Explore every episode of the podcast On This Road

Just outside Derby, there’s an open block of ground and a single screen still standing.

It doesn’t look like much.

But this was once the town’s Picture Gardens — an open-air theatre where people gathered under the night sky.

On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

The pearls gathered off the Kimberley coast didn’t stay here.Men like Edwin Streeter, a jeweller from London, helped carry them into global markets.

A brief story of how Broome became part of something much larger.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In the late 1800s, labour was brought into northern Australia from across the region — often under coercion or false promise.Known as blackbirding, it became part of the early pearling and pastoral industries.

This is a short look at what that meant, and the place it holds in the history of the Kimberley.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

During the Second World War, the north-west of Australia was closer to the war than many realised.

Across the Kimberley, station country became part of a quiet defence — stockmen trained, tracks were pushed through remote country, and small outposts watched the northern skies.

Most of it happened out of sight.

And for the most part… it stayed that way.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In the East Kimberley, the arrival of cattle stations brought significant change.

Access to country shifted. Water sources were altered. Movement across the land was no longer the same.

What followed, over time, was a period of conflict — not defined by a single event, but by repeated incidents across the region.

Much of it was never formally recorded.

What remains has been carried forward through memory, place, and fragments of history.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Most days, the Fitzroy River doesn’t look like much.

Wide. Quiet. Slow moving.

But this river drains a vast part of the Kimberley — and when the wet season comes, everything feeds into it.

What seems calm can become something else entirely.

This is a river defined not by how it looks… but by what it can become.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

The Ord River looks simple at first.

But it isn’t.

What begins as a seasonal river becomes something very different — shaped, held, and redirected along the way.

This is not just one river, but a system.

And to understand it, you have to follow it from the beginning… to what it has become.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

When the pearling luggers returned to Broome, the whole town shifted.Crews moved through the Roebuck, the Continental, the Mangrove, and Chinatown in between — a few days onshore before heading out again.

Work, money, and what came back with them didn’t always stay in the open.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

At King Sound, the tide doesn’t just rise and fall — it moves.Out from Derby, the water can be a long way out at low tide, then return with force as it’s funnelled back in.

One of the largest tidal ranges in the world, shaped by the coastline and the rivers that feed into it.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Matso’s takes its name from the Matsumoto family, part of Broome’s Japanese pearling community in the late 1800s.The building itself predates the brewery, with a history tied to the town’s working past.

Today it’s known for its ginger beer, still sitting in one of Broome’s older structures.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

When Lord McAlpine arrived in Broome, many of the old pearling buildings were in decline.He restored and rebuilt, shaping how parts of the town look today.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

The Durack family made one of the great overland journeys in Australian history — driving cattle from western Queensland to the Kimberley across country nobody had mapped. It took years, cost lives, and changed the north forever.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In 1879, explorer Alexander Forrest named the region during his expedition across the north, honouring John Wodehouse, the Earl of Kimberley.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

The Kimberley coast has been seen and described for a long time.

Long before it was settled, ships worked their way along this shoreline — charting, observing, and trying to understand what was there.

One of those visits left a record that lasted.

Not a grand arrival.Just an early account of a place that was still largely unknown to those writing about it.

It’s a reminder that some of the first impressions of this country came from people passing through — noticing what they could, and leaving the rest.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Out in the east Kimberley, the country opens out into long, flat stretches of red earth.

And then, without much warning, it changes.

A near-perfect circle set into the ground.Wide. Quiet. Contained.

It’s something you don’t expect to find out here.

Formed long before anything else you can see around it, and sitting in the landscape as if it has always been there.

It’s the kind of place that feels separate from everything around it —even though it isn’t.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Johnny Chi was one of the early figures in Broome’s pearling days — a man who arrived from overseas and became part of a harsh, complex industry on the edge of the continent.

His story sits within a time of opportunity, tension, and cultural mixing, when Broome was still finding its shape.

What remains today isn’t just the history… but the traces of the people who lived it.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Camels have been part of northern Australia for a long time.

In places like Broome, they’re still visible today — sometimes in ways that feel familiar.

But the role they once played was different.

Set against country that was difficult to move through, they became part of how things were carried, supplied, and connected.

What remains now isn’t a continuation of that work.

Just a reminder.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Gantheaume Point sits just south of Broome, where the red cliffs meet the Indian Ocean.

At low tide, the reef reveals something unexpected — marks in the rock that reach back more than 100 million years, from a time when this coastline looked very different.

There are other traces here too. Old stories tied to the pearling days. The remains of a lighthouse that once guided ships along this coast. And always, the contrast — deep red rock against bright blue water.

It’s a place where time sits in layers.Ancient, recent, and present — all in the one stretch of shoreline.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Joseph Lyons never looked like power — but in the hardest years Australia had known, he led with steadiness and care. This story traces his journey from a poor Tasmanian childhood to Prime Minister during the Great Depression, and asks what quiet leadership looks like when a nation is afraid.

On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In 1917, a message left the remote town of Halls Creek in the Kimberley.

It travelled south across the continent to Perth.

It was urgent.

This is a story about distance, communication, and an extraordinary attempt to save a life in one of the most isolated parts of Australia.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

On 31 May 2000, Whyalla Airlines Flight 904 departed Adelaide on a routine flight to Whyalla.

It did not arrive as expected.

This story is told from inside the search — from the perspective of someone involved, moving through uncertainty, long hours, and the quiet weight of not knowing.

There are no theories here.No reconstruction.Just a remembered account of a night that stays with you.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Just outside Derby there’s a large hollow boab tree.

Not far from it, a long concrete water trough sits in the dirt.

Two things, in the same place.

This is a story about what happened here —and how the land was used over time.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In the far north-west of Australia, Derby sits beside King Sound — a place shaped by distance, tides, and movement.

In the early days, getting from the town to the sea was not simple.

So a solution was built.

This is a story about that line…and the quiet role it played in connecting a remote town to the outside world.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In the early 1920s, the north-west coast of Western Australia was a very long way from anywhere.

Derby sat at the edge of it — a port town shaped by cattle, tides, and distance.

Then came an idea.

To fly.

This is a story about the early days of aviation in the north-west…and a journey that would quietly change how Australia was connected.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Queenie and Rover

In the Kimberley, two lives began not far apart, each shaped by the same country in very different ways.

Queenie grew up between worlds on a cattle station, while Rover came from deep within his own cultural law and story.

Their paths would later cross, in ways that reflected the time and place they lived in.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In 1980, on a remote cattle station in the Kimberley, a dispute began over land, law, and who had the right to decide.

The Yungngora people opposed oil exploration on their country, leading to a long and public standoff that drew national attention.

What happened there became part of a turning point in how land, culture, and authority were understood in Australia.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Before the railway pushed north through the centre of Australia, Beltana was one of the most important towns in South Australia’s far north.

In the late 1800s Afghan cameleers passed through here with camel trains carrying supplies deep into the interior. When the railway arrived, the train itself became known as The Ghan, remembering those early drivers of the desert.

For a time Beltana was a busy railway town on the edge of the outback.

Today the trains no longer stop, but the story of the Ghan still passes quietly through this place.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

In the 1860s, Surveyor-General George Goyder rode across South Australia studying drought, soil, and rainfall.

When he returned, he drew a simple line across the map.

South of the line, farming would usually succeed.North of it, the country was better suited to grazing.

More than 150 years later, Goyder’s Line still marks the boundary between reliable farming country and the dry pastoral land beyond.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia

Out on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, a group of Gurindji stockmen once walked away from their work.

They walked off the station, but they didn’t walk away from the land.

Led by Vincent Lingiari, their stand began in 1966 as a protest over wages, but it grew into something much larger — a long and patient claim for land and recognition.

Many Australians later came to know the story through the song From Little Things Big Things Grow by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody.

This is the story of that place — and the man who stood there.

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On a quiet night in January 1975, a bulk carrier struck the Tasman Bridge in Hobart.

In seconds, a section of the bridge collapsed into the Derwent River. Cars plunged into the dark. A ship lay broken across the channel. The city was suddenly cut in two.

This is the story of what happened — and what followed.

Not a technical investigation, but a human one:the people driving home,the first rescuers,the divers in the water,and a city waking up to a new reality.

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On This Road— Travel stories from Australia