Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

Allison Road - The Haunting Tale of Chrissie Venn
On a February afternoon in 1921, a thirteen-year-old girl named Chrissie Venn left her home on Allison Road in North Motton, Tasmania, to collect groceries from the village. She was carrying a basket and nine shillings. She didn't come home.
Nine days later, searchers found her body stuffed headfirst into a hollow tree stump, half a mile from her front door.
More than a hundred years later, the question of who killed Chrissie Venn has never been answered. But the road where she died hasn't forgotten. Drivers on Allison Road still report engines cutting out, GPS signals vanishing, scratch marks appearing on car doors with no explanation. A girl in a white dress, standing at the roadside, gone before you can be sure you saw her.
Allison Road. A true crime story. A ghost story. And a reminder that in small communities, the secrets that aren't spoken aloud have a habit of making themselves known another way.
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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay
Sources:
Zeehan and Dundas Herald (Tasmania), March 1921. Digitised via Trove, National Library of Australia. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/83958105
Connolly, Pauline. "Drs. Ratten and Ferris and the Chrissie Venn Case." paulineconolly.com, 2025. https://paulineconolly.com/2025/dr-ferris-and-dr-ratten-meet-in-a-courtroom/
"The Haunting of Allison Road: The Murder of Chrissie Venn." Dangerous Roads. https://www.dangerousroads.org/australia-and-oceania/tasmania/13620-the-haunting-of-allison-road-the-murder-of-chrissie-venn.html
"The Ghost of Allison Road." Tasmania's Most Haunted, January 4, 2019. https://tasmaniasmosthaunted.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/the-ghost-of-allison-road/
Sun Ithilwen. "The Road Haunted by a Little Girl: The Murder of Chrissie Venn." YouTube, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3QqBwCJj_E

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?
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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

Home Tonight - The Wonnangatta Unsolved Mystery 
In the summer of 1917, two men vanished from an isolated cattle station deep in Victoria's high country. What followed became one of Australia's oldest and most enduring mysteries. A story whispered through pubs, shearing sheds and campfires for more than a century.
This week on Strewth, we head into the Wonnangatta Valley to unravel the folklore, the rumours, and the unanswered questions behind the story the high country never let go of.
Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast 
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Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com 
Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay
Sources:
Gippsland Murders and Murder Mysteries, Alby Adams, 2010
Harry's Hut Blog: Wonnangatta Murders the facts, speculation and theories - June 2014, https://harryshut.net/wonnangatta-murders/ 
Peninsula Essence: Peter McCullough, Who killed Jim Barclay, January 2018, https://peninsulaessence.com.au/who-killed-jim-barclay/ 
Strange Company, The Wonnangatta Murders: A Classic Australian Mystery, May 2020, https://strangeco.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-wonnangatta-murders-classic.html

The Shark Arm Case - Australian True Crime Mystery

Anzac Day, 1935. A live tiger shark in a Coogee swimming pool vomits up a human arm in front of a crowd of holiday families. And on the inside of the forearm, a tattoo that a man reading the Sunday paper over breakfast will recognise as his brother's.
What follows is one of the strangest murder cases in Australian history. A bankrupt billiard hall manager. A respectable boatbuilder running cocaine through Sydney Heads. A four-hour police chase around the harbour. And a body found in a car at Dawes Point in the small hours of the morning.
Nobody was ever convicted of anything.


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:
The Shark Arm Case — Vince Kelly, Angus & Robertson, 1975

The Shark Arm Murders — Alex Castles, Wakefield Press, 1995

Shark Arm Murder 1935 — Dictionary of Sydney, 2010 - https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/shark_arm_murder_1935 

The Shark Arm Murders — Sydney Crime Museum, 2015 - https://www.sydneycrimemuseum.com/crime-stories/the-shark-arm-murders/

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