On 8 April 1998 Australians woke up to the startling news that dogs and men in balaclavas were invading the docks around the country, locking out workers. This is a story of political intrigue, of lies, double dealing, high stakes leaks and high stakes finances. And guns. It takes us from Queensland’s Ettamogah pub to the ports of Dubai, from low-rent motel rooms to the highest court in the land. And all the way to the Prime Minister. In this six-part investigation into the waterfront dispute be...
Feb 26, 2025
In the final episode of Anzac Massacre, Black Sheep podcast host William Ray delves into the unanswered questions surrounding the killings at Surafend, Southern Palestine by the Anzac Mounted Division in December 1918. What motivated this brutal act?
Feb 23, 2025•29 min
Radio New Zealand podcast Black Sheep brings us the story of the Surafend massacre of December 1918, an event described by one historian as the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand and Australian military personnel.
Feb 15, 2025
The story of the Surafend massacre of December 1918, an event described by one historian as the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand and Australian military personnel.
Feb 08, 2025•29 min
Come on a wild ride through the extraordinary story of the Big Day Out; the festival which, for over two decades, was a summertime rite of passage for music lovers around Australia. Was it really a victim of its' own success?
Feb 01, 2025•29 min
We''ve got news! The History Listen has been given a makeover. Our new show, ABC Rewind , is still your home for gripping audio storytelling, and still the podcast where you'll hear true stories told by the people who lived through them. Come on a deep dive into the past on Rewind.
Jan 31, 2025
Come on a wild ride through the extraordinary story of the Big Day Out; the festival which, for over two decades, was a summertime rite of passage for music lovers around Australia
Jan 25, 2025•29 min
It's 1865 in remote central west NSW. A police office is fatally shot by a man he believes is a Chinese bushranger. The story of Sam Poo is a bushranging tale with a twist
Jan 19, 2025•29 min
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 in this episode she tells her tale.
Jan 11, 2025•34 min
Was he Australia's greatest con artist? That was the title given to John Friedrich, the former head of the Victorian Division of National Safety Council of Australia. Back in the 1980s, he famously made $293 million of investors’ money disappear. When his fraud was uncovered, he went missing himself for sixteen days, prompting a nationwide manhunt and a media storm that reported both facts and the fictions. Guests: Barry Whitehead - former NSCA operations manager Frank Bongiorno - professor of h...
Jan 04, 2025•29 min
When Bill Garner began exploring his family history, a puzzling gap in the family tree led him to discover a most extraordinary ancestor: Fanny Finch . Finch was a well-known and controversial figure during the Victorian gold rushes. A London-born woman of African heritage, she pushed a wheelbarrow from Melbourne to the goldfields in 1852, where she became a sly grogger and restaurateur. She actively resisted police corruption , supported women and children against domestic violence and in 1856,...
Dec 28, 2024•29 min
Laya Semler was the last Jew sent to a concentration camp from Wennigsen, Germany, in 1945. Her non-Jewish husband Adolf was sent to slave labour for not denouncing her. Both survived. Now, Wennigsen has invited their Australian family back, to commemorate Laya and Adolf’s incredible story of courage and love. In Part 1, their great-grandchildren discovered a town perhaps finally ready to accept the extent of its role in the Nazi regime. In Part 2, they will experience that history face-to-face....
Dec 22, 2024•29 min
In 1945, Laya Semler became the last Jew sent to a concentration camp from Wennigsen, Germany. Her non-Jewish husband Adolf chose slave labour rather than abandon her. They both survived. In 2022, the village of Wennigsen invited their Australian family back to commemorate Laya and Adolf’s bravery. Told by their great-grandchildren, Laya and Adolf’s story is testament to the power love has to bridge even the greatest differences. But it’s also the story of a town only just coming to terms with t...
Dec 14, 2024•29 min
Fifty years ago, in the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy killed 66 people and decimated the city of Garramilla/Darwin. Afterwards more than 30,000 residents were evacuated, many never returning to Darwin. Writing down memories of the event helped some survivors of the cyclone process the experience. Hear a handful of these stories, set in crumbling houses, airborne cars, a busy restaurant and an overcrowded hospital, all set to the terrifying real-life soundtrack of Cyclone Tracy...
Dec 07, 2024•28 min
It’s the early 1900s and a gang of men moves through the gritty streets of inner-city North Melbourne: they dress sharp and inspire fear wherever they go. This gang, the Crutchy Push ruled the streets of North Melbourne over a ten year period, from late 1890s. And the reason for their curious name? All the members of this gang were amputees: mostly one-legged, and they used a crutch - and not just for walking! To mark the International Day for People With Disability, Melbourne-based writer and d...
Nov 30, 2024•24 min
It’s March 25th, 1999, and Australia’s most remarkable prison escape has just taken place, after a helicopter hovers above the recreation grounds at the Silverwater maximum security prison, in Sydney. In the blink of an eye, a prisoner runs towards the chopper, climbs onboard, and is on his way to freedom. This is the story of that airborne escapee, John Killick, a man who spent much of his life leading the authorities on a merry dance. Somehow he survived his dangerous escapades and many prison...
Nov 26, 2024•29 min
In a shocking and brutal end to a colourful life, Australian wallpaper designer Florence Broadhurst was murdered in her Paddington studio on the 15th of October, 1977. So who was suspected of this crime and why is the case still unsolved to this day? Please listen with care - this episode contains graphic content. Guests: Tony Russell – Former NSW Police officer Helen O’Neill – Journalist and author, Florence Broadhurst: her secret and extraordinary lives Mark Whittaker – Journalist and author, ...
Nov 16, 2024
She’s one of Australia’s most prolific and popular designers, and yet not many people know her name, let alone her audacious life story. Florence Broadhurst was from regional Queensland but people who met her later in life, thought she was English aristocrat. She reinvented herself many times throughout her life. Today she’s known for her wallpaper designs that cemented her in Australian design history. But a shadow lingers over her legacy; her unsolved murder in 1977. Guests: Helen O’Neill – Jo...
Nov 09, 2024
When superannuation pioneer Mavis Robertson was in her seventies, she was showered with awards and honours. But something was missing from the life story shared with the public at this time: the more than 30 years she spent as a leading member of the Communist Party of Australia. Historian Alice Garner and Mavis's son Peter Robertson delve into this part of his mother's life, including her extensive ASIO security file.
Nov 02, 2024•30 min
An entire school is kidnapped at gunpoint. 9 students and their teacher are taken hostage by a prison escapee who demands a ransom of 7 million dollars, the release of 17 prisoners, 100 kilos of cocaine, automatic weapons, and an escape vehicle.
Oct 26, 2024•30 min
After World War Two, around 650 Japanese war brides crossed once enemy lines to make a home in Australia, at a time when the White Australia Policy still held sway. But 50 years on, how do the grandchildren of the Japanese war brides understand their family story?
Oct 19, 2024•29 min
The Martha Plan was a secret scheme created in the early 1960's to bring unmarried Spanish women to Australia, in the hope that they'd stay and populate the country. Did it work?
Oct 12, 2024•29 min
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 postal history. Why the secrecy? And why has a Sydney family been so shocked by their revelations?
Oct 05, 2024•29 min
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 uncovered secrets, silences and shame from a chapter of Australia's history some would prefer to forget.
Sep 28, 2024•29 min
Where did Jack Karlson learn the lines he delivers in his famous viral video? This moving story of the prison playwright and the performer unravels why Jack uttered those now infamous words “This is democracy manifest.”
Sep 21, 2024•31 min
Who is the man behind Australia’s most iconic internet meme, who famously said “This is democracy manifest”?
Sep 14, 2024•29 min
59-year-old Ingrid was in her office one day when her phone rang. It was the German Red Cross. They asked if she was Ingrid von Oelhafen? Also known as Erika Matko? It was the call she’d waited for her whole life and it opened the door to a terrible secret from one of Nazi Germany’s sickest experiments. Who was she? And where was she from?
Sep 07, 2024•33 min
Ingrid von Oelhafen’s childhood in post-WW2 Germany was full of strange events - her mother inexplicably left her in a children’s home for five years, her doctor called her by another name. It took her decades to discover the horrific truth - a secret that led straight back to the highest powers of the Nazi regime.
Aug 31, 2024•33 min
The Kangaroo dog is unique to Australia. It's a mystery dog with a big story. Born in the early Sydney colony, this deerhound-greyhound mongrel dog was bred to hunt and kill kangaroos.
Aug 24, 2024•37 min
Swimmer Siobahn Paton won multiple medals at the Sydney 2000 games but her dreams were shattered when athletes in a different sport cheated spectacularly. Louise Sauvage delves into the controversy of classification along with the heightened visibility and respect the Games have brought to all people with disabilities.
Aug 17, 2024•30 min
