The History of the Port Arthur Massacre | 157
History of the 90s
Kathy Kenzora
4.7 • 610 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In April 1996, a gunman killed 35 people in what was and still is Australia's worst mass shooting. The attack by Martin Bryant devasted the nation and inspired the government to quickly enact tough new gun laws that have been a model for other countries ever since.
Guest info:
Claire Braund, in 1996 she was a reporter for The Examiner Newspaper in Tasmania. Today she is the Executive Director of Women on Boards, an organization she co-founded in 2006
Show info:
Instagram: @that90spodcast
Email: 1995podcast@gmail.com
Substack: @historyofthe90s
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | At 6 o'clock on the morning of April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant's alarm went off at his home in Tasmania. |
| 0:12.1 | He wasted no time, getting dressed and loading up his yellow Volvo. |
| 0:16.8 | Inside a blue duffel bag, he had packed three semi-automatic guns, as well as 1,500 rounds of ammunition. |
| 0:24.1 | The 28-year-old also loaded handcuffs, rope, a hunting knife, and several containers of gasoline into the trunk of his car before heading out. |
| 0:43.3 | About four hours later, he pulled up to a small pink weatherboard cottage, a bed and breakfast popular with tourists visiting the far-flung Australian state. |
| 0:49.3 | Seescape Cottage was owned and operated by an elderly couple, |
| 0:53.3 | well liked by their neighbors, and known for their community work and generosity. |
| 0:58.2 | The wife was also admired for her homemade jam, which she made from fruit trees that grew on their waterfront property. |
| 1:06.2 | But Martin Bryant had a simmering grudge against the couple for a perceived slight many years earlier. |
| 1:13.4 | And that Sunday morning, he had come to the guest house focused on exacting revenge in a hail of bullets. |
| 1:20.6 | And he'd killed them because he felt aggrieved towards them. |
| 1:24.4 | He felt that his father who'd wanted to buy that business had been somehow |
| 1:30.6 | passed over. Anyway, he shot them and he stole their weapons. And then he went down the single road, |
| 1:36.7 | the single lane to Port Arthur. I'm Kathy Kanzora, and this is History of the 90s, a podcast |
| 1:43.9 | about a decade that changed the world. |
| 1:46.9 | In this episode, I'm looking back at Australia's worst mass shooting, a shocking crime that killed 35 people, |
| 1:55.3 | and led to an immediate and extraordinary overhaul of the country's gun laws. |
| 2:00.6 | This is the history of the Port Arthur Massacre. |
| 2:09.0 | After killing David and Sally Martin at the Seescape Cottage, |
| 2:13.4 | Martin Bryant drove the short distance to his next destination. |
| 2:17.2 | When he arrived, he found a spot in the crowded parking lot. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday, and there were already many cars and buses at the busy tourist attraction. A surfboard was tied with bungee cords to the roof racks on Bryant's car, but he wasn't a surfy. In fact, he had no idea how to surf. |
| 2:36.4 | It was just an image that Bryant had started to cultivate a few months earlier. |
... |
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