ABC Rewind

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. 

It's 1865 in remote central west NSW. A police office is fatally shot by a man he believes is a Chinese bushranger. But all may not be as it seems. A bushranging tale with a twist

What if the most remarkable of all your ancestors was the one left out of the family tree? Historian Kacey Sinclair and two of Fanny Finch’s direct descendants reconstruct the life and legacy of a  Victorian goldfields trailblazer, a woman of colour whose story was hidden for generations.

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. The kangaroo dog was there at key moments in Australia's colonial past - from hunting dog that fed the colony, to bushrangers best mate - to battle dog in the Frontier wars, and family member. The kangaroo dog has s...

Where did Jack Karlson learn the lines he delivers in his famous viral video ?  This episode unravels the story of a prison playwright and his muse which led Jack to utter those now infamous words “This is democracy manifest.”

Who is the man behind Australia's most iconic internet meme, who famously said “What is the charge? Eating a meal, a succulent Chinese meal? Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest"?

In this extra episode Sisonke Msimang tells stories of First Nations Australians, Rugby and the fight to end Apartheid. When Aboriginal Rugby player Lloyd McDermott refused to declare himself an honorary white for the Wallabies tour of South Africa in 1963 he began a tradition of First Nations Australians using the sport to get under the skin of the country’s regime. But when Glen Ella from the fa...

After 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela is free and the anti-apartheid movement is full of hope.  But as apartheid legislation is repealed and South Africa starts transitioning to democracy, not everyone is happy. Right-wing Afrikaner groups take to the streets with guns and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party inflicts terrible violence within the black community. There are mass killings and peace tal...

The 1980s see South Africa spin out of control as defiance to apartheid and the regime’s crackdown builds. A cultural boycott of South Africa sees international musicians refuse to play there until Paul Simon controversially records his album Graceland with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The world finally gets to hear the vibrant sounds of Zulu music but at what cost to the anti-apartheid movement?

It's 1984, and in Dublin, Ireland, 21 year old shop assistant Mary Manning refuses to sell a South African grapefruit. Her action draws world attention to the campaign to hit Apartheid where it hurts, by crippling the South African economy. At the same time a young Australian seaman starts a global ban on shipping oil to South Africa. How South Africans won their freedom from the racist Apartheid...

How South Africa won their freedom from the racist Apartheid regime and the Australians who helped them fight for it. A new leader emerges in South Africa, a young man with radical ideas. Steve Biko’s ‘black consciousness’ movement inspires a generation.  His murder at the hands of authorities is a moment of reckoning.  When the children of Soweto township are forced to study in Afrikaans, the lan...

By the 1970s the anti-apartheid movement is growing around the world as protesters find ways to hit the South African government where it hurts most. In Australia, the action takes place in a very public way, by heading onto the sports field. Seven former Wallabies rugby players refuse to compete against the South African Springboks when they tour Australia. As mass protests divide the country, Pr...

How South Africans won their freedom from the racist Apartheid regime and the Australians who helped them fight for it. It’s 1990 and Sisonke Msimang is glued to the TV, watching Nelson Mandela, the world’s most famous political prisoner, walk free after 27 years. She’s weeping with joy for a country she knows and loves but has never seen. Since 1948 South Africans have been divided along race lin...

How South Africans fought to win their freedom, and the Australians who helped them fight for it. It's 1990, and the world is watching as Nelson Mandela walks free from his prison cell after 27 years. The global movement to end the racist policy of Apartheid in South Africa is finally on the brink of victory. Host Sisonke Msimang grew up in a family of South African freedom fighters, and in this s...

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...

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?

Forty years ago this January, the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated on its way into orbit. All seven astronauts on board were killed. In the days after the tragedy, the world wanted answers. What really caused the shuttle to explode? And should the launch have been stopped altogether? For season five of Science Friction, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki and Fiona Pepper investigate how the Challenger dis...

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 journalist Annika Blau learns of the discovery of two tea chests of highly valuable letters under the floorboards of an old Sydney home, she begins to uncover secrets, silences and shame from a chapter of Australia's history some would prefer to forget.

When two tea chests full of letters are found under a house in Sydney, they're identified as one of the most important finds in Australia's postal history. But for journalist Annika Blau, they also expose family secrets, silences and shame, as more startling truths are revealed about who her family really is and where they come from. 

Join wheelchair racing legend Louise Sauvage for the intriguing history of The Paralympics. The games had their beginnings back in 1948 as life-saving rehabilitation for World War 2 soldiers but today have become an elite sporting event watched by millions. Along that journey Australia radically changed the way the world saw athletes with a disability by treating them equally to the Olympic compet...

Gold medal winning Paralympian and coach Louise Sauvage tells the controversial story of classification at the Paralympics and the fallout from Spanish intellectually impaired basketballers who faked their disability at the Sydney 2000 games. We meet champion swimmer Siobhan Paton whose dreams of winning future medals were shattered when all the intellectual disability categories were cancelled. A...

In the final episode of Anzac Massacre,  host William Ray delves into the unanswered questions surrounding the killings at Surafend, in Southern Palestine  by the Anzac Mounted Division in December 1918. What motivated this brutal act?

In part two of this series, host William Ray unravels the story of the Surafend massacre in December 1918, and the events which followed it - including the little known role that the Anzacs played in suppressing the 1919 Egyptian revolution.