water learnt the dish as a boy.

But today, they are not panning for gold. There is a bag of ash on the bank beside them, carried down from a hollow on a hillside two kilometres back, and another bag coming. A farmer named William Mullins walked out to check his possum traps a fortnight earlier and did not come home, and this is what is left to look for him with.

Six weeks later a jury of his neighbours sat in the Mathinna hall and named the man who killed him. Six weeks after that a Chief Justice in Hobart took the case off a second jury before they were allowed to consider it.

This week on Strewth, the Mathinna Mystery.

Launceston By Foot - https://www.launcestonbyfoot.com/

Sources:

• "Ellen Sneezewell: Her Life and Unfortunate Death." From On the Town - Dianne Cassidy (2020) https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55780385-on-the-town

• "The Mathinna Tragedy. Summing Up of the Coroner. Daniel Jones Found Guilty of Murder. Mrs Jones an Accessory." The Mercury (Hobart), 13 August 1913. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/10295662

• Trial report, The Mercury (Hobart), 25 September 1913. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/10300830

• Trial report, The Examiner (Launceston), 24 September 1913.

• Druce, Alex. "Mathinna murder mystery endures." The Examiner (Launceston), June 2013.

• "Tragedy in Launceston. Murder and Attempted Suicide." The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW), 9 May 1882, reprinting the Launceston Examiner. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/851532

• "Murder in Launceston." The Mercury (Hobart), 1 May 1882. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9008855

• "Execution of George Braxton at Launceston." The Mercury (Hobart), 11 July 1882. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/9026073

Wakehurst Parkway - Australia's Most Haunted Road Fourteen kilometres of unlit road run straight through the bush through the bush on Sydney's Northern Beaches. By day it is a commuter route with a flooding problem. After dark it is the most haunted road in the city, and people have been reporting the same young woman on the verge for more than fifty years.

What is on the record is just as horrifying. Four very real killings, thirty five years apart, no connection between the people who committed them. So what brings them to the same stretch of road to commit these heinous crimes.

In this episode I drive the Wakehurst Parkway end to end. Are you game enough to join me?

Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast

Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Rozenberg-Clarke, Josephine. "Wakehurst Parkway Ghost: Tales From Sydney's Most Haunted Road." Pedestrian.TV, 22 May 2019. https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/wakehurst-parkway-ghosts/

• "Wakehurst Parkway: 'Ghost of Kelly' haunts road on Sydney's Northern Beaches." Nine.com.au, 31 October 2018. https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/haunted-roads-wakehurst-parkway-sydney-northern-beaches-ghost-kelly-halloween-20181031-p5wpbq.html

• Hla Oo. "Dark Parkway." Hla Oo's Blog, November 2010. http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.com/2010/11/dark-parkway.html

• "Wakehurst Parkway Ghost: The Hitchhiker of Sydney's Haunted Road." Earth Bound, 10 March 2026. https://earthboundguides.com/blogs/supernatural-sydney/wakehurst-parkway-ghost-the-hitchhiker-of-sydney-s-haunted-road

• "Wakehurst Parkway Drivers Report Chilling Ghost Sightings In Oxford Falls Stretch." Cromer News. https://cromernews.com.au/wakehurst-parkway-drivers-report-chilling-ghost-sightings-in-oxford-falls-stretch/

The Disappearance of Kath Bergamin - Part 2 of 2

On the evening of Sunday the 18th of August 2002, a woman walking her dog in Wangaratta crossed the road to avoid a parked car with the music up. That put her four or five metres from a stranger's front door, where a man was standing on the step talking to somebody behind the flywire.

Margaret Scutt kept it to herself for five years and by the time she picked up the phone, a coroner had opened an inquest into what happened to the woman behind that door.

In part two of our two part series into the disappearance of Kath Bergamin, we walk through that Sunday hour by hour. Pulling apart the evidence and scrutinising those around her to try to determine what happened to Kath on that fateful night.

Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast

Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources

• Record of Investigation into Suspected Death, Case No. 1111/07. Coroner Peter White, State Coroner's Office Victoria, dated at Melbourne 4 June 2008.

• Australian Missing Persons Register, Kath Bergamin case file. australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ampr/Bergamin.htm.

• Wangaratta Chronicle, 20 Years since Kath was murdered. 26 August 2002. https://www.wangarattachronicle.com.au/news/police-and-courts/20-years-since-kath-was-murdered-kjfuy8xj

• ABC News, 10 August 2015. Family seeking the $1m reward increase. abc.net.au/news/2015-08-10/family-of-missing-woman-kath-bergamin-want-reward-increased/6684520

• Nine.com.au / AAP, 3 October 2017. "Letter-writer key to Victorian cold case." Det Insp Tim Day. nine.com.au/australia-news/vic/dna-hope-in-missing-vic-woman-case-20171003-p5vxur.html

• Wangaratta Chronicle, 18 August 2025. "Cold case hope." wangarattachronicle.com.au/news/police-and-courts/cold-case-hope-ganvyycv

The Disappearance of Kath Bergamin - Part 1 of 2

Kath Bergamin was thirty seven. She had married at eighteen and spent nineteen years on a tobacco farm sixty kilometres up the King Valley, raising three children, working the property, and telling a small number of trusted people that her husband had said she would never get off it alive.

On the 29th of May 2002, she escaped it.

This is the story of the eleven weeks that followed, the last eleven weeks of Kath Bergamin's life.

Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast

Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Record of Investigation into Suspected Death, Case No. 1111/07. Coroner Peter White, State Coroner's Office Victoria, dated at Melbourne 4 June 2008.

• Australian Missing Persons Register, Kath Bergamin case file. australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ampr/Bergamin.htm.

• Wangaratta Chronicle, 20 Years since Kath was murdered. 26 August 2002. https://www.wangarattachronicle.com.au/news/police-and-courts/20-years-since-kath-was-murdered-kjfuy8xj

• ABC News, 10 August 2015. Family seeking the $1m reward increase. abc.net.au/news/2015-08-10/family-of-missing-woman-kath-bergamin-want-reward-increased/6684520

• Nine.com.au / AAP, 3 October 2017. "Letter-writer key to Victorian cold case." Det Insp Tim Day. nine.com.au/australia-news/vic/dna-hope-in-missing-vic-woman-case-20171003-p5vxur.html

• Macleay Argus / AAP, Callum Godde, 17 September 2020. "Five interviewed over Vic mother cold case."

• Wangaratta Chronicle, 18 August 2025. "Cold case hope." Source for the Part 2 closing beat. wangarattachronicle.com.au/news/police-and-courts/cold-case-hope-ganvyycv

Australian Train Heist Mysteries

In December 1973, two men in black stopped a train in the rainforest above Cairns, took the track workers' wages off it at gunpoint and vanished down a drain into the scrub. Thirty-five years earlier and half a state away, a mine payroll was lifted out of a locked mail van on the dark run to Mount Isa, so cleanly that a full day went by before anyone knew it was gone. Two railways, two payrolls, and two impeccable railway heists.

This week on Strewth, the Phantoms of the Line.

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Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

1. "MAIL TRAIN ROBBERY. £3,000 IN NOTES STOLEN. North Queensland Haul." Brisbane, 31 August 1938.https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42110600

2. "MAIL TRAIN ROBBERY. BRISBANE DETECTIVES. Called In To Assist." Brisbane, 4 September 1938. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/62172323

3. ABC News, "Mystery of Australia's Great Kuranda rail robbery remains unsolved 50 years on," 2023.

4. Queensland Police Museum, "FROM the VAULT - Silk Yards and a Railway Guard,"

5. The Workshops Rail Museum (Queensland Museum), "Railway Mysteries," David Mewes, 25 June 2014. https://blog.qm.qld.gov.au/2014/06/25/railway-mysteries/ Secondary (retrospective features)

6. The Cairns Post, "Cairns mystery: 1973 Kuranda rail armed robbery," Pete Martinelli, 2018.

7. ABC News, "Deathbed confession solves 66-year-old robbery case," 10 February 2005.

The Disappearance of Peter Falconio - Part 2 of 2

Bradley Murdoch was convicted of Peter Falconio's murder and died in prison still denying it. Twenty-five years on, there is still no body, and some of the evidence that put him away has never stopped being argued over. In part two of two we analyse the evidence, the doubts, the stories, and leave you holding the one question a jury, a judge and a dying man could not close.

Where is Peter Falconio?

---------------------

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Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• "25 years on: How Joanne Lees escaped the fate of Peter Falconio," Woman's Day, 12 July 2026. https://www.nowtolove.com.au/true-crime/joanne-lees-peter-falconio-25-years/

• "A Quarter-Century Search for Answers," Nine , 2026. https://www.nineforbrands.com.au/media-release/a-quarter-century-search-for-answers/

• "Outback Terror: The Falconio Murder: Documentary revives search for remains in Australia's Northern Territory," Victoria Laurie, The Sydney Morning Herald (Nine network), 2026. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-documentary-reviving-the-search-for-peter-falconio-s-remains-20260712-p60enu.html

• "Peter Falconio: Australian police reveal previously unseen photos 25 years after backpacker murder," BBC News, 14 July 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlwln0gkzlo

• "Police release new footage of Northern Territory killer days before death," Nine 10 July 2026. https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/nt/bradley-john-murdoch-police-footage-peter-falconio-20260711-p60ehc.html

• "Peter Falconio murder: British expert says he has identified a 'most likely' burial location," The Guardian, 18 July 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/18/peter-falconio-british-expert-says-he-has-identified-a-most-likely-burial-location

• "Peter Falconio's body could be 70km from murder scene, former police officer says," Courtney Barrett, ABC News, 14 July 2026. abc.net.au/news/peter-falconio-body-investigator-nt-missing-person-search/106911332

The Disappearance of Peter Falconio - Part 1 of 2

July 2001. A young English couple drive north into the Australian desert, and only one of them is ever seen again. Joanne Lees escapes a killer on the loneliest road in the country, hides for hours in the dark, and walks out to raise the alarm. Plenty of armchair detectives are quick to decide that she is the one with something to hide.

In part one of two: the crime, the manhunt, and the survivor who was put on trial by everyone except the law.

Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast

Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast

Contact me - [email protected]

Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• "25 years on: How Joanne Lees escaped the fate of Peter Falconio," Woman's Day, 12 July 2026. https://www.nowtolove.com.au/true-crime/joanne-lees-peter-falconio-25-years/

• "A Quarter-Century Search for Answers," Nine , 2026. https://www.nineforbrands.com.au/media-release/a-quarter-century-search-for-answers/

• "Outback Terror: The Falconio Murder: Documentary revives search for remains in Australia's Northern Territory," Victoria Laurie, The Sydney Morning Herald (Nine network), 2026. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-documentary-reviving-the-search-for-peter-falconio-s-remains-20260712-p60enu.html

• "Peter Falconio: Australian police reveal previously unseen photos 25 years after backpacker murder," BBC News, 14 July 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crlwln0gkzlo

• "Police release new footage of Northern Territory killer days before death," Nine 10 July 2026. https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/nt/bradley-john-murdoch-police-footage-peter-falconio-20260711-p60ehc.html

• "Peter Falconio murder: British expert says he has identified a 'most likely' burial location," The Guardian, 18 July 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/18/peter-falconio-british-expert-says-he-has-identified-a-most-likely-burial-location

• "Peter Falconio's body could be 70km from murder scene, former police officer says," Courtney Barrett, ABC News, 14 July 2026. abc.net.au/news/peter-falconio-body-investigator-nt-missing-person-search/106911332