This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie.

Our old pal, Michael Adams, from the Forgotten Australia podcast, joins us again to tell us about an historical crime.

This time, we're travelling back almost exactly 100 years to the gold mines of Calgoorlie in Western Australia.

It's a classic Wild West scenario, with lots of money to be made, lots of

dodgy characters trying to get their hands on it, and an under-resourced police department

tasked with keeping it all under control. This is Australian true crime. We acknowledge the

traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundri Woi Warang people of the Koolin Nation.

And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

There were these two veteran detectives,

Detective Inspector John Walsh and Detective Sergeant

Alexander Pittman.

I think Pittman was about 53 and John Walsh was about 64.

So they were long in the tooth.

They were veterans.

So what they would do is they'd go out late at night or early in the morning to catch

these guys when they were sort of, you know, late at night or early in the morning to catch these

guys when they were sort of, you know, either setting up or about to come back in with

this stolen gold.

So anyway, on the 28th of April, 1926, these two cops, and they operated on bicycles.

So they ride out of town and that's it.

They're just not seen.

And no one's worried because they often go out of town on these stakeholders.

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