ABC Rewind

During War time food shortages and rationing preoccupied most people, but the hunger suffered by prisoners was on a whole different level.

In the late 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, Australia made a brief but audacious bid to enter the nuclear arms race, by manufacturing a bomb

Every era, every city has a crime that defines it. For Perth it was the Claremont serial killings.

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?

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 the early 1900's in Sydney. Fictional Pyrmont resident and neighbourhood gossip Lizzie Absalom tells what really went on in those back lanes.

There’s a mystery surrounding the elegant and ingenious Jimmy Possum chairs that were made 130 years ago in Tasmania. Did their maker live in a tree trunk?  Did he even exist?  Claudia Taranto goes in search of the real Jimmy Possum and learns about the enduring power of a good story.

Three Western journalists and a UN employee ignored advice to leave East Timor after the country's independence vote in 1999. They recount the most fearful week of their lives.

When amateur historian Nick Russell stumbled across a set of very old Japanese manuscripts, he unearthed a dramatic tale of convict mutineers, samurai warriors and a hijacked ship, which sheds new light on one of the greatest escape stories in Australian history.

A dramatic tale featuring pirates, Samurai warriors, a historical detective and a ship of escaped convicts from Australia who washed up in Japan in 1830

An idyllic town with a hidden surveillance bunker and a secret past. A ruined RAAF base comes to life to tell its story.

In these remote islands we uncover a history of whalers, abducted Aboriginal women, and a mysterious human skeleton found on Franklin Island. There’s even a connection to Gulliver’s Travels.

Aboriginal people from the Murray-Darling Basin’s waterways come together to raise awareness and speak up for their country.

When a group of newcomers set up a women-only community in the bush, the neighbours were scandalised. It wasn't long before hostility turned into drastic action.  Could the community survive?

A women-only utopia deep in the Australian bush — no men, no meat, no machines — was a wild ride, complete with rainbows and tiger snakes, sisterly joy and un-sisterly tensions. 

Anonymous threats in the mail and a homemade bomb. International networks of misinformation. A young girl with the gift of song. Three stories that share a common thread: water fluoridation.

Have you ever wondered where the plants in your garden originally came from? They were probably transported in a Wardian case. Discover the story of this remarkable object, whose lasting impact on the natural world remains evident today.

The Queensland Native Police had a devastating impact on Indigenous people across the state. We look at how Indigenous families deal with the unknowns in their family history – unknowns caused by the violence of the Native Police.

Queensland’s Native Police was notorious for its violence against Indigenous people on the colonial frontier. How do descendants of Aboriginal troopers in the Native Police, and descendants of massacre survivors, make sense of this history?

In the early 1800s, on the remote East coast of Iceland in a small fishing village, a young man stepped ashore. He was escapee from the Danish slave trade and is said to be Iceland’s first black settler.

How does a nation forget a wartime catastrophe? When Japan invaded Australian territory in January 1942, hundreds of civilians were left behind to die. Nearly 80 years later, their families are still traumatised. 

The discovery of the first Chinese story written in Australia gives a fascinating and new insight into the early Chinese immigrants of Victoria. The anonymous author is also uncovered, and revealed to his Australian grandchildren..

A young pilot. A distress call. A missing plane. What happened to Frederick Valentich in October 1978?

What happens when a small town puts the word "massacre" on an historical monument?

Shortly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a young Bahai mother was smuggled out of the country on camelback with her baby daughter. 40 years later she recounts her story.