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ABC Rewind

ABC Australiawww.abc.net.au
The History Listen is now ABC Rewind, the home of gripping narrative history series. Dive into true stories told by the people who lived through them.
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Episodes

The Lady of the Swamp

The mysterious tale of rich socialite Margaret Clement, who lived alone in the Gippsland bush in a decaying mansion encircled by waist-deep water. She was known to locals as 'the lady of the swamp' until one day in 1952 Margaret simply vanished.

Aug 03, 202429 min

The Great Australian Camel Race (part 2)

The story of an epic 3300-kilometre adventure from the Australian desert to the coast. Half way through the race, Illness, flood, fatigue and flies are all taking their toll, as camels and riders push through to the finish line.

Jul 27, 202429 min

The Great Australian Camel Race (part 1)

It’s April 1988, somewhere near Uluru, and the starter gun fires off one of the strangest, most audacious events to mark Australia's bicentennial year, the Great Australian Camel Race. People came from all around the world to take part in a feat which spanned over 3000km, as camels and humans endured scorching heat, flooding rains and serious sickness that almost sent the race belly-up.

Jul 20, 202426 min

Monarto | Lost city of the future

Don Dunstan had a dream - a futuristic city to rise out of The Mallee. What went wrong? After years of planning and designing why was it never built?

Jul 13, 202429 min

Blood, prejudice and nursing | Barry’s story

It's the 1980s, and the first devastating decade of the AIDS pandemic. A young student nurse tests positive for the virus. and this information ends up on the front page of his local newspaper. A tale of fear and prejudice. but also of great courage, and love.

Jul 06, 202429 min

Great Aussie Cons | My Mother The Spy

Mercia Masson, one of Australia’s longest serving undercover ASIO agents, spied on her communist friends, while her only daughter remained in the dark.

Jun 29, 202429 min

Great Aussie Cons | The Lady Imposter

A clever young street urchin disguises herself as aristocracy. She inconveniently finds herself in a convict cell in Tasmania - but only temporarily. Then it's onto the streets of 1850’s Melbourne to continue her deception.

Jun 22, 202429 min

Great Aussie Cons | The Qantas Con

The public watch the sky above Sydney as a Boeing 707 circles for hours. Fuel running dangerously low. Qantas flight 755 from Sydney to Hong Kong, is threatened by a terrifying phone call. Richard Roxburgh takes a deep dive into the events of that fateful day. On May 26th, Qantas flight 755 takes off on a routine flight from Sydney to Hong Kong. A man called Mr Brown telephones. He wants half a million dollars – or else 'the plane will blow up'. The public watches the sky above Sydney as a 707 c...

Jun 15, 202429 min

Great Aussie Cons | The Flying Forger

One of Australia’s craftiest counterfeiters forges two million dollars in his suburban basement in the 1950s. Richard Roxburgh, renowned for playing shady characters on screen, tells the story of Robert Baudin and his brazen ability to make fake money.

Jun 01, 202429 min

INTRODUCING — Great Aussie Cons

Australian history’s littered with con artists. Renowned Australian actor Richard Roxburgh tells the stories of these brazen and downright deviant identities who used their charm and smarts to spy, extort and steal. How did they get away with it? The first episode drops on the 1st of June.

May 30, 2024

Fight for the forest

In an unprecedented political move, the Western Australian state government will end logging of native forest. Meet the people who have dedicated their lives to saving these incredible forests.

May 28, 2024

Partition's children

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

May 21, 202430 min

Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 2

In the summer of 1978, Australian narcotics agents intercepted a campervan being unloaded on the Melbourne docks. What they discovered inside the van turned out to be the largest haul of an illicit substance, black hashish, to land on Australian soil at the time. The campervan belonged to two elderly American women tourists, whose overseas holiday odyssey quickly spiralled into a hellish nightmare.

May 11, 202429 min

Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 1

In the summer of 1978, narcotics agents discovered the largest ever haul of illicit drugs to land in Australia, stashed inside a campervan belonging to two elderly American women tourists. But were these women truly drug smugglers or naive puppets in an elaborate plot masterminded by someone else?

May 04, 202429 min

Michael Mansell: a life of radical resistance

Activist and lawyer Michael Mansell has been fighting for Aboriginal rights in Australia for over 50 years. In this episode his daughter Nala Mansell sits down with her father for a conversation about his life on the frontline, and the resilience of palawa identity in lutruwita Tasmania

Apr 27, 202429 min

Section 71 - The Tasmanian crime of gay sex

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 story of the High Court case that changed that law.

Mar 16, 202429 min

Remembering Windradyne's War

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 of this conflict and the heroic Wiradjuri warrior, Windradyne. Two centuries on, this history is being remembered and retold.

Mar 12, 202429 min

In my skin

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 true. With just a handful of letters from both her parents Regina starts to dig into her family story and finds a while lot of surprises along the way.

Mar 02, 202429 min

The medal that spoke

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 the medal then disappeared. Two centuries later, Te Pahi's medal resurfaced – in a Sydney auction house

Feb 24, 202429 min

Crossing Enemy Lines

Minna Muhlen-Schulte knew her surname came from her German grandfather who’d married her Australian grandmother in the 1930s and had lived in Berlin. But she knew very little about her grandparents’ experience during World War Two, except that her grandfather fought on the ‘other’ side, with the German army. So Minna goes in search for her family’s wartime story.

Feb 17, 202429 min

The unspoken story of Isabel Pepper

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

Feb 10, 202429 min

Secrets and Lies | My year behind the Iron Curtain

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 fiction? This actually happened to Miranda Jakich and she tells her tale on The History Listen.

Feb 03, 202434 min

Green Mountain plane crash

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 disappearance sparks one of the most extensive air searches in Australia.

Jan 20, 202429 min
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