ABC Rewind

In 1768 when James Cook sailed from Tahiti looking for the great southern land, Tupaia, a traditional Polynesia navigator was on board. His knowledge proved invaluable to Cook and his sailing skills astounded the crew. What role did Tupaia actually play in the voyage and why haven't we heard heard about him?

March 1797. Five British sailors and 12 Indian seamen are shipwrecked off the Gippsland coast in Victoria The closest settlement is the penal colony of Port Jackson, over 700 km north - the men have no choice but to walk to Sydney. Two centuries later, historian Mark McKenna and naturalist John Blay retrace the sailors' steps, to re-imagine the journey and the cultural encounters with the original...

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

The story behind one of Australia's greatest con artists. In the late 1980s, when millions went missing from Victoria's National Safety Council, the man responsible, John Friedrich disappeared into thin air, and the media went wild. 

Two stories about radio. In the past, radio was the most ephemeral of all media or art-forms. It's invisible, evanescent—it passes by the ear and is gone, yet radio can leave deep sound prints - memories of listening that can reverberate over decades. Plus, trying to unravel the secret behind one of the most popular radio shows of the 20th century, as a grandson  tries to find out how his grandpar...

The experiences of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who served in the Vietnam war have, until very recently, not been told. Hear the stories  of two 20-year-old  blokes who donned the ‘green skin’ and how it changed their lives forever.

With nothing to lose, Raymond Denning escapes Grafton prison in a rubbish bin. He has help from prisoner rights groups and an agenda to raise awareness about police corruption. The man-hunt for Denning turns farcical when he uses the media to make the police look foolish.

The story of one of Australia's most misunderstood criminals. After a traumatic childhood, Raymond Denning jumps from 'juvie' to jail. When an escape attempt goes wrong, a prison warder is critically injured and the finger is pointed at Denning.

Port Moresby 1942, and the story of the most extraordinary postal delivery, when hundreds of letters from Australian POWs of the Japanese fell from the sky .

The little known story of migrant camp that was home to over 60,000 people - single mothers and their children - in the years after World War II.

This is the story of - and the soundtrack to - one of the most influential instruments of the last 50 years. Meet the creators of the Fairlight, the super stars that used it and learn the tricks of the music production trade along the way.

Asbestos was once known as the wonder mineral. It's now banned in Australia. But before that happened, companies kept making and selling asbestos products despite mounting evidence of its deadly dust. Dusted, the human cost of mining in Australia is presented by Van Badham.

When a vast coal seam was found running through the escarpment around Wollongong it seemed that this beautiful place had got lucky. But had it? Van Badham heads back to her hometown and goes ‘on the coal’ with the miners. Dusted, the human cost of mining in Australia is presented by Van Badham.

Gold may have made Australia rich, but historians are now digging up evidence of the devastating consequences of the silica dust that surfaced with it. Dusted, the human cost of mining in Australia is presented by Van Badham.

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.

The story of how the traditional custodians of Ooldea got their sacred water soak back and the healing of the land.

North west of Ooldea in South Australia's Great Victoria Desert is Maralinga where the British exploded seven nuclear bombs. This episode explores the Cold War politics behind the bomb tests and their ongoing impact on the traditional owners of the land, the Maralinga Tjarutja people..

Ooldea's most famous resident was Daisy Bates, also known as "Kabbarli" or grandmother. She lived at Ooldea for sixteen years in a tent, helping to feed and clothe Aboriginal people, but these days her reputation is very mixed.

On the edge of the Nullabor, Ooldea, with its ancient water soak "Yuldi Kapi", is one of the most important Aboriginal sites in Australia. Trading routes and dreaming stories crossed here for thousands of years, but then the transnational railway arrived in 1917.

Producer David Schulman has been on a quest – he’s been trying to find a single tree. David’s a violinist.  And for him, violins aren’t just boxes made of wood – they’re magical objects. With voices and spirits that can seem almost human.  Old violins even work as a sort of ‘time machine’ – by the sound they make and by their stories, they carry us back into the past. And it turns out there’s soli...

Magdalene Laundries for "fallen women" date back to 12th century Europe. These were Catholic run institutions to reform "wayward" women known as Magdalens, through strict religious observance and hard work..

The achievements of Sidney Jeffryes, a radio operator on the 1911 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, have been notably missing from the polar records. In an era that celebrated physical heroism, vulnerability was not tolerated.

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

Millie Skoko had never really thought much about her Mum’s side of the family, who are Chinese Timorese, and who came to live in Australia in the early 1970s. Until one day, when she was online, Millie discovered her Grandfather’s former home and building, Toko Lay, in stories about the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, in December 1975. This discovery leads Millie, in tandem with her mum Lorrain...