ABC Rewind

It’s April 1988, somewhere near Uluru, and the starter gun fires off one of the strangest, most audacious events to mark Australia's bicentennial year, the Great Australian Camel Race. People came from all around the world to take part in a feat which spanned over 3000km, as camels and humans endured scorching heat, flooding rains and serious sickness that almost sent the race belly-up.

Don Dunstan had a dream - a futuristic city to rise out of The Mallee. What went wrong? After years of planning and designing why was it never built?

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. 

Mercia Masson, one of Australia’s longest serving undercover ASIO agents, spied on her communist friends, while her only daughter remained in the dark. 

A clever young street urchin disguises herself as aristocracy.  She inconveniently finds herself in a convict cell in Tasmania - but only temporarily.  Then it's onto the streets of 1850’s Melbourne to continue her deception. 

The public watch the sky above Sydney as a Boeing 707 circles for hours.  Fuel running dangerously low. Qantas flight 755 from Sydney to Hong Kong, is threatened by a terrifying phone call.  Richard Roxburgh takes a deep dive into the events of that fateful day. On May 26th, Qantas flight 755 takes off on a routine flight from Sydney to Hong Kong.  A man called Mr Brown telephones. He wants half a...

Is he a baronet or a butcher from Wagga Wagga? Can he claim the estate of an English aristocrat who has been lost at sea?

One of Australia’s craftiest counterfeiters forges two million dollars in his suburban basement in the 1950s. Richard Roxburgh, renowned for playing shady characters on screen, tells the story of Robert Baudin and his brazen ability to make fake money.

Australian history’s littered with con artists. Renowned Australian actor Richard Roxburgh tells the stories of these brazen and downright deviant identities who used their charm and smarts to spy, extort and steal. How did they get away with it?   The first episode drops on the 1st of June.

In an unprecedented political move, the Western Australian state government will end logging of native forest. Meet the people who have dedicated their lives to saving these incredible forests.

When India was divided to create Pakistan more than a million people lost their lives. People who were there remember the chaos, violence and moments of kindness of Partition.

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?

Activist and lawyer Michael Mansell has been fighting for Aboriginal rights in Australia for over 50 years. In this episode his daughter Nala Mansell sits down with her father for a conversation about his life on the frontline, and the resilience of palawa identity in lutruwita Tasmania 

A story of swagger, bravery, skill and ultimately, friendship, set on the frontline of war

In the second part of the bitter and long-running case known as the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, the battle heads all the way to the High Court.

Ever wondered how the term "secret women's business" entered the Australian vernacular? It's part of a bitter legal battle over land, culture and history in South Australia.

How much power does the federal government have to protect Australians from international threats?  Two key High Court cases, 50 years apart, which put this question to the test.

The High Court showdown over religious freedom that could help you understand how schools are funded to this day

It might surprise you to learn that until 1997, a man could be jailed for up to 21 years for having sex with another man in Australia. This is the story of the High Court case that changed that law.

In 1824, the British waged war against the Wiradjuri people of western NSW, a battle that shook the new colony. But many Australians have never heard of this conflict and  the heroic Wiradjuri warrior, Windradyne. Two centuries on, this history is being remembered and retold.

Growing up Regina looked totally different from her brothers and sisters, she thought she was adopted. But her mother told her that was only partly true. With just a handful of letters from both her parents Regina starts to dig into her family story and finds a while lot of surprises along the way.

In 1806,  Maori chief Te Pahi  was gifted a silver medal by Sydney Governor Philip Gidley King. He had come from Aotearoa to establish trade. But  the medal then disappeared. Two centuries later, Te Pahi's medal resurfaced – in a Sydney auction house

Minna Muhlen-Schulte knew her surname came from her German grandfather who’d married her Australian grandmother in the 1930s and had lived in Berlin. But she knew very little about her grandparents’ experience during World War Two,  except that her grandfather fought on the ‘other’ side, with the German army. So Minna goes in search for her family’s wartime story.

Producer Fiona Pepper had always known her great grandmother died far too young, but until recently, she never knew the full story.