Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

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.
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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.

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.
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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.

The 6:30 to Gippsland - Australian Unsolved Mystery

On the evening of Saturday, 7 June 1919, a fireman named Frederick Mills climbed the coal pile in his tender as a steam train approached Korumburra station in South Gippsland. In the light of the signal box, he saw a body on the carriage roof. It was still warm.
The deceased was Alexander Gordon Eastman, a twenty-one-year-old butcher from Prahran, who had boarded the 6:30 to Gippsland a few hours earlier with his aunt. He had stepped away at Dandenong to find a friend. The friend was never traced.
This episode examines the discovery, the inquest, and the four competing theories about what happened on the South Gippsland line that winter night. No conclusion the evidence doesn't support is reached.


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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay
Sources
The Argus (Melbourne), 10 June 1919, p. 4: "Train Mystery. Body Identified. Gold Ring Missing from Finger." Trove: nla.news-article1477101
The Argus (Melbourne), 26 June 1919, p. 9: "Train Mystery. Deputy Coroner's Finding. No Foul Play." Trove: nla.news-article1482558
The Advertiser (Adelaide), 11 June 1919, p. 9: "The Death of Eastman." Trove: nla.news-article5655217
The Ballarat Star, 11 June 1919, p. 1: "Korumburra Train Mystery — Supposed Solution." Trove: nla.news-article212643831

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich - The Unanswered - Australian Unsolved Mystery

The search covered more than a thousand square miles of Bass Strait. Five days. An RAAF Orion, eight civilian aircraft, ocean-going vessels. The official investigation took nearly four years.
In Part Two of Strewth's investigation into the disappearance of Frederick Valentich, we go looking for answers and we find, instead, a case that resists every explanation applied to it. The spatial disorientation theory that most aviation experts accept, and why the man who was actually there that night doesn't buy it. The ground witnesses, the photographs taken at Cape Otway twenty minutes before Valentich's first radio call, and what analysis has and hasn't been able to confirm. The 315-page investigation file that researchers were told had been destroyed, sitting untouched in the National Archives for thirty-four years.
And one more thing. A story that a researcher carried for more than twenty years before he knew what to do with it about a South Australian farmer, a shadow that fell across him in a paddock the morning after Valentich disappeared, and what he found attached to the outside of the object above him.


Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast 
Strewth social media links -  https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast 
Contact us - [email protected] 
Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay
Sources:
Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report (1982) Department of Transport, Commonwealth of Australia. File reference V116/783/1047, approved for publication April 27, 1982. 
Marine Search and Rescue File (1978) National Archives of Australia, Series A4703, control symbol 1978/1205. 
Radio Transcript of VH-DSJ Final Transmission (1978) Reconstructed for broadcast from the official BASI published transcript. 
Haines, Richard F. (1987) Melbourne Episode: Case Study of a Missing Pilot. LDA Press (LSRG)
Simpson, George (2022) Nothing on Radar: The Valentich Mystery. Self-published (Amazon). 
Haines, Richard F. & Norman, Paul (2000) "Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop." Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14(2). 
Haines, Richard F. (1981) Sound spectrum analysis of the 17-second metallic transmission. Journal of UFO Studies. 
McGaha, James & Nickell, Joe (2013) "The Valentich Disappearance: Another UFO Cold Case Solved." Skeptical Inquirer, 37(6), November/December 2013. 
Haines, Richard F. (undated, published PSU CiteSeerX) "Valentich Disappearance: New Evidence and a New Conclusion." 
Chalker, Bill (2019) "Australian UFO Mysteries: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich." New Dawn, Issue 173 (March–April 2019)
Flight Safety Australia (February 2025) "Leaving This World." Official publication of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA)
Chalker, Bill (1979) "The Missing Cessna and the UFO: A Preliminary Report on the Bass Strait-King Island Affair." Flying Saucer Review, Volume 24, No. 5, March 1979.
Chalker, Bill (1984) "Vanished? The Valentich Affair Re-examined." Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 30, No. 2.
Basterfield, Keith (2012) "Valentich Files Released by Australian Government." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. 
Basterfield, Keith (2015) "Found: Two More Australian Government Files on the 1978 Valentich Disappearance." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. 
Basterfield, Keith (catalogue) "A Catalogue of UAP Reports from Victoria, Bass Strait and Tasmania at the Time of the Valentich Disappearance." 
Chalker, Bill (2013) "Strange Days, Strange Tales — A Valentich Connection." The OZ Files blog, October 2013. 
Tasmanian Aviation Historical Society (2020) "Mysteries of Aviation — Frederick Valentich and VH-DSJ." Available via tahs.org.au.
Discovery Science Channel (September 2013) The Unexplained Files, Season 1. 
NBC / Cosgrove-Meurer Productions (September 29, 1993) Unsolved Mysteries, Season 6, Episode 2. 
The Age (Melbourne), October 23, 1978 
Herald Sun (Melbourne), 2014 Coverage of the Victorian UFO Action group's "Age of Reason" conference; 
Coonabarabran Times, November 17, 1994

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich - The Flight - Australian Unsolved Mystery

On the evening of Saturday, October 21, 1978, a twenty-year-old pilot named Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne. He crossed the coast at Cape Otway at seven o'clock, right on schedule. Six minutes later, he radioed Melbourne Flight Service to ask if there was any known traffic below five thousand feet.
There wasn't.
What followed was a six-minute radio exchange that has never been satisfactorily explained. Frederick described something above him, a long shape, metallic, shiny, with a green light, hovering, orbiting, moving at speeds he could not identify. His last clear words were: it is hovering and it's not an aircraft.
Then seventeen seconds of metallic sound.
Then silence.
Frederick Valentich and his Cessna were never found.
In Part One of this two-part Strewth investigation, we follow Frederick from the beginning, his obsessive love of flying, the exam failures he hid from everyone, the engagement ring on layaway, the Saturday evening plans he would never keep. We put him in that aircraft. We fly that route with him. And we listen to every word of that radio transmission, in full, exactly as it was recorded.
Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast 
Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast 
Contact us - [email protected] 
Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay


Sources:
Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report (1982) Department of Transport, Commonwealth of Australia. File reference V116/783/1047, approved for publication April 27, 1982. 
Marine Search and Rescue File (1978) National Archives of Australia, Series A4703, control symbol 1978/1205. 
Radio Transcript of VH-DSJ Final Transmission (1978) Reconstructed for broadcast from the official BASI published transcript. 
Haines, Richard F. (1987) Melbourne Episode: Case Study of a Missing Pilot. LDA Press (LSRG)
Simpson, George (2022) Nothing on Radar: The Valentich Mystery. Self-published (Amazon). 
Haines, Richard F. & Norman, Paul (2000) "Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop." Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14(2). 
Haines, Richard F. (1981) Sound spectrum analysis of the 17-second metallic transmission. Journal of UFO Studies. 
McGaha, James & Nickell, Joe (2013) "The Valentich Disappearance: Another UFO Cold Case Solved." Skeptical Inquirer, 37(6), November/December 2013. 
Haines, Richard F. (undated, published PSU CiteSeerX) "Valentich Disappearance: New Evidence and a New Conclusion." 
Chalker, Bill (2019) "Australian UFO Mysteries: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich." New Dawn, Issue 173 (March–April 2019)
Flight Safety Australia (February 2025) "Leaving This World." Official publication of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA)
Chalker, Bill (1979) "The Missing Cessna and the UFO: A Preliminary Report on the Bass Strait-King Island Affair." Flying Saucer Review, Volume 24, No. 5, March 1979.
Chalker, Bill (1984) "Vanished? The Valentich Affair Re-examined." Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 30, No. 2.
Basterfield, Keith (2012) "Valentich Files Released by Australian Government." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. 
Basterfield, Keith (2015) "Found: Two More Australian Government Files on the 1978 Valentich Disappearance." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. 
Basterfield, Keith (catalogue) "A Catalogue of UAP Reports from Victoria, Bass Strait and Tasmania at the Time of the Valentich Disappearance." 
Chalker, Bill (2013) "Strange Days, Strange Tales — A Valentich Connection." The OZ Files blog, October 2013. 
Tasmanian Aviation Historical Society (2020) "Mysteries of Aviation — Frederick Valentich and VH-DSJ." Available via tahs.org.au.
Discovery Science Channel (September 2013) The Unexplained Files, Season 1. 
NBC / Cosgrove-Meurer Productions (September 29, 1993) Unsolved Mysteries, Season 6, Episode 2. 
The Age (Melbourne), October 23, 1978 
Herald Sun (Melbourne), 2014 Coverage of the Victorian UFO Action group's "Age of Reason" conference; 
Coonabarabran Times, November 17, 1994