ABC Rewind

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...

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 re...

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...

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 l...

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...

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 de...

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 extensi...

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.

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? 

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?

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?

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.

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.”

Who is the man behind Australia’s most iconic internet meme, who famously said “This is democracy manifest”?

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?

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.

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.

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.

Join wheelchair racing legend Louise Sauvage for the fascinating evolution of The Paralympics, from life-saving rehabilitation for World War 2 soldiers to today’s elite sporting event.

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.

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.