The Ballad of Tom Wills

2025-05-11

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This week we travel to Australia for a game of Marn Grook, to discuss origin stories; perhaps the archetypal troubled sportsman - and horrific massacres. Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, colonialism, and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people listening to this episode - I discuss some of your origin legends as best I can, and play a brief excerpt of a speech from an Aboriginal elder. Sources Include: Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories by Jim Haynes This University of Newcastle Article on Aboriginal mass...

This week we travel to Australia for a game of Marn Grook, to discuss origin stories; perhaps the archetypal troubled sportsman - and horrific massacres.

Trigger warnings: Murder, suicide, colonialism, and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people listening to this episode - I discuss some of your origin legends as best I can, and play a brief excerpt of a speech from an Aboriginal elder.

Sources Include:

Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories by Jim Haynes
This University of Newcastle Article on Aboriginal massacres, quoting studies by Professor Lyndall Ryan
This NSW State Library piece on The ‘First Fleet’
This article on Edward Wills
First Contact by Anita Heiss
This piece on the Dreamtime.

The deplorable (alleged) Neo-Nazi interruption of tribal elder Mark Brown, care of the Guardian
Speeches from Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese on election night 2025, care of SBS News.

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