ABC Rewind
Episodes
The Friendship Spitfire: Jack Dawson Green's WW2 story
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A story of swagger, bravery, skill and ultimately, friendship, set on the frontline of war
Acting on a High Wire - a short history of television drama
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the very first night that ABC television beamed into loungerooms around Australia, it offered audiences live drama, initially plays and then ser...
Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 2
21 Jun 2022
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 2
21 Jun 2022
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
14 Jun 2022
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 ...
A Day at the Beach - Wanda 1982
07 Jun 2022
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, where a massive crowd turne...
Rottnest Island: White playground
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How did the largest deaths in custody site in Australia become a tourist mecca?
Rottnest Island: Black prison
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The dark history of Western Australia’s idyllic holiday playground.
Australia's greatest miscarriage of justice? The Croatian Six - part two
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979 a man named Vico Virkez gave a surprise tip off that would lead to one of the longest criminal trials, and some say, the greatest miscarriage...
Australia's greatest miscarriage of justice? The Croatian Six - part one
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The story of six Croatian Australian men who were incarcerated for 15 years for crimes they say they never committed.40 years later, new evidence has...
Samuel Plimsoll sails to quarantine
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Diaries from two voyages to Sydney aboard the famous Scottish clipper, Samuel Plimsoll.It was a perilous time to be at sea. Disease and fever spread ...
Fairlight CMI - the sound you've never heard of
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Australian instrument that shaped the sound of the 1980s and forever changed how popular music was made
Sister Edith Blake WW I
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sister Edith Blake’s gripping story, from her training in Sydney to nursing Australian soldiers in Gallipoli, to her tragic death in English waters...
Buried Treasure - the story of Lake Pedder
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lake Pedder, in Tasmania’s vast south-west region, was known for its pink quartzite beach, its pristine waters, and its rugged beauty. 50 years ago...
The Benalla Experiment
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Australia's least remembered migrant camp for 'unsupported' mothers.
The job with the best view in the world
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge isn't for the fainthearted. Angela Heathcote’s dad Kelly told her adventurous tales of working up high on th...
William Ah Ket: the first Chinese-Australian barrister
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1904, William Ah Ket became Australia’s first Chinese barrister. He went on to fight racist laws and social prejudice in and out of court.
Nah Doongh's story
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nah Doongh's story tells of a life that was lost and found; a life that spanned the entire 19th century and bore witness to the colonisation of Austr...
Steely women
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Forty years ago Australian women weren't fighting for equal pay, they were fighting for an equal right to work. This is the story of our nation's lar...
The bay leaves of West Terrace cemetery
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The uplifting story of the Baby Memorial at Adelaide's West Terrace cemetery.
Only Joking
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Comedian David Rose digs into the archives and discovers a very personal story: about a life lived on stage, the parallels of history, and a surprisi...
Fight for the Forest
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In an unprecedented political move, the Western Australian state government will end logging of native forest. Meet the people who have dedicated the...
Mrs C private detective
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A journey back to the mean streets of Brisbane in the 1920’s with feisty private detective – Mrs Kate Condon.
The lost journal of Jeanne Barret: Part 2
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The continuation of the amazing story of the first woman to sail around the world.
The lost journal of Jeanne Barret: Part 1
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The amazing story of the first woman to sail around the world.
Tommy Walker and the bone collector
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner tells the tale of two men from the opposite ends of Adelaide society at the turn of the twentieth century. The fates ...
The Little Sparrow - the ASIO spy inside the Communist Party
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1950s Adelaide housewife Anne Neill made a life-changing decision: she joined the Communist Party of Australia, and ended up travelling ...
Yarramundi and the people of Dyarubbin
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dyarubbin, the mighty Hawkesbury River, winds its way along the foot of the Blue Mountains, around the north western rim of Sydney’s Cumberland Pla...
Diamond Jack, Smirnov and the Pelikaan
28 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A wild ride involving a Russian flying ace, an escape from Java in World War 2, and a missing package of diamonds.
The Lost Boys of Daylesford
21 Dec 2021
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...
Finding Eve Langley, writing a life
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Where does the life of Australian poet and writer Eve Langley end and her fiction begin?
Commemorating James Stirling?
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The statue of Western Australia's first governor, Captain James Stirling, in central Perth is hard to miss; there's also a mountain range, a suburban...
Caribbean Convicts in Australia
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1836, the convict ship the Moffatt left Portsmouth harbour in England to travel halfway around the world to the colony of NSW. On board were eight...
Respect! - the 1986 Nurses Strike
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the lead up to Christmas 1986, a battle was fought on the streets, in the hospital wards, and on the tram lines around Melbourne. Nurses, trained ...
150 years at the Art Gallery of NSW
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For most of its life, the Art Gallery of NSW was dank and dingy. In the 1970s, there was no air conditioning or electric lights in its exhibition spa...
Resonate
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nazi collaborator is a label that still resonates in Belgium 75 years after the end of the Second World War. Peter Lenaerts grew up listening to h...
Brother artist Hosea Easton
02 Nov 2021
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 ...
Henson Park: the eighth wonder
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
History, tragedy, and triumph. Marrickville’s Henson Park is an icon of Sydney's inner west. But before the unshakable Newtown Jets footy fans cal...
May Wirth: bareback riding queen
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
'I can do things no woman ever did before in the history of the circus business.' May Wirth
Pentridge prison: a violent past and complicated present
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a brutal history behind the imposing walls of Melbourne's Pentridge prison, stretching from 1851 right up until its closure in 1997. Today th...
Ray Denning part 2: stitch up
28 Sep 2021
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 awarenes...
Ray Denning part 1: breaking out
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story of one of Australia's most misunderstood criminals.After a traumatic childhood, Raymond Denning jumps from juvenile detention to jail.When ...
You are not alone: 100 years of PEN International Part 2
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Have writers been imprisoned in Australia for their work? Most definitely and PEN has worked to have them freed. In this history of PEN in Austra...
You are not alone: 100 years of PEN International Part 1
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Writers go to prison for the courageous pursuit of their craft and PEN has been working to get them out. Melbourne writer Arnold Zable tells the st...
The curious geologist
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How a South Australian geologist named Reg Sprigg helped solve Charles Darwin's dilemma
Seachange: 20 years on from the Tampa Affair
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When a Norwegian container ship - the MV Tampa – rescued 438 asylum seekers from a sinking boat on August 26, 2001 who was to know the political fa...
Miner Poets - songs and verse from the west coast of Tasmania
17 Aug 2021
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.
Stories from the Archibald
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On the 100th anniversary of Sydney's Archibald portrait prize, artist Wendy Sharpe takes a look at some its most controversial moments.
Alone with J.S. Bach
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a lifetime companion for many violinists. And in our time of Covid-19 isolation, his Six Sonatas and Partitas f...
Whitlam's China chance: the origins of the Australia-China relationship
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Cold War winter of July 1971 ALP leader Gough Whitlam made an audacious trip to Beijing. This is the story of the events, 50 years ago, that t...
Those Bloody Vegos - a short history of vegetarianism in Australia
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Early in 2020, a vegetarian version of the iconic Four’N Twenty meat pie hit service stations around the country. For lifelong vego Carly Godden, t...
Escape from Greece 1941
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One soldier's incredible World War II escape story through southern Europe. Why haven't Australian's heard more about the heroic ANZAC campaign in Gr...
Yarramundi and the people of Dyarubbin
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dyarubbin, the mighty Hawkesbury River, winds its way along the foot of the Blue Mountains, around the north western rim of Sydney’s Cumberland Pla...
How hypnosis brought the CIA to Australia
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Orne was one of the leading psychologists of the 20th century, his specialty was the science of hypnosis. In the 1960s, his scientific metho...
An Object in Time - The Whip
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The whip played a central role in the development of Australia. What can it tell us about our society today?
An Object in Time - The Ginger Beer
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The refreshing beverage that revolutionised the law.
An Object in Time - The Envelope
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An envelope is a humdrum communications device – except when it’s full of misinformation, tucked into the pocket of a dead man, and dropped by a ...
An Object in Time - The Cup of Tea
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how the humble cup of tea came to represent a ruthless British Empire.