ABC Rewind

Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 2

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1978, Australian narcotics agents intercepted a campervan being unloaded on the Melbourne docks. What they discovered inside the van...

Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 1

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1978, narcotics agents discovered the largest ever haul of illicit drugs to land in Australia, stashed inside a campervan belonging ...

Michael Mansell: a life of radical resistance

27 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Activist and lawyer Michael Mansell has been fighting for Aboriginal rights in Australia for over 50 years. In this episode his daughter Nala Mansell...

The Friendship Spitfire: Jack Dawson-Green's war story

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A story of swagger, bravery, skill and ultimately, friendship, set on the frontline of war

Section 71: The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair (Part 2)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the second part of the bitter and long-running case known as the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, the battle heads all the way to the High Court.

Section 71: The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair (Part 1)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ever wondered how the term "secret women's business" entered the Australian vernacular? It's part of a bitter legal battle over land, culture and his...

Section 71: Communists, Terrorists and the High Court

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How much power does the federal government have to protect Australians from international threats?  Two key High Court cases, 50 years apart, which ...

Section 71: The High Court Dog-Fight on Schools Funding

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The High Court showdown over religious freedom that could help you understand how schools are funded to this day

Section 71 - The Tasmanian crime of gay sex

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It might surprise you to learn that until 1997, a man could be jailed for up to 21 years for having sex with another man in Australia. This is the st...

Remembering Windradyne's War

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1824, the British waged war against the Wiradjuri people of western NSW, a battle that shook the new colony.But many Australians have never heard ...

In my skin

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up Regina looked totally different from her brothers and sisters, she thought she was adopted. But her mother told her that was only partly t...

The medal that spoke

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1806,  Maori chief Te Pahi  was gifted a silver medal by Sydney Governor Philip Gidley King. He had come from Aotearoa to establish trade.But  ...

Crossing Enemy Lines

17 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Minna Muhlen-Schulte knew her surname came from her German grandfather who’d married her Australian grandmother in the 1930s and had lived in Berli...

The unspoken story of Isabel Pepper

10 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Producer Fiona Pepper had always known her great grandmother died far too young, but until recently, she never knew the full story.

Secrets and Lies | My year behind the Iron Curtain

03 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of the Cold War a New Zealand teenager is sent to a hospital in the Soviet Union to grow new fingers on her left hand. Sounds like fict...

Finding our father, Harry Valentine

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hidden family truths are discovered as two sisters follow the trail of their late fathers' secret life.

Green Mountain plane crash

20 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's the 19th February 1937, and a  Stinson passenger plane leaves Brisbane for a routine flight to Sydney, but it never arrives. Instead, its disap...

The Unknown Sailor - a wartime mystery

12 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A lost ship, A lost sailor, a lost identity. In November 1941 as war drew closer to Australia. the HMAS Sydney and its crew of 645 sailors disappeare...

The confidence men: conjuring up a wartime escape

05 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What if the only tool you had to escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in WW1 was a homemade Ouija board? The story of a wild and elegant hoax concocted...

Tupaia - star navigator of the Pacific

29 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1768 when James Cook sailed from Tahiti looking for the great southern land, Tupaia, a traditional Polynesia navigator was on board. His knowledge...

Retracing the sailors' walk

22 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

March 1797. Five British sailors and 12 Indian seamen are shipwrecked off the Gippsland coast in Victoria The closest settlement is the penal colon...

Last Light - the Valentich disappearance

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A young pilot. A distress call. A missing plane. What happened to Frederick Valentich in October 1978?

Friedrich the Fraud

08 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story behind one of Australia's greatest con artists. In the late 1980s, when millions went missing from Victoria's National Safety Council, the ...

Stories about radio - Listening to ghosts & Keep them guessing

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two stories about radio. In the past, radio was the most ephemeral of all media or art-forms. It's invisible, evanescent—it passes by the ear and ...

Green Skin - Aboriginal Vietnam Veterans

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The experiences of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who served in the Vietnam war have, until very recently, not been told. He...

Ep 2: Ray Denning - the stitch up

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With nothing to lose, Raymond Denning escapes Grafton prison in a rubbish bin. He has help from prisoner rights groups and an agenda to raise awarene...

Ep 1: Ray Denning - breaking out

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of one of Australia's most misunderstood criminals. After a traumatic childhood, Raymond Denning jumps from 'juvie' to jail. When an escap...

Last letters - the wartime legacy of Lark Force unit

04 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Port Moresby 1942, and the story of the most extraordinary postal delivery, when hundreds of letters from Australian POWs of the Japanese fell fr...

The Benalla Experiment - a camp for mothers and children

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The little known story of migrant camp that was home to over 60,000 people - single mothers and their children - in the years after World War II.

Fairlight CMI - the instrument of musical change

21 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is the story of - and the soundtrack to - one of the most influential instruments of the last 50 years. Meet the creators of the Fairlight, the ...

Asbestos — Dusted 03 | The human cost of mining in Australia

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Asbestos was once known as the wonder mineral. It's now banned in Australia. But before that happened, companies kept making and selling asbestos pro...

Coal — Dusted 02 | The human cost of mining in Australia

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When a vast coal seam was found running through the escarpment around Wollongong it seemed that this beautiful place had got lucky. But had it? Van B...

Gold — Dusted 01 | the human cost of mining in Australia

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gold may have made Australia rich, but historians are now digging up evidence of the devastating consequences of the silica dust that surfaced with i...

Ep 2: The Buried Tea Chests

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hidden for nearly a century, two chests of mail found under a Sydney home was declared to be one of the most important hauls in Australia’s posta...

Ep 1: The Buried Tea Chests

15 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When journalist Annika Blau learnt of the discovery of two tea chests of very valuable mail under the floorboards of an old Sydney home, she uncovere...

The sands of Ooldea: part 4 Wankani

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story of how the traditional custodians of Ooldea got their sacred water soak back and the healing of the land.

The sands of Ooldea: Part 3 Mamu

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

North west of Ooldea in South Australia's Great Victoria Desert is Maralinga where the British exploded seven nuclear bombs. This episode explores th...

The sands of Ooldea: Part 2 Kabbarli

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ooldea's most famous resident was Daisy Bates, also known as "Kabbarli" or grandmother. She lived at Ooldea for sixteen years in a tent, helping to f...

The sands of Ooldea: Part 1 Yuldi

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On the edge of the Nullabor, Ooldea, with its ancient water soak "Yuldi Kapi", is one of the most important Aboriginal sites in Australia. Trading ro...

One Tree: In Search of Stradivari's Sibling Violins

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Producer David Schulman has been on a quest – he’s been trying to find a single tree. David’s a violinist.  And for him, violins aren’t just...

The Missing Magdalens

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Magdalene Laundries for "fallen women" date back to 12th century Europe. These were Catholic run institutions to reform "wayward" women known as Mag...

A vapour of the mind: calling Sidney Jeffryes

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The achievements of Sidney Jeffryes, a radio operator on the 1911 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, have been notably missing from the polar records...

Finding Fanny Finch

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What if the most remarkable of all your ancestors was the one left off the family tree? Historian Kacey Sinclair and two of Fanny Finch’s direct de...

Invasion 1975 - the untold story of the Chinese-Timorese

14 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Millie Skoko had never really thought much about her Mum’s side of the family, who are Chinese Timorese, and who came to live in Australia in the e...

Visions of the Filipina bride

10 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up in the 1990s, Alan Weedon always wondered why he was one of many kids born to an Australian father and Filipina mother. It was a pattern ...

Fanny Smith: Icon

04 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1899, twenty-three years after her people were declared ‘extinct’, Fanny Smith made a revolutionary recording where she announced to the world...

Laya's Way Home Part 2

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945, Adolf Semler, a German World War One hero, was sent to a slave labour camp for refusing to denounce his Jewish wife Laya. In 2022, their gre...

Laya's Way Home Part 2

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945, Adolf Semler, a German World War One hero, was sent to a slave labour camp for refusing to denounce his Jewish wife Laya. In 2022, their gre...

Laya's Way Home Part 1

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945, Laya Semler became the last Jew sent to a concentration camp from Wennigsen, Germany.  Her non-Jewish husband Adolf chose slave labour rath...

Laya's Way Home Part 1

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1945, Laya Semler became the last Jew sent to a concentration camp from Wennigsen, Germany.  Her non-Jewish husband Adolf chose slave labour rath...

Spies, lies and hairdryers

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1950s a romantic proposition by a Russian diplomat transformed Kay Marshall from an admin worker into one of Australia’s most important doub...

Through Samurai Eyes, ep 2

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When amateur historian Nick Russell stumbled across a set of very old Japanese manuscripts, he unearthed a dramatic tale of convict mutineers, samura...

Through Samurai eyes: one of Australia's greatest convict escape stories

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A dramatic tale featuring pirates, Samurai warriors, a historical detective and a ship of escaped convicts from Australia who washed up in Japan in 1...

Those Bloody Vegos - a short history of vegetarianism

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A plant-eating sleuth uncovers the hidden history of vegetarianism in Australia - featuring spiritualists, nudists, and politicians, plus plenty of n...

The Unknown Sailor

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A lost ship, A lost sailor, a lost identity. In November 1941 as war drew closer to Australia. the HMAS Sydney and its crew of 645 sailors disappeare...

The Lost Boys of Daylesford

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On a clear cold Sunday morning in June 1867, three little boys wandered away from their home near the town of Daylesford, on Dja Dja Wurrung country ...

Green Mountains Plane Crash

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

19th February 1937, a Stinson passenger plane leaves Brisbane for a routine flight to Sydney, but never it arrives. Instead, its disappearance sparks...

Edie's War

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Penny Bristol Jones inherited a battered trunk full of family documents and memorabilia, little did she know the rich wartime history she would ...

The Great Australian Camel Race (part 2)

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s 6 weeks into this epic 3300-kilometre adventure, and competitors face the longest leg of the race, across the Simpson Desert and into Queensla...

The Great Australian Camel Race (part 1)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s April 1988, somewhere near Uluru, and the starter gun kicks off one of the strangest, most audacious events to mark Australia's bicentennial y...

The Kitchen Table - Spice

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's time to rethink the spices in your pantry. The long trade in clove and nutmeg lead to colonisation, but long before the Europeans arrived, it ...

The Kitchen Table - Wine

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What's the story behind your favourite wine? This fermented drink has long been an important part of Australia's social and cultural history, used f...

The Kitchen Table - Salt

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Behind your humble shaker of table salt lies a curious and industrious history

The kitchen table - Tea

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By the turn of the twentieth century Australians were the world’s most obsessive tea drinkers. Four cups with a meal wasn’t uncommon. Where did t...

Crossing Time: Australia's transgender history—part 2

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The 1970s was a decade which saw social change, that helped foster new ideas and understandings about sex, gender and identity. And much of this ch...

Crossing Time: Australia's transgender history—part 1

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the last few decades, there has been a huge social transformation in the way people express and talk about gender. But right across time, and here...

The Making of Mardi Gras: Supernova

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 2002, after a decade of giddy expansion, the bubble burst for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. With debts mounting and creditors circling, M...

The Making of Mardi Gras (1979 -1981)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To mark 2023 World Pride, the  origin story of Sydney Mardi Gras. How did a one-off street protest on a chilly winter's night more than 40 years ago...

Mrs C Private Detective

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A journey back to the mean streets of Brisbane in the 1920s with clever and feisty private detective – Mrs Kate Condon.

Partition's children

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When India was divided to create Pakistan more than a million people lost their lives. People who were there remember the chaos, violence and moment...

Making Manganinnie

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The story behind the 1980 Australian film Manganinne, set during the infamous Black Line violence of colonial Tasmania, and the extraordinary Yolng...

A Day at the Beach - Wanda 1982

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Were you at the Wanda gig in 1982? It's forty years since Triple J hosted a free outdoor concert on Sydney's Wanda Beach, when a massive crowd turne...

Play your way to happiness

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It was the Great Depression in Australia. People dreamt of a paradise, an escape from Nowheresville. And they found it, gathering on the beaches of c...

Miner Poets - songs and verse from the west coast of Tasmania

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We travel to the west coast of Tasmania, to meet the mining communities who carry on a rich cultural tradition of storytelling in poetry and song.

Fairlight CMI - the sound you've never heard of

27 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Australian instrument that shaped the sound of the 1980s and forever changed how popular music was made. This documentary won the 2023 Prix Ital...

Brother artist Hosea Easton

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1899 two thousand people attended the funeral of an African-American banjo player in Sydney.  Who was he? How did he come to be in Australia and ...

An Object in Time - The Flag

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of one of history’s most mysterious flags - the Jolly Roger. It’s the pirate flag that defined one of the world’s greatest criminal e...

An Object in Time | The Jewel

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the  diamond so infused with underhand deeds and deadly acts that it was thought to curse any male ruler who wore it..

An Object in Time | The Ball

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Carbolic Smoke Ball was touted as a miracle cure for all kinds of illnesses that were rife in the 1890s. It never actually cured anything, but wh...

An Object in Time | The Potato

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The humble potato is not just a lump of carbohydrate: it tells the story of how food, so essential to life, is also central to politics. This is the...

An Object in Time | The Briefcase

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of briefcase that almost killed Hitler in 1944, how it was stopped only by a misplaced table leg, and the fate of the man at the heart of ...

Fitzroyalty — a short history of Brunswick Street

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1980s & '90s, an influx of artists and creative types changed the face of Melbourne’s Brunswick Street, in inner-city Fitzroy. What wa...

Snapshots

30 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A chance discovery of a bag of old photographs leads two Asian-Australian artists, Mayu Kanamori and William Yang, to explore their histories.

No way back - the coolies of Christmas Island

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the early years of the twentieth century thousands of poor Chinese workers crossed the seas to a tiny dot in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Chris...

Hume and Hovell and the pathfinders

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1824 Hamilton Hume and William Hovell with 6 convicts began an expedition south-west of Sydney into the unknown. Governor Brisbane wanted to find ...

Operation Copperhead or ' I was Monty's Double'

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The D-Day landings in 1944 involved a lot of planning, deception, and in one case as comedic as it was dangerous, a bloke from Perth. An outlandish w...

Impostors: If it's endangered, we want it

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ecology didn’t exist in the nineteenth century. So, when, where, and how did it first begin in Australia?

Impostors: If it lives, we want it

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1860s, a group of well-intentioned settlers introduced animals from overseas, hoping they would thrive in Australia. Many did. Too many.

Play your way to happiness

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was the Great Depression in Australia. People dreamt of a paradise, an escape from Nowheresville. And they found it, gathering on the beaches of c...

The Confidence Men

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What if the only tool you had to escape from a WWI Turkish prison camp was a homemade Ouija board?

Queen Elizabeth II and Australians

09 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Browning presents this special tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, looking at the relationship she had with Australians; from the adora...

The Loveday Trilogy Part 3 | Miyakatsu Koike

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of a stoic, humane and wise man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Loveday Trilogy Part 2 | Francesco Fantin

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The tragic tale of a man sent to a detention camp where he was surrounded by his political enemies.

The Loveday Trilogy Part 1 | Oskar Speck

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of one man's mind-bendingly long kayak journey that lead to an Australian Detention camp in World War 2.

Maiden's Eucalypts

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This story is set on Worimi and Biripi country in the year 1894 The avid colonial botanist Joseph Maiden is making a trip through the forests around ...

Inexpressible Island

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The little known story of perhaps the greatest endurance feat in Antarctic history. The survival of Robert Falcon Scott's Northern Party in the winte...

The man with the wooden shotgun

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Britta Jorgensen grew up hearing many tales about her great Uncle Keith Byson, whose life sounded like something out of a children's story book - t...

Finding Harry Valentine

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hidden family truths are discovered as two sisters follow the trail of their late fathers' secret life.

First port of asylum

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On the night Dai Le was elected to Federal Parliament as an Independent she was remembering being a frightened 10 years old, out in the open sea, esc...

Fanny Smith: Icon

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1899, twenty-three years after her people were declared ‘extinct’, Fanny Smith made a revolutionary recording where she announced to the world...