by Carol Baxter
It's rare to see a yawn from her spellbound audiences. It's more common to hear a groan, then a laugh, then a clap when she leaves her audiences hanging with the words: "All will be revealed ... in tomorrow's session!"
Carol Baxter speaking on the Regent Seven Seas Explorer in 2024.
Why haven't you heard about Australia's first internationally-famous female aviator, Jessie Miller, who became a close friend of Amelia Earhart? All is revealed in this three-part talk.
Carol's book about Jessie Miller, The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller, is being turned into a TV series called The Aviatrix.
While holidaying in London in 1927, bored Australian housewife Jessie Miller decides to join World War I aviator Bill Lancaster in his attempt at a record-setting flight. She hopes to become the first woman to travel from England to Australia by air. But aloft in their open-cockpit biplane, events soon spiral out of control.
Click HERE to watch a video snippet from this talk (filmed late 2023).
Australia’s first internationally famous aviatrix, Jessie Miller, travels to America in 1928 where she becomes a record-setting celebrity aviator, the world's first female test pilot, and a close friend of Amelia Earhart. Then one day she disappears ...
As the Great Depression grips America, celebrity Australian aviatrix Jessie Miller finds herself the world’s most notorious scarlet woman and a central player in a sensational American murder trial.
The Catalpa series
Little do most people realise that Ireland's centuries-long crusade to achieve independence from their British overlords was critically boosted by a bold plan set in motion by some Irish Americans.
In 1875, Irish-born Americans plot to help their homeland throw off the yoke of British oppression. Their plan to liberate Irish political prisoners – Fenians – from the Western Australian penal colony is both audacious and perilous. Could it possibly succeed?
The American whaler Catalpa docks in Western Australia in 1876 on a secret mission to liberate Irish political prisoners from under the noses of their British captors. But nothing goes according to plan.
Have you heard about the American ghost ship that became one of the world's greatest maritime mysteries? These two talks grippingly recount the discovery, the investigation, and the theories proposed to explain its abandonment.
In November 1872, the now-famous American brigantine Mary Celeste sails from New York for Italy carrying eight crew members, two passengers, and a cargo of alcohol. Soon afterwards, it's found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean. What did the investigators discover?
After the Mary Celeste is found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes one of the world's greatest maritime mysteries. After 150 years of theories, speculations and outrageous claims, can we determine what really happened to the passengers and crew?
When Britain sends the First Fleet across the world's oceans to establish penal settlements in New South Wales and Norfolk Island in 1787/88, these new outposts of the British empire are soon plunged into a life-threatening crisis.
NB. This talk can instead be called Marooned if the title Shipwrecked is considered undesirable.
In 1937 the world’s most famous aviatrix, Amelia Earhart, sets off across the Pacific on the final leg of her world flight … and disappears. Did her empty fuel tanks force her to ditch into the ocean? Was she spying for the US government? Was she captured by the Japanese and compelled to become one of the Tokyo Rose broadcasters? Join the history detective, Carol Baxter, as she attempts to determine what really did happen to Amelia Earhart.
When retired US Navy pilot Jay Prochnow sets off from San Francisco in 1978 to ferry a Cessna to Sydney, little does he realise that his navigation system is about to fail, leaving him lost over the Pacific Ocean as darkness falls and his fuel tanks empty. Can a nearby Air New Zealand DC-10 save him?
As we cross the world's oceans, changing time zones along the way, join the history detective, Carol Baxter, as she investigates "time" itself and how the world came to shackle the eight units of time that drive our world today.
When Quaker ex-convict John Tawell attempts to rid himself of his demanding ex-mistress, he flees the scene in one of England's revolutionary new railway trains. Unbeknown to him, the only electric telegraph line in the entire world that's capable of sending a random message at a moment's notice is strung along wires beside this particular stretch of railway tracks. The deadly consequences help launch the Information Age.
From Carol's book The Peculiar Case of the Electric Constable.
Join Carol Baxter on a rollicking robbing ride across New South Wales in the 1860s with outlaw Captain Thunderbolt – aka Frederick Ward aka the “gentleman bushranger” – and his feisty Aboriginal lover Mary Ann Bugg.
From Carol's book Captain Thunderbolt and His Lady, which is being turned into a TV series called Thunderbolt and Bugg.
When audacious convicts tunnel through a sewerage drain into the bank owned by Sydney’s wealthiest gentlemen, they steal the equivalent, in today’s terms, of twenty million dollars. Can the authorities catch the thieves, reassert their imperious authority in this penal settlement (of all places), and save the colony from a devastating economic collapse?
From Carol's book Breaking the Bank.
In 1888 – the year Jack the Ripper launched himself onto the world stage – Louisa Collins finds herself in Australia's spotlight. Nicknamed "The Lucretia Borgia of Botany Bay", she is declared by some to be worse than the Ripper. But is she innocent or guilty of the deaths of her husbands?
From Carol's book Black Widow. Watch a video snippet from her "Black Widow" talk (filmed 2018).