Australia’s no 1 university for research impact
History Lab
The series
At History Lab we’ve got some good stories to tell
But we are interested in much more than just the story. Instead of an academic or other expert telling you what to think, History Lab wants to draw you in to the investigative process. It wants you to come along with us as we try to make sense of the traces the past leaves in the present. You’ll find that this can sometimes be confusing and frustrating: records are patchy, evidence is destroyed and a lot of the time people disagree about what happened and what it means.
But more often than not, trying to make sense of the traces of the past is also pretty exciting. Things are not always what they seem. Aren’t we always in the process of finding that out? Come and join us, as together we try and make sense of the big and little questions all around us.
In a History Lab season like no other, we’re pulling on the threads of one of Australia’s greatest misunderstood histories, moving beyond the myths to learn what the Aboriginal brothers Jimmy and Joe Governor faced in both life and death.
Jimmy and Joe Governor were from Wiradjuri and Wonnarua country, and were the last proclaimed outlaws in Australia, wanted dead or alive.
Australia’s budding Federation is the background setting to this remarkable story, tying the brothers to the inauguration of a ‘new’ nation and Australia’s dark history of frontier violence, racial injustice and the global trade and defilement of Aboriginal ancestral remains.
To learn more, visit the Last Outlaws website.
This Impact Studios production is a collaboration with the Governor family descendants and the UTS Faculty of Law.
The Last Outlaws, Season 5 of History Lab, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Digital History Prize, as well as Best History Podcast and Podcast of the Year at the Australian Podcast Awards.
Tile art from ‘Blood On His Hands, Cleansed By Salt Water’ by Aunty Loretta Ethel Parsley, commissioned by Impact Studios.
Podcast playlist
EPISODE 0
Introducing History Lab Season Four – The Last Outlaws
The Last Outlaws is the latest audio series to be released by Impact Studios, an audio production house embedded in the University of Technology Sydney.
The trilogy podcast is based on UTS Law Professor Katherine Biber’s tenacious and careful research of Jimmy and Joe Governor, Australia’s last proclaimed outlaws.
The Governor brothers’ story has been told in books and film before, but never like this.
For the Governor family descendants this is a difficult story to tell, but one that demands to be heard.
Coming September 22nd.
EPISODE 3
What remains of Joe Governor?
After Jimmy’s trial, what happened to his brother Joe?
Joe has mostly been forgotten by history, and his presence in the archives is little more than a whisper.
From coronial records, family tales and a visit to a country pub, it becomes clear that Joe fell foul of the frontier, in life and death.
And yet, more questions remain: Was Joe Governor, an outlaw, killed lawfully?
How do his ancestral remains become another transactional asset in the murky world of race science? And why is western knowledge still entangled in its colonial past?
EPISODE 2
Death Row Diary
How does the law deal with an outlaw?
Jimmy Governor is captured and his legal case becomes a lightning rod for justice in the new federation. But how did Australia’s most-wanted murderer get one of the best lawyers in the colony?
A prison experiment begins with a diary and we find out how the present mimics the past.
EPISODE 1
The Last Outlaws
This is the tale of a prison colony trying to become a country and the murder case that stood in its way, but this is not a true crime podcast.
Jimmy and Joe Governor, two brothers from Wiradjuri and Wonnarua country, were the last proclaimed outlaws in Australia – wanted dead or alive.
120 years later we examine what has survived and what we can still learn from the Governor brothers’ story.
To find out more visit: https://thelastoutlaws.com.au
