A killer is on the loose in an Australian country town. Excited for the June long weekend, bubbly 23-year-old Rachelle Childs leaves work, calls her sister, and is dead within hours. Her burning, partially naked body is found nine hours later in bushland on a lonely coastal road. Her killer has never been caught. Now innocent people, once too afraid to speak, are breaking their silence. If you’re looking for your next true crime podcast obsession, search out Dear Rachelle. An unstoppable cold case team is reinvestigating and uncovering damning new evidence. Could this finally be the break the family needs? Dear Rachelle is hosted and investigated by journalist Ashlea Hansen, who teams up with retired detective and renowned cold case specialist Damian Loone. The first episode of Dear Rachelle is now available on all podcast platforms. If you’re looking for your next true crime podcast binge and you want to be first to hear what’s next, visit dearrachelle.com.au - your News Corp Australia subscription grants you access to podcast episodes three weeks before everyone else, as well as exclusive access to videos, interactive evidence, behind-the-scenes content, and more. Dear Rachelle is a podcast from True Crime Australia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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3:27
Rebuilding
Has COVID-19 stopped the rebuilding after the bushfires? Dick Adams was a deputy police commissioner but he says he has never seen a disaster of this scale and it is his job to fix the coast. He is a recovery coordinator. His first job is to clear the remnants of razed homes and to rebuild community infrastructure. Sir Peter Cosgrove is running the business council response to the blazes. The people he has met in the Malua Bay region are "temporal saints," he says. Find out from the people you have met in this podcast what their plans are now. Who will rebuild and who is planning to move on. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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16:12
Kindness
Heroes are easy to find in Malua Bay. Raj Gupta is a lifesaver. Too humble to talk about his own fire losses, he would rather talk about the patients who come to his Malua Bay pharmacy. He opened it in the wake of the fires and dispensed medicine in the dark for free. Ken Sloan is the man you would want to see if a devastating fire had just ripped through. He runs the South Coast's best opp shop near Malua Bay and on New Year's Eve morning he was following firetrucks into razed farms to give shattered survivors bottles of water. Emily Maguire has been busy giving haircuts and washes to women who have lost their homes. She sends them home with new makeup and hair products. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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30:01
Trauma
Amid the horror, one thing is sure in Malua Bay. No one will be the same. We speak to Lifeline about how they are helping people come to terms with the trauma. Post traumatic stress is already apparent in many who stared down the flames and survived. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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18:01
Heroes
Stoic fire chief Shane Fitzsimmons gave comfort to the people of Malua Bay 24 hours after the inferno. The toll of the dreadful fire season is never far when the commissioner recounts the toll of 25 deaths across the state, including six of his own men. The horror summer didn’t spare his volunteers like Steve Hillyer, a funny Australian larrikin. It's a wonder he has time to be funny, he is homeless. The volunteer firefighter spent more than 24 hours saving other people's homes only to return to his to find a pile of ash See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This Australian bush fire season has been unprecedented. In this podcast you will hear harrowing accounts of survival and the incredible acts of bravery and kindness which are helping the town of Malua Bay in southern New South Wales on the path to recovery. The town’s cast of heroes is a long one - the young surf life saver whose quick thinking spared hundreds of lives at the town beach, the RFS volunteers whose houses burned while they were saving others and the now homeless pharmacist who dispensed free medicine in the dark. This podcast captures the best of Australians.
Australia