Amazing Australian events

A yacht race which had always, since the first one in 1851, been won by the Americans. Until Australian entrepeneur and millionaire Alan Bond decided it was time the cup ended up in Australian hands and put big sums of money into building a superboat named Australia II which under skipper John Bertrand in 1983 wrestled the cup out of American hands to the delight of ecstatic Australians.

Ansett collapse

Ansett was Australia's main domestic airline, grown from a one plane operation in 1936, until one morning on the 5th of March 2002 it was suddenly no longer there. Staff showed up for work to find the doors closed, passengers with valid tickets weren't going anywhere and many Australians who had been clocking up frequent flyer points to get freebies suddenly lost the whole lot. The end came so suddenly that one plane was in the air; the all night flight from Perth to Brisbane was about midway when the pilot was told that he didn't have a job any more but he better keep working for a few more hours till they'd land in Brisbane. An Ansett levy was introduced by the Government on all domestic flights to raise funds to pay the employees their entitlements , lucky that Richard Branson had just started Virgin Blue.

Boatpeople land in Cairns

One morning in the beach suburb of Holloways Beach on the northside of Cairns a group of a dozen Asians in business suits came into the news agency and asked the owner to ring them a taxi. He did but also decided to ring the police as there were a few things that made him wonder;
- Business suits are an uncommon sight for a start in the casual north
- They wanted to go to Springwood Station which they thought to be a railway station but is actually a cattle station hours out of Cairns.
- A local resident that just returned from walking his dog reported a ship high and dry on the beach.
Police intercepted the taxi-bus before it reached Cairns railway station and it became clear that this had been a clever maneouvre by people smugglers, instead of landing in the Northern Territory where they were expected they went all the way around Cape York and chose Cairns to beach their ship and jump ashore.

BTEC Campaign

In the 1990s disease was found in cattle in Northern Australia and the authorities took some strong action to eradicate this. In cases of mad cow disease in the U.K. for instance you can go around farms and slaughter animals there but in the Northern Territory a lot of the cattle roams around at will on cattle stations and there are thousands of feral horses, donkeys, waterbuffaloes etc. that will walk between these stations spreading the disease too so helicopters and sharp shooters were used to free thousands of hectares of land from feral animals. One cattle station owner I spoke to in 1999 was still grumbling on about it years later how helicopters with M16s had come in and wiped out tens of thousands of his cattle.

Five thousand nude people at the Opera House

Now here's something you don't see every day.... World famous photographer Spencer Tunick made another visit to Australia and 5000 people undressed for him at the Opera House in Sydney in March 2010.

Frank Sinatra 'imprisoned' in Sydney

During a visit to Sydney in 1974, Frank Sinatra made the mistake of being very politically incorrect and referred to Australian women journalists as 'two-dollar hookers'.This led to a siege by Union members who also refused to service his rooms and airlines that refused to fly him out of Sydney. He who was holed up in the Boulevard Hotel in William Street, near Kings Cross in Sydney until the situation was resolved in a meeting with the then current Union boss Bob Hawke and he was allowed to leave.

HIH collapse

HIH became Australia's biggest ever corporate collapse when it failed in March 2001 with liabilities of $5.3 billion. Many people lost their life savings, and with most doctors and others in the medical business being insured here the collapse also lead to a health care crisis, as suddenly they found themselves working without insurance cover. The government had to step in with temporary arrangements to avoid a country with no doctors but many in the medical profession found the new insurance schemes to expensive and stopped working or went into early retirement.
The former director, 45 year old Rodney Adler, said he had made some "stupid errors of judgment", but the judge disagreed with this terminology, cited several examples of gross misconduct, fraud and outright lies, and sentenced him to a maximum of four and a half years in jail for four crimes of dishonesty committed in his time at the failed insurer, but he will probably only do two and a half years of that. In 2002 he had already been banned from being a company director for 20 years
While he knew HIH was already going down the tubes he made false statements to obtain $2 million from HIH for his own company, Business Thinking Systems. He was the first former director to be convicted but not the last. While in prison he got caught out trying to run a business, disguised as helping his kids with homework. This led to a promotion as toilet cleaner.
Former HIH chief Ray Williams is serving a four-year jail sentence for his role in the HIH collapse in the same jail and is also on toliet duties. Late 2005 he was also stripped of his prized Order of Australia award by Governor-General Michael Jeffery.

Human head in fish

A fish filleter at Cairns fish wholesaler A Fine Kettle O'Fish got the surprise of his life when a 44kg and 1,6 metre long Morgan Cod had a huge lump in his stomach which on closer examination turned out to be a human head! As the fish had been caught by a boat that had lost a crew member the day before it was believed this was the head of the missing fisherman that had found its way back on board again but Cairns Police, who are holding both the head and the fish in the city morgue, said yesterday DNA tests would be needed to establish conclusively that the head belonged to the lost fisherman. As cods do not attack humans it is believed that the crewman was ripped apart by sharks that habitually follow fishing boats to feed off fish scraps thrown overboard and that the giant cod, a bottom feeding fish, found and swallowed the head.

London Bridge has fallen down

London Bridge near Port Campbell on the Great Ocean Road, Victoria

This children's song became reality in january 1990 when a rock formation known as London Bridge suddenly collapsed. For many years day trippers had walked out along this natural bridge to the big rock at the end but after sitting there for possible millions of years the bridge spontaneously collapsed in January 1997 leaving two people stranded on the rock who had to wait several hours for a helicipter to arrive to ferry them back to the mainland. There is an urban myth that these two people were not actually a couple but both cheating on their repective partners and then got caught out getting their faces on national television but we do not know if this holds truth or not.

Missile destroys four wheel drive

Tony Travers, also known as Datto, next to the Toyota 4WD that was bombed in an airforce blunder in 2000

Darwin has been bombed quite a bit during World War Two but the most recent one happened during Operation Pitch Black exercise at 9.15 Pm on August 3, when a dummy missile fell off an airforce bomber. At the time Tony Travers was preparing a BBQ for himself at his workplace and residence at # 2 Strath Road, Berrimah ( Datto's Rust Repairs), which unfortunately has gone out of business since then due to all this.

All hell broke loose when a AIM-7-CATM { Captive Air Training Missile } fell off a FA-18 Hornet
as it prepared to land at Darwin airport During Operation Pitch Black on 3 August 2000.
It landed 20 metres from me and hit a 1974 Toyota Landcruiser directly at the rear of my shed.
The ensuing destruction as the 250 Kg -12 foot Missile hit the Tojo at approximately 500 Kph shook the dust out of the roof of the shed as it sent a shockwave tearing through the shed.
The Boom was like a thunderclap directly overhead ,, Very Very Loud,,, It scared the Crap out of me,,, { And My 2 Red Heeler Dogs } Upon doing a search around the shed I found 1/2 of the Missile protruding out of the ground beside the Now Destroyed Toyota,, Absolute Awesome Damage ,, The Guidance Fin had cut the windscreen like a Bullet going through a playing card and the engine had been Smashed into a thousand pieces ,, You could see the pistons and internals of the motor everywhere,, Totally Destroyed !!! Diff ,, Chassi ,, Cab ,, Gearbox ,, Everything in its path,, { It Probably hit # 5 Cylinder Causing a massive backfire }
Upon Seeing this with my torch I literally Shit myself and uttered F#*K many times over, Knowing that another 2 metres further towards where I was standing and I wouldn't have had a chance ,, It would have Creamed Me and the contents of my workshop,,,
The other 1/2 that broke off on impact smashed into another 3 cars before hitting a fence,, and coming to rest next to my Nissan Patrol Mudracer , The Re Occuring Dreams of this incident are still haunting me to this day ,,,therefore being the subject of a Law Suit that is still going on ,, and
,, on ,,

Tony is still in a court case with the airforce, it took a long time before they coughed up part of the money for the three cars of Tony's customers that were damaged, and his rust repair business of 14 years has gone bankrupt.

Here are three pics of the carnage that Tony shot that disastrous night in August 2000, showing the missile and the totally rooted Toyo. ( Click pics to enlarge)

The wrecked Toyota 4WD, owned by Basil Roe who runs Berrimah Radiators,is still on display outside the radiator shop on Berrimah Road, although with an imitation missile, because the airforce took the evidence back. After a very long time of haggling the airforce was finally gonna cough up some money for the Toyo but only on condition they'd get the wreck. Basil told them to get f#&%!d and kept it as a display outside his shop.

As if Tony didn't have enough bad luck being bombed he also got done for drink driving in 2004. The judge was not convinced by his defence that after surviving the 2000 bombing he had to drink during every airforce exercise to keep his stress levels down and handed him a prison sentence.

Tony is still in a legal battle with the airforce, next courtcase will be in April 2005, keep watching this site as Tony will keep us up to date...

Nude Melbourne

Photographer and artist Spencer Tunick makes a living out of photographing public nudity and in 2001 in Melbourne he managed to convince no less than 4000 people to line up naked along the banks of the Yarra river!

NO WAR on Opera House

At a time when the Australian government was trying to calm a population that was worried about a terrorist attack by saying that all security measures were in place and Sydney landmarks had special guards, two men managed to climb the Sydney Opera House in the night and paint in huge red letters "NO WAR" on it. Now if two average Aussie blokes can get past security, what would a trained terrorist be capable of?

N.T. Cannonball Run

This was meant to be an annual event and was the brain child of the Northern Territory's Chief Minister at the time who was a bit of a racing fanatic.
The race was held on the Stuart Highway from Darwin to Ayers Rock and back, a distance of around 4000 km. and attracted well off racing enthusiasts from all over the world with their expensive machines.
Unfortunately in the very first race a Japanese driver lost control of his car and ploughed into some racing officials next to the highway and four people were killed, the Japanese Ferrari driver and his co-driver, and two NT men. The race was never held again.

Patagonian Toothfish poachers

On 7 august 2003 an Australian fisheries patrol boat near the Antarctic spotted the Urugayan fishing boat Viarsa, when they approached the vessel it sped away direction home but the Aussies did not give up just like that. They chased the vessel for 21 days until they cornered it in Sub-arctic waters with the help of a British vessel sent fromt the Falklands and a South-African vessel. After refuelling in Capetown the fishing boat and its crew were brought back to Fremantle W.A. despite furious protests by the Urugayan government and the 35 crew now faces the Australian court. Several months later the Russian flagged Volga, along with sister ship Lena, was apprehended with 136 tonnes of Patagonian toothfish on board in the AFZ, off Heard and McDonald islands, 4,200km south of Perth.
To set an example to poachers the ship was blown up and sunk in shallow water near Fremantle where you can now go scuba diving to see it. The government also announced funding of $40-50 million to enhance the existing patrol program, which includes the Australian Customs Service to lease an ice-strengthened vessel which will carry a deck-mounted 0.50 calibre machine-gun, an armed Customs boarding party and Australian fishery officers

Patagonian tooth fish is reputed to fetch up to $1400.- a fish making it a lucrative trade for well organized poachers,Australia issues fishing licences but maintains strict quoatas to prevent this fish from being decimated.

Sydney beach riots

Although Aussies in general are a pretty friendly and tolerant lot there are also some individuals that have a different way of thinking. During December 2005 Sydney was the scene of some spectacular large scale gang fights between Aussies of Lebanese origin and Aussies of non-Lebanese origin. As the fights mainly concentrated on the beaches and beach suburbs like Cronulla this became known as the beach riots. The NSW government acted swiftly with a range of new laws to give police extra powers to fight this situation, and about 2000 extra police officers patrolled the beaches and adjoining areas. Even at night gangs would drive around for hit and run attacks. At one point it was rumoured that bus loads of young men were underway from Melbourne and other places to join in the fights but this did not eventuate. The strong action by authorities seems to have worked as things calmed down soon after. Several men were arrested and received severe sentences.

Tasmanian earthquake

At the end of 2004 an earthquake in the ocean off Tasmania rocked the island state a little bit, but not enough to do any damage. Even though this was the most powerful earthquake to hit the world in quite a few decades, but the distance from the epicentre saved the day. It was only learned a couple of months later how lucky Australia had been when an only slightly more powerful quake hit the ocean off Sumatra, moved the seabed in a different way than the Tasmanian quake, and killed hundreds of thousands throughout Asia.

Tilt train derailed

When the $139 million Tilt Train was introduced between Brisbane and Cairns, it was boasted that at 170 km/h this was the fastest narrow gauge train in the world, cuttting traveling time to 25 hours. Unfortunately in October 2004 near Bundaberg the train tilted a bit too much going through a bend way above the speed limit and completely derailed at high speed. It was later found that the train was traveling at twice the maximum speed and the driver was making himself a coffee at the time! Amazingly enough nobody aboard the fairly full train died and only about two thirds were injured. Even more amazingly the driver kept working after the accident and, even more f%#@! amazingly, he did not seem all that worried about the whole situation!