Sunday History Talks: Qantas Bomb Hoax

Qantas 755 from Sydney to Hong Kong took off from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport around 11am on Wednesday 26 May 1971. There were 133 people onboard. Shortly after midday, with the plane over Dalby in Queensland and the lunch service about to start, Qantas’s deputy general manager Phil Howson in Sydney, took a phone call. ‘Call me Mr Brown’ said the English accented caller. He said there was an altitude sensitive bomb on board but for $500,000 ($4M today) - he’d tell them where to find it. Qantas decided not to trust the dubious expertise of the NSW police and to pay up. What no one knew was that Mr Brown - an English migrant called Peter Macari - was a habitué of Darlinghurst and the Cross, and was a rampant sexual predator and likely a double murderer. But since Brandy and Duncan first told the story a few years…