Sold out — 21 April 2026 — original robbery site
50 Years After the Great Bookie Robbery
21st April 1976 - 21st April 2026.
At 12:07 pm, 50 years to the minute, the story returned to the room where it began.
On 21 April 2026, Gregory M Carroll marked the 50th anniversary of the Great Bookie Robbery with a sold-out reading and presentation at Red Spice Road, inside the former Victoria Club site in Melbourne. The event was a quiet return to the room, the time, and the people behind one of Australia’s most enduring crime stories.
The robbery took eleven minutes. The consequences lasted decades. The presentation did not celebrate the crime. It asked what remained: the families, the violence, the silence, and the cost carried by those left behind.
50
years to the day
12:07
the time of the robbery
Sold out
at the original location
Channel 9 News Melbourne
Broadcast coverage from the anniversary event
Tony Jones and Channel 9 Melbourne covered the 50th anniversary story for the Sunday 6 pm news bulletin. The short excerpts below are presented as a record of the event and its historical context.
Introduction — returning to the Victoria Club room
A short excerpt from the Channel 9 News coverage introducing the 50th anniversary reading at the original robbery site.
Ian Carroll — the personal cost behind the story
Gregory M Carroll reflects on the human consequence of the robbery and the death of his brother, Ian Carroll.
Tony Jones closing — fifty years on
Tony Jones closes the Channel 9 News report on the 50th anniversary of the Great Bookie Robbery.
9Now availability may change. Short excerpts remain subject to Channel 9 copyright and are included here only to document the anniversary coverage.
Event gallery
The room, the readers, and the record
Images from the sold-out anniversary presentation at Red Spice Road, the former Victoria Club site. The gallery is included as a record of the day rather than a celebration of the crime.
The event is over. The story is not.
11 Minutes is the novel that grew from the facts, the scars, and the long silence around the Great Bookie Robbery. The anniversary event was not just a launch or a reading. It was a return to a room where history, family memory, and consequence still sit close together.
For readers, the book offers a way into the documented history and the human cost behind the headlines: not simply how the robbery was done, but what followed when the money, the fear, and the myth took hold.