The Reporter: True Stories

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The Reporter: True Stories
Series

The Reporter: True Stories

Gary Adshead’s 40-year journalism career has been spent pursuing the truth, no matter how ugly, dangerous – or ridiculous. From crooks and crimes to state secrets and heroic rescues, we take you behind the headlines.

18 stories
Tony Bullimore rescue. Gary Adshead The Reporter series.

Heads you keep the story, tails you lose: Reporting the Tony Bullimore rescue

“There’s something in the water,” I pointed and yelled from the deck of the warship. “There. He’s alive. There. It’s him.” But it still wasn’t my story to tell.

  • by Gary Adshead
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Bullimore emerges as HMAS Adelaide crew knock on the opposite side of the hull. This image was part of a folio that won the West Australian Press Photographer of the Year Awards for Tony McDonough, a Perth freelance photographer sent by Fairfax Media to cover the situation.

The Reporter podcast: Bullimore and the coin toss

This week on The Reporter podcast, Michael Thomson and Gary Adshead discuss the extraordinary rescue of missing round-the-world yachtsman Tony Bullimore.

A reporter walking his dog one Sunday resulted in a tip-off about the identity of a severed head had washed up on Rottnest Island wrapped in plastic.

From racing to Rottnest: Piecing together the full story of Perth’s severed head

A gifted child and a charming man, Stephen Cookson could have had it all. Instead, he sank deep into the underworld, where one day he got everything he deserved.

  • by Gary Adshead
Stephen Cookson during the time of his relationship with Torney.

The Reporter podcast: The Head in the Bag

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson how an ordinary walk with the dog led to a tip-off about the identity of a dismembered body.

He was the secret operative working to sting corrupt police. On the fringes of organised crime. Only one reporter was ever to interview him.
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Off the record or else: A Perth journo, a Como hotel and a story too big to publish

Few people knew where Gary Adshead was going that night. To a hotel in which he would hear the most remarkable story of his career – but one he couldn’t report.

  • by Gary Adshead
If these walls could talk: I heard explosive secrets in this sleepy suburban hotel.

The Reporter podcast: the story of T3

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson how he scored a clandestine interview with a secret operative working to sting corrupt police.

He was the secret operative working to sting corrupt police. On the fringes of organised crime. Only one reporter was ever to interview him.
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Inside story: How a bikie debt collector brought down a Perth pillar of parliament

Small town, big connections: How a speed junkie was running Perth’s parliament, how one man brought him down, and how this reporter was finally unleashed.

  • by Gary Adshead
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She was such a convincing con artist that she was made chief executive of the largest hospital south of Perth.

This fugitive con artist fooled health departments across Australia. Until the day her phone rang

The true story of how a journalist pursued this prestigious executive’s true identity, building a damning dossier that brought her house of cards crashing down.

  • by Gary Adshead
Ashton Foley with a copy of the report she prompted into Peel Health Campus.

The Reporter podcast: When the whistleblower turned out to be the fugitive

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson a story of deception that would better suit a Hollywood movie than a WA health service.

Once this reporter exposed how police call centre operators were being paid in drugs and money for tip-offs and computer access, detectives intercepted a threat on the reporter’s life so serious he had to leave town.

Tow trucks and death threats: The Perth industry that spun out of control

Perth’s unregulated tow truck industry was a hotbed of corruption and violence. And when one reporter exposed its underbelly, detectives told him to leave town.

  • by Gary Adshead
A tow truck is firebombed in 2021 in Perth.

The Reporter podcast: Tow Trucks and Death Threats

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson the inside story of an industry that spun out of control.

Robert Bogucki The Reporter series Gary Adshead. Inside the extraordinary real story of Nine’s discovery of a lost pilgrim.
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Finding Bogucki: The fallout, the stuff-ups and a tinderbox of tension

Behind the scenes of the extraordinary rescue of Robert Bogucki in the Australian desert, and how those sent to observe found themselves playing a leading role.

  • by Gary Adshead
Robert Bogucki case

The Reporter podcast: Finding Bogucki

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson the inside story of the extraordinary rescue of Robert Bogucki in the Australian desert.

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Echelon Gary Adshead reporter series Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station Kojarena

The truth is out there – at a spy base 400 kilometres north of Perth

The source was prepared to grant me 10 questions about the Kojarena base. I was to prepare them carefully – there would only be one chance to get them answered.

  • by Gary Adshead
The Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station in Kojarena.

The Reporter podcast: Spy Base Echelon

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson the story of one of the most secret spy bases in the world.

Gary Adshead spent five years to dismantle the web of faked and forged achievements this MP spun to mislead those he was supposed to represent.

The photo and the phone call: How a tip-off toppled master manipulator Barry Urban

This reporter was told he had a “bum steer”, “not really a story”. Undaunted, he launched an investigation that would finally land its subject in jail.

  • by Gary Adshead
Barry Urban with then-premier Mark McGowan.

The Reporter podcast: Unmasking Barry Urban

This week on The Reporter podcast, Gary Adshead tells Michael Thomson how he launched an investigation that would finally land its subject in jail.

Gary Adshead spent five years to dismantle the web of faked and forged achievements this MP spun to mislead those he was supposed to represent.

Stolen valour, stolen skills: Revealing the depth of MP Barry Urban’s betrayal

Reporter Gary Adshead was methodically exposing the Perth MP’s multiple lies over faked war medals when a chance conversation led him even deeper into the mystery.

  • by Gary Adshead