ABC Rewind

Van Badham explores the human cost of mining in Australia across the past 2 centuries. Gold may have made Australia rich, but historians are now digging up evidence about the devastating impact of the silica dust that surfaced with it.

It's the early 1970s and the power of good is unleashed. In the Age of Aquarius the public get wise to being hoodwinked by advertising. Health campaigners hijack the medium — and turn it to their advantage.

The hunt is on for the winning TV ad — the one that keeps the client happy and the consumers consuming. What's the right method for making the perfect advertisement?               In 1970 a young bloke called John Singleton thought he had the answer. Host Dee Madigan continues her adventures through the vaults of Australian advertising.

It’s the 1970s and we're entering Australia's golden age of advertising. The Aussie larrikin makes his TV appearance and liquid lunches get longer. Salaries get bigger and the egos to match them. Join host Dee Madigan as she digs through the history of advertising in Australia. 

Join host Dee Madigan for a wild ride through the golden days of Australian advertising.  When TV arrived in Australia in 1956,  it brought American ad agencies, international sophistication and the rise of the cultural cringe.

In this bonus episode Jan Fran and historian Dr Geraldine Fela discuss how the waterfront dispute has shaped the way we work in Australia today. 27 years later work is more precarious – casual and fixed term jobs have grown, the kind of work we do has changed and employers now have more power over employees. Politics and industrial relations were also changed by the dispute and unions have learned...

Was the Howard government the puppet master of the Waterfront dispute? Host Jan Fran reveals new evidence that provides some answers to questions that’ve dogged Australian politics for 27 years. 

After Patrick Stevedores sacks its 1,400 maritime union workers the waterfront dispute turns into a courtroom drama as the legal teams battle it out in the Federal Court before heading all the way to the High Court.

The Maritime Union knows Patrick Stevedores is building up to a dramatic move. But it’s shocked when the company sends in balaclava-clad security guards and dogs to forcibly lock out workers in the dark of night. The union's lawyers take the company to the Federal Court where Patrick drops a bombshell on day one of the hearing.

After the collapse of the Dubai plan Patrick Stevedore's boss Chris Corrigan turns to Plan B, training fresh-faced farmers to work as wharfies. The MUA suspect the farmers will take their jobs and so create chaos at the gates of Patricks’ Webb Dock to stop the farmers getting through. Meanwhile the heat remains on Corrigan to fess up to his masterminding of Dubai.

When the Opposition Labor Party breaks the news in Parliament about a secret group of ‘industrial mercenaries’ training in Dubai to take over the wharfies' jobs some big questions are asked: who exactly is behind the training operation, and is the government involved?  

When Patrick Stevedores locks out and fires 1400 wharfies overnight on April 8, 1998, it divides the country. But behind all this is a story of high drama and political intrigue, a complex web of double dealing and high-stakes leaks. It's no secret that the Howard government wants waterfront reform but what role is it playing in Patrick owner Chris Corrigan's "revolution"?

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...

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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 t...

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 activ...

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...

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 br...