Author Description

Australia has had more than its share of crime and, in fact, bloodshed, butchery and brutality has been with us since white settlement in 1788. From murder and mayhem to riot and rape, Australia has experienced every imaginable crime. There have been headless corpses, limbs in rivers, plane hijackings, audacious robberies and brazen con-men. Some of these crimes are etched deep into the Australian psyche and many of the central characters are part of the nation's folklore. Ned Kelly, a hanged criminal, is part of our culture and almost every Australian knows of such notorious cases as "The Pyjama Girl" and the horrific Anita Cobby murder. These are just the tip of a massive iceberg as crimes, both gruesome and mundane, have been committed on every day of the calendar. Here, for the first time, crimes have been listed when they have occurred, from New Year's Day to the singing of Auld Lang Syne at midnight on December 31. Every era of Australian criminal history is covered, from bushranging in colonial times to modern-day murder monsters. There is the unusual and the bizarre, from a train explosion to a head in a sink, from kidnapping and torture to escaped criminals. There are parent killers and perverts, corpses and conspiracies. All on a daily basis!