Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

Mark

Welcome to Strewth, where we uncover Australia's most captivating tales of true crime and mysterious happenings. Yarns so extraordinary they'll make you stop and say, "Strewth!" From the sun-scorched outback to the seedy underbelly of our biggest cities, Australia harbours some of the world's most perplexing mysteries. Stories so bizarre that even hardened detectives could only mutter that distinctly Australian expression of disbelief. Each episode takes you deep into extraordinary cases through atmospheric storytelling and meticulous research. You'll walk alongside the detectives, feel the frustration of families seeking answers, and experience the shock of communities torn apart by inexplicable events. Strewth reveals how these cases shaped Australian society and exposes the dark undercurrents flowing beneath the nation's beautiful facade. From colonial-era crimes to modern forensic breakthroughs, these are the stories that made headlines and left investigators scratching their heads. New episodes weekly. Because some stories are too strange not to tell.

  1. A Lone Wolf? - Australian True Crime

    6d ago

    A Lone Wolf? - Australian True Crime

    A Lone Wolf? - The Ivan Milat Backpacker Murders - Australian True Crime Everyone knows how the number seven relates to the Ivan Milat case. Seven backpackers. Seven graves in the Belanglo State Forest. Seven life sentences handed down in a Sydney courtroom in 1996. But in August 2025, a list was tabled in the New South Wales parliament that had been sitting in police files since 1993. Fifty-eight names. Fifty-eight missing or murdered young people that detectives from the task force that caught Ivan Milat had identified as potentially connected to him. Every state and territory in Australia. Decades of cases. Families who were never told. In this episode of Strewth, we aim to answer two big questions that still hang over this horrific case. How many of those fifty-eight is Milat really responsible for and did he receive help when committing these crimes? Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast  Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: NSW Legislative Council Hansard Motion by the Hon. Jeremy Buckingham regarding production of Ivan Milat criminal records, 2025. URL: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-98950/link/92 ABC News "Police doubt Milat had a woman's help," Saturday 16 July 2005. URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-07-16/police-doubt-milat-had-awomans-help/2059768 News.com.au / Candace Sutton "Belanglo backpacker murders: Ivan Milat confessed to his mother before her death." URL: https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/belanglo-backpacker-murders-ivan-milat-confessed-to-his-mother-before-her-death/news-story/c56d825d8cde4acd3ce05e7bbeffcfbe Daily Telegraph / Charles Miranda "How forensic evidence finally solved Ivan Milat accomplice mystery," May 14, 2019. URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/behindthescenes/last-forensic-evidence-solves-ivan-milat-accomplice-mystery/news-story/b27c2d9b3b1ba60b3ead841d9a7e6508 The Guardian / Michael McGowan "Ivan Milat's chilling serial backpacker murders still haunt Australia," October 27, 2019. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/27/ivan-milat-chilling-serial-murders-haunt-australia-after-death AAP News, "Police files link Milat to 58 cold cases over decades," August 22, 2025

    42 min
  2. The Junjudee - Australian Mystery

    May 19

    The Junjudee - Australian Mystery

    Junjaree | Njimbin | Brown Jack | Little Hairy Man - Australian Cryptid Mystery It isn't the Yowie. It's smaller than that. Faster. And by some accounts, considerably more unsettling. The Junjudee has been part of this country's stories since long before records were kept. It appears in a newspaper from 1897. It appears in the testimony of soldiers on a military exercise in the Cape York rainforest. It appears to a horsewoman in the Northern Rivers, in open daylight, in open pasture and then vanishes into a stand of trees the size of a lounge room. It's still appearing in Tasmania in 2024 In this episode of Strewth, we're on the path of this elusive creature.  Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast    Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Karen Thurecht PhD - Personal essay, The Little Brown Hairy Man, 2019. https://karenthurecht.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/the-little-brown-hairy-man-junjudee/  Paul Cropper and Tony Healy - The Nimble Junjudee From Jiggi, The Fortean, 2018. https://www.thefortean.com/2018/07/21/the-nimble-junjudee-from-jiggi/  Paul Cropper - Christmas Hills Reserve, Tasmania 2024, Australian Yowie Research. 8 July 2024. https://www.yowiehunters.com.au/tasmania/2274-christmas-hills-reserve-tasmania-2024  Jet Zak - (YouTube, 2007) - Black Shadows: Hairy Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_O6tb68R9k&t=18s  Robin Morgan - Junjudee, 2021 - https://www.superbugtom.com/cryptid-catalogue/junjudee

    35 min
  3. Leanne Holland - Not a Scintilla - Australian True Crime

    May 14

    Leanne Holland - Not a Scintilla - Australian True Crime

    Leanne Holland - Part 2 of 2 - Not a Scintilla - Unsolved True Crime On Christmas Eve 2009, Graham Stafford's conviction for the murder of Leanne Holland was quashed. A Court of Appeal found his trial had been fundamentally unfair. One of its judges would have acquitted him outright. The murder of Leanne Holland was officially unsolved. Then Queensland Police conducted a two-year review, declared there was not a scintilla of evidence against anyone other than Stafford, and locked the report away for a decade. In Part 2, we ask the question nobody in authority has seriously tried to answer: if not Graham Stafford, then who? Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast  Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: R v Stafford [1992] QCA 269 R v Stafford; ex parte A-G [1997] QCA 333 R v Stafford [2009] QCA 407 Stafford and Queensland Police Service [2021] QICmr 21 ABC Australian Story, "Body of Evidence" Parts 1 & 2, aired 20 & 27 August 2007. Channel 9, Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, aired 14 February 2024. Graeme Crowley and Paul Wilson, Who Killed Leanne Holland? One Girl's Murder and One Man's Injustice, New Holland Publishers, 2010 Graeme Crowley, Joe Crowley, Darrell Giles and Greg Cary, The Leanne Holland Murder, 2024 Podcast - Who Killed Leanne Holland?, Six10 Media, hosted by Graeme Crowley and Jamie Pultz, 2020 Thomas Chamberlin, "Leanne Holland murder case reopened by coroner after 35 years," The Courier Mail, 22 April 2026

    40 min
  4. Leanne Holland - A Walk to the Shops - Australian True Crime

    May 12

    Leanne Holland - A Walk to the Shops - Australian True Crime

    Leanne Holland | Part 1: A Walk to the Shops | Unsolved True Crime On the first morning of the September school holidays in 1991, twelve-year-old Leanne Holland left her home in Goodna, Queensland, wearing a purple jumper and no shoes. She was going to the shops. She never came home. Three days later, police found her body in bushland off Redbank Plains Road. Within a week, a man was arrested. Within months, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. He has always said he didn't do it. This is Part 1 of a two-part investigation into one of Queensland's most contested criminal cases. Leanne Holland - A Walk to the Shops. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast  Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: R v Stafford [1992] QCA 269 R v Stafford; ex parte A-G [1997] QCA 333 R v Stafford [2009] QCA 407 Stafford and Queensland Police Service [2021] QICmr 21 ABC Australian Story, "Body of Evidence" Parts 1 & 2, aired 20 & 27 August 2007. Channel 9, Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, aired 14 February 2024. Graeme Crowley and Paul Wilson, Who Killed Leanne Holland? One Girl's Murder and One Man's Injustice, New Holland Publishers, 2010 Graeme Crowley, Joe Crowley, Darrell Giles and Greg Cary, The Leanne Holland Murder, 2024 Podcast - Who Killed Leanne Holland?, Six10 Media, hosted by Graeme Crowley and Jamie Pultz, 2020 Thomas Chamberlin, "Leanne Holland murder case reopened by coroner after 35 years," The Courier Mail, 22 April 2026

    36 min
  5. Message in a Bottle - Australian Mystery

    May 5

    Message in a Bottle - Australian Mystery

    The Unexplained Disappearance of the Patanela | Australian Mystery In November of 1988, a steel-hulled schooner called the Patanela made three radio calls from ten miles off Botany Bay and disappeared. No wreckage. No bodies. No distress signal. No explanation that holds together under examination. Just an experienced skipper asking for directions to a town he'd already passed, a silence where a voice used to be, and one barnacled lifebuoy that turned up six months later and raised more questions than it answered. Four people were aboard. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast  Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Janice Jarrett, "Operation 'Lilac' The mystery of the Patanela", Platypus: The Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Issue 36/38, July 1992.  NSW Coronial Inquest, Deputy State Coroner Derrick Hand, Glebe Coroner's Court, 1992.  Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 2008. "Message in a bottle redeems lost sons." Paul Whittaker and Robert Reid, Patanela Is Missing: Australia's Greatest Sea Mystery, Bantam Books, Sydney, 1993. Philip Temple, The Sea and the Snow, 1966 (reissued). Derrick Hand, The Coroner, ABC Books, 2004. John Pinkney, Great Australian Mysteries, Five Mile Press, 2004. Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, "Ghost Ship: What happened to the Patanela?", Channel Nine, 1 March 2023.

    38 min
  6. The Humpty Doo Mystery - Australian Paranormal

    Apr 28

    The Humpty Doo Mystery - Australian Paranormal

    The Humpty Doo Poltergeist - Unsolved Paranormal Mystery In early 1998, a rented weatherboard house forty kilometres outside Darwin became the most talked-about address in Australia. Over three months, the residents of 90 McMinns Drive reported knives hurling themselves across rooms, gravel falling through an intact ceiling, and messages spelled out in driveway stones, including the name of a friend who had died weeks earlier in a fire. Three priests of three different denominations came to help. None of them left with a simple explanation. Then the cameras arrived. This is the Humpty Doo poltergeist, Australia's most-witnessed, least-investigated paranormal case of the twentieth century. Thirty people saw something in that house. Nobody in any official capacity ever tried to find out what it was. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Anderson, Max. "Ghost Writer." The Australian Magazine, 9 May 1998.  Voss, Nikki. Multiple articles. Northern Territory News, 3, 4, 6, 7, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23 April 1998; 3 May 1998.  Ellis, Jack et al. Multiple articles. The Litchfield Times, 2, 9, 16 and 30 April 1998.  Farrar, Tracey. Interview with Kirsty Agius. ABC Radio Darwin, April 1998. Healy, Tony. "A Week with the Humpty Doo Poltergeist." strangenationaustralia.blogspot.com, November 1998 Cropper, Paul. "The Humpty Doo Poltergeist: 20 Years On." The Fortean, 13 March 2018. thefortean.com Healy, Tony and Paul Cropper. "Tony and Paul Meet the Humpty Doo Poltergeist." The Fortean, 12 April 2020. thefortean.com Healy, Tony and Paul Cropper. Australian Poltergeist: The Stone-Throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases. Strange Nation / Xoum, 2014. ISBN 9781921134340. Braude, Stephen. Review of Australian Poltergeist. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 29(1), 2015, pp. 158–160.

    36 min
5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Welcome to Strewth, where we uncover Australia's most captivating tales of true crime and mysterious happenings. Yarns so extraordinary they'll make you stop and say, "Strewth!" From the sun-scorched outback to the seedy underbelly of our biggest cities, Australia harbours some of the world's most perplexing mysteries. Stories so bizarre that even hardened detectives could only mutter that distinctly Australian expression of disbelief. Each episode takes you deep into extraordinary cases through atmospheric storytelling and meticulous research. You'll walk alongside the detectives, feel the frustration of families seeking answers, and experience the shock of communities torn apart by inexplicable events. Strewth reveals how these cases shaped Australian society and exposes the dark undercurrents flowing beneath the nation's beautiful facade. From colonial-era crimes to modern forensic breakthroughs, these are the stories that made headlines and left investigators scratching their heads. New episodes weekly. Because some stories are too strange not to tell.

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