Afleveringen
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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.
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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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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