In Australia, our bank robbers aren’t just crafty… they’re literate too. Gregory David Roberts actual haul from heisting banks may have been a paltry $38,000, but his career after the robberies is the real kicker. Roberts was initially nabbed by the po-lice, but then managed to escape prison by using the complicated thievery technique of “walking out the front door in broad daylight”. He then fled to Mumbai where he joined the local mafia and was on the lam for a good decade before getting stitched up in Frankfurt in 1990 (history’s lesson: never trust the Germans). The best bit is that after being shipped back to Australia to serve 6 years in the slammer he wrote a novel based on his experiences called Shantaram. And then Johnny Depp fell in love with the book and is now filming a movie adaptation. I don’t want to play a game of ‘join the dots’ on this one, but… apparently, rob a bank and you get to be friends with Johnny Depp. Where’s my balaclava?

The mystery of the Kerry Packer safe robbery is so clouded that not only does the Internet not have a scrap of information on it, but I can barely remember it myself. As such, this is all straight off the top of my head and certifiably factually dubious. It all went down somewhere in the United States (possibly Las Vegas), where media mogul Kerry Packer (possibly) owned a building. Inside the building there was a safe (of some sort), in which lay some precious gold bullion. Or diamonds. Anyhow, despite tight security the safe was eventually cased and the priceless artifacts (whatever they were) were never seen again. Aside from the fact that the criminal was never caught, the real mystery is that the story has also apparently been “robbed” from the Internet. I could find no shred of information about the job on any website, leading me to consider the prospect that the greatest safe robbery ever has become the greatest Internet heist of all time. Either that or I'm misremembering a plot from Quincy.

No list of heists would be complete without a train robbery. Australia’s best was the Great Ghan Robbery, which happened in May of 1935 upon the Ghan train, a service that runs from Darwin to Adelaide (an odd pairing, if you don’t mind me saying). Now, in the glory years of the 1930s you didn’t need fancy “security guards” or new-fangled “common sense” to transport money between banks. No, back in the 30s you’d just stuff an envelope full of gold bullion, scribble “BANK OF NSW” on the front and then shove it in the post box. Such was the course of events that landed a 15kg parcel of precious gold in a mail bag aboard the Ghan in May of 35. Much to everyone’s dignified, trusting surprise, somewhere along the remote line between Alice Springs with Quorn the parcel went a-missing. No one was ever caught, and the two staff aboard the mail train were fined “15 shillings” each for ‘carelessness’. Carelessness? If only I could lose a few million in bullion and then get a dollar fine for my troubles. Did they even hold that train staff upside down and give them a shake?

Despite being shackled with the lamest of all monikers, The Postcard Bandit is Australia’s best living bank robber. His real name is Brenden Abbott, and over the course of his mischief making he managed to pocket about $5 million, and very little of that has been found by police. Aside from robbing banks, the rascal’s best talent is getting the hell out of places once said robbing is taken care of. He has escaped from prison several times – once, memorably, by constructing a guard’s uniform in his spare time and then trundling out the front door of Fremantle Prison. Abbot was Australia's Most Wanted Man from 1989-95 when that particular phrase meant something other than the title of 9’s latest reality gambit. During this five year period he was the James Bond of the Australian bank robbing scene (admittedly a tight field), inventing disguises, electronic gadgetry and high-tech weapons in order to get the loot. All that and he got shackled with the ‘Postcard Bandit’.