The History Listen

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.

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 million dollars – or else 'the plane will blow up'.

The public watches the sky above Sydney as a 707 circles in a holding pattern for hours. 

Bomb experts are called in as QF 755’s fuel runs dangerously low.

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.

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 she tells her tale on The History Listen.

Hidden family truths are discovered as two sisters follow the trail of their late fathers' secret life.

It's the 19th February 1937, and a  Stinson passenger plane leaves Brisbane for a routine flight to Sydney, but it never arrives. Instead, its disappearance sparks one of the most extensive air searches in Australia.

A lost ship, A lost sailor, a lost identity. In November 1941 as war drew closer to Australia. the HMAS Sydney and its crew of 645 sailors disappeared off the Western Australian coast after being ambushed by a German raider. Months later the body of a sailor washed up on tiny Christmas Island and was laid to rest by locals. Half a century on this unknown sailor would help unravel the mystery of how the pride of Australia’s navy just vanished.

What if the only tool you had to escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in WW1 was a homemade Ouija board? The story of a wild and elegant hoax concocted by two British soldier POWs to hoodwink their captors.

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 inhabitants on this country. 

This is one of Australia's greatest survival stories and cross cultural encounters.

Two centuries later, historian Mark McKenna and naturalist John Blay retrace the sailors' steps.

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 grandparents read people's minds. A story about magic,illusion and the creative power of radio. 

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 solid science behind this method of time travel.

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 Lorraine, on a quest to uncover the hidden history of the Chinese-Timorese community in Timor-Leste and hear from the survivors who experienced waves of violence at the hands of the invading forces.

Growing up in the 1990s, Alan Weedon always wondered why he was one of many kids born to an Australian father and Filipina mother. It was a pattern replicated in the various backyard barbecues and play dates of his youth — where Filipino men were far and few between.

Following the tragic death of his mother Jesusita in 2022, Alan, in his grief, decided to trace his Mum's story of coming to Australia. In doing so, he unravelled a great southern migration, where tens of thousands of Filipinas migrated to Australia via marriage in the 80s and 90s.

But when they landed in Australia, these Filipina brides — many of who had migrated on their own accord — were often subject to racist and sexist stereotypes. Most persistent was the 'mail order bride' tag, a stereotype that stuck and leached into newspapers and popular culture – and which still lingers on today.

In 1899, twenty-three years after her people were declared ‘extinct’, Fanny Smith made a revolutionary recording where she announced to the world that she was The Last Tasmanian. Far from ‘extinct’, she was a proud Aboriginal woman raising her eleven children and publicly singing and speaking her Pakana language. This is her extraordinary story.

In 1945, Adolf Semler, a German World War One hero, was sent to a slave labour camp for refusing to denounce his Jewish wife Laya. In 2022, their great-grandchildren return to Germany to discover a town finally wrestling with the extent of its role in the Nazi regime.

In 1945, Adolf Semler, a German World War One hero, was sent to a slave labour camp for refusing to denounce his Jewish wife Laya. In 2022, their great-grandchildren return to Germany to discover a town finally wrestling with the extent of its role in the Nazi regime.

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.  Theirs is a love story for the ages.

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.  Theirs is a love story for the ages.

In the 1950s a romantic proposition by a Russian diplomat transformed Kay Marshall from an admin worker into one of Australia’s most important double agents. It was the beginning of a four-year intelligence operation which revealed that there was more going on at the Soviet Embassy than met the eye..

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

A plant-eating sleuth uncovers the hidden history of vegetarianism in Australia - featuring spiritualists, nudists, and politicians, plus plenty of nutmeat and a vegan dish called Hampstead Cutlets 

A lost ship, A lost sailor, a lost identity. In November 1941 as war drew closer to Australia. the HMAS Sydney and its crew of 645 sailors disappeared off the Western Australian coast after being ambushed by a German raider. Months later the body of a sailor washed up on tiny Christmas Island and was laid to rest by locals. Half a century on this unknown sailor would help unravel the mystery of how the pride of Australia’s navy just vanished.

On a clear cold Sunday morning in June 1867, three little boys wandered away from their home near the town of Daylesford, on Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria. Over the next six weeks the boys’ story gripped the colony.

19th February 1937, a Stinson passenger plane leaves Brisbane for a routine flight to Sydney, but never it arrives. Instead, its disappearance sparks one of the most extensive air searches in Australia.

When Penny Bristol Jones inherited a battered trunk full of family documents and memorabilia, little did she know the rich wartime history she would uncover.

In amongst the bounty was a collection of diaries and letters written by Penny’s great grandmother Edie Digby, during the First World War, while her husband and two sons were away at the front.

It’s 6 weeks into this epic 3300-kilometre adventure, and competitors face the longest leg of the race, across the Simpson Desert and into Queensland.  The stakes are high, as they battle illness, flood, fatigue and flies, in the push towards the finish line on the Gold Coast, and call themselves the winner?

It’s April 1988, somewhere near Uluru, and the starter gun kicks 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.

It's time to rethink the spices in your pantry. The long trade in clove and nutmeg lead to colonisation, but long before the Europeans arrived, it helped define the language, culture, religion and geography of Indonesia.

What's the story behind your favourite wine? This fermented drink has long been an important part of Australia's social and cultural history, used for ceremonial, medicinal and celebratory purposes.

Behind your humble shaker of table salt lies a curious and industrious history

By the turn of the twentieth century Australians were the world’s most obsessive tea drinkers. Four cups with a meal wasn’t uncommon. Where did this insatiable thirst start? and did it ever really stop? A story about Australia's tea drinking history, and the beverage that keeps us brewing

The 1970s was a decade which saw social change, that helped foster new ideas and understandings about sex, gender and identity. And much of this change was brought about by trans activists.

In the last few decades, there has been a huge social transformation in the way people express and talk about gender. But right across time, and here in Australia, there’ve always been people who existed outside the binary definition of male and female.Compelling history from Australia and around the world.

In 2002, after a decade of giddy expansion, the bubble burst for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. With debts mounting and creditors circling, Mardi Gras went into voluntary administration. In the new millennium, had Mardi Gras lost its relevance?

To mark 2023 World Pride, the  origin story of Sydney Mardi Gras. How did a one-off street protest on a chilly winter's night more than 40 years ago transform into the massive annual summer celebration we now know?

A journey back to the mean streets of Brisbane in the 1920s with clever and feisty private detective – Mrs Kate Condon.

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.

The story behind the 1980 Australian film Manganinne, set during the infamous Black Line violence of colonial Tasmania, and the extraordinary Yolngu actor, Mawuyul Yanthalawuy. who plays the film's central character.

Were you at the Wanda gig in 1982? It's forty years since Triple J hosted a free outdoor concert on Sydney's Wanda Beach, when a massive crowd turned up to see the bands whose music defined an era, and who changed the sound of Australian rock forever

It was the Great Depression in Australia. People dreamt of a paradise, an escape from Nowheresville. And they found it, gathering on the beaches of coastal cities and crowding halls in country towns - to play Hawaiian steel guitar.  Historian Robyn Annear discovers what drove thousands of Australians to learn this unlikely instrument?

We travel to the west coast of Tasmania, to meet the mining communities who carry on a rich cultural tradition of storytelling in poetry and song.

The Australian instrument that shaped the sound of the 1980s and forever changed how popular music was made. This documentary won the 2023 Prix Italia in the Radio & Podcast Music category.

In 1899 two thousand people attended the funeral of an African-American banjo player in Sydney.  Who was he? How did he come to be in Australia and why was he so loved? Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe tells the story of Hosea Easton, along with the history of minstrel music and the banjo, in Australia and the United States.

The story of one of history’s most mysterious flags - the Jolly Roger. It’s the pirate flag that defined one of the world’s greatest criminal enterprises and it helps us to understand how the high seas transformed from lawlessness to order

The story of the  diamond so infused with underhand deeds and deadly acts that it was thought to curse any male ruler who wore it..

The Carbolic Smoke Ball was touted as a miracle cure for all kinds of illnesses that were rife in the 1890s. It never actually cured anything, but what it did do was change the law forever.

The humble potato is not just a lump of carbohydrate: it tells the story of how food, so essential to life, is also central to politics. This is the story of how the potato became a weapon.

The story of briefcase that almost killed Hitler in 1944, how it was stopped only by a misplaced table leg, and the fate of the man at the heart of the assassination plot. 

In the 1980s & '90s, an influx of artists and creative types changed the face of Melbourne’s Brunswick Street, in inner-city Fitzroy. What was once a humble industrial shopping strip transformed into a bustling hive of creativity, full of cafes, bars, art and music.

A chance discovery of a bag of old photographs leads two Asian-Australian artists, Mayu Kanamori and William Yang, to explore their histories.

In the early years of the twentieth century thousands of poor Chinese workers crossed the seas to a tiny dot in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Christmas Island was rich in phosphate, and when a British owned mine company set up on the island it needed workers. They came to seek their fortune and instead struck tragedy, as most of these men would never return home to China.

In 1824 Hamilton Hume and William Hovell with 6 convicts began an expedition south-west of Sydney into the unknown. Governor Brisbane wanted to find an inland route from Sydney all the way to Bass Strait.

The country however was neither unknown nor uninhabited. Hamilton Hume's friendship with and assistance from local Aboriginal groups throughout the journey enabled the opening up of some of the most pristine land in New South Wales and Victoria

The D-Day landings in 1944 involved a lot of planning, deception, and in one case as comedic as it was dangerous, a bloke from Perth. An outlandish wartime caper that ended up on the silver screen.

Ecology didn’t exist in the nineteenth century. So, when, where, and how did it first begin in Australia?

In the 1860s, a group of well-intentioned settlers introduced animals from overseas, hoping they would thrive in Australia. Many did. Too many.

It was the Great Depression in Australia. People dreamt of a paradise, an escape from Nowheresville. And they found it, gathering on the beaches of coastal cities and crowding halls in country towns - to play Hawaiian steel guitar.  Historian Robyn Annear discovers what drove thousands of Australians to learn this unlikely instrument?

What if the only tool you had to escape from a WWI Turkish prison camp was a homemade Ouija board?

Daniel Browning presents this special tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, looking at the relationship she had with Australians; from the adoration she was shown in the 1954 tour to her extensive Aboriginal art collection and the way so many Australian women saw her as a role model.

Guests: Jane Connors, Historian. Juliet Rieden, Editor-at-large of The Australian Women's Weekly

The story of a stoic, humane and wise man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The tragic tale of a man sent to a detention camp where he was surrounded by his political enemies.

The story of one man's mind-bendingly long kayak journey that lead to an Australian Detention camp in World War 2.

This story is set on Worimi and Biripi country in the year 1894 The avid colonial botanist Joseph Maiden is making a trip through the forests around the NSW towns of Stroud and Gloucester, recording every tree, leaf, and plant he encounters in meticulous detail in his journal. 130 years later historian Jodi Frawley re-traces Maiden's journey, using his original records as a guide.

The little known story of perhaps the greatest endurance feat in Antarctic history. The survival of Robert Falcon Scott's Northern Party in the winter of 1912.

Britta Jorgensen grew up hearing many tales about her great Uncle Keith Byson, whose life sounded like something out of a children's story book - that he was a hermit who lived in a shack on a deserted island in the Great Barrier Reef, warding off strangers with a wooden shotgun, and who got around in his underwear. Years after his death Britta heads to her uncle's island home, to try and sort out the truth from the tall tales

Hidden family truths are discovered as two sisters follow the trail of their late fathers' secret life.

On the night Dai Le was elected to Federal Parliament as an Independent she was remembering being a frightened 10 years old, out in the open sea, escaping Vietnam in a boat.  For The History Listen Dai returns to the place she first landed, Hong Kong, looking for traces of the refugee camp where she lived, worked in factories and like so many thousands, waited for a visa to The West.

In 1899, twenty-three years after her people were declared ‘extinct’, Fanny Smith made a revolutionary recording where she announced to the world that she was The Last Tasmanian. Far from ‘extinct’, she was a proud Aboriginal woman raising her eleven children and publicly singing and speaking her Pakana language. This is her extraordinary story.

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

From the very first night that ABC television beamed into loungerooms around Australia, it offered audiences live drama, initially plays and then serials. The story of the generation of pioneers who helped to create a new art form, shake off the cultural shackles of England, and pave the way for the Australian television which went on to conquer the world.

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, 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?

Were you at the Wanda gig in 1982? It's forty years since Triple J hosted a free outdoor concert on Sydney's Wanda Beach, where a massive crowd turned up to see the bands whose music defined an era, and who changed the sound of Australian rock forever

How did the largest deaths in custody site in Australia become a tourist mecca?

The dark history of Western Australia’s idyllic holiday playground.

In 1979 a man named Vico Virkez gave a surprise tip off that would lead to one of the longest criminal trials, and some say, the greatest miscarriage of justice, in Australian history.

The story of six Croatian Australian men who were incarcerated for 15 years for crimes they say they never committed.

40 years later, new evidence has been found in their favour.

Diaries from two voyages to Sydney aboard the famous Scottish clipper, Samuel Plimsoll.

It was a perilous time to be at sea. Disease and fever spread through the ship.

Both journeys ended prematurely at Sydney's North Head quarantine station.

The Australian instrument that shaped the sound of the 1980s and forever changed how popular music was made

Sister Edith Blake’s gripping story, from her training in Sydney to nursing Australian soldiers in Gallipoli, to her tragic death in English waters where Germany had promised the safe passage of hospital ships.

Lake Pedder, in Tasmania’s vast south-west region, was known for its pink quartzite beach, its pristine waters, and its rugged beauty. 50 years ago, it became the site for one of the fiercest conservation battles ever seen in Australia

Australia's least remembered migrant camp for 'unsupported' mothers.

Working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge isn't for the fainthearted.  Angela Heathcote’s dad Kelly told her adventurous tales of working up high on the famous arches. Years after his passing she meets more of the men and women who brave; the elements, the larrikinism, the fireworks and the brushes with death to maintain this Sydney icon.

In 1904, William Ah Ket became Australia’s first Chinese barrister. He went on to fight racist laws and social prejudice in and out of court.

Nah Doongh's story tells of a life that was lost and found; a life that spanned the entire 19th century and bore witness to the colonisation of Australia. It is also a story of love, loss and one woman’s tenacity to die on the land on which she was born.

Forty years ago Australian women weren't fighting for equal pay, they were fighting for an equal right to work. This is the story of our nation's largest class action claim, instigated by a group of blue-collar women against the company known as The Big Australian.

The uplifting story of the Baby Memorial at Adelaide's West Terrace cemetery.

Comedian David Rose digs into the archives and discovers a very personal story: about a life lived on stage, the parallels of history, and a surprising family legacy which dates all the way back to the music hall era

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.

A journey back to the mean streets of Brisbane in the 1920’s with feisty private detective – Mrs Kate Condon.

The continuation of the amazing story of the first woman to sail around the world.

The amazing story of the first woman to sail around the world.

Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner tells the tale of two men from the opposite ends of Adelaide society at the turn of the twentieth century. The fates of fringe-dweller Tommy Walker and State Coroner William Ramsay Smith entwined and ultimately exposed what was really going on in the mortuaries, gaols, medical schools and graveyards of South Australia at that time.

In the early 1950s Adelaide housewife Anne Neill made a life-changing decision: she joined the Communist Party of Australia, and ended up travelling behind the Iron Curtain and befriending KGB spy Vladimir Petrov. But what did this extraordinary woman truly believe in?

Dyarubbin, the mighty Hawkesbury River, winds its way along the foot of the Blue Mountains, around the north western rim of Sydney’s Cumberland Plain. Settlement along the river, like much of Australia’s history, has been told from a colonial perspective. We hear from Darug knowledge holders about their long and enduring relationship with this country, and the river they know as Dyarubbin

A wild ride involving a Russian flying ace, an escape from Java in World War 2, and a missing package of diamonds.

On a clear cold Sunday morning in June 1867, three little boys wandered away from their home near the town of Daylesford, on Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria. Over the next six weeks the boys’ story gripped the colony.

Where does the life of Australian poet and writer Eve Langley end and her fiction begin?

The statue of Western Australia's first governor, Captain James Stirling, in central Perth is hard to miss; there's also a mountain range, a suburban municipality and even a school named after him. But as the state looks towards its bicentenary in 2029, new questions are being asked about James Stirling, including his involvement in frontier violence and in the British slave trade. How should he be remembered?

In 1836, the convict ship the Moffatt left Portsmouth harbour in England to travel halfway around the world to the colony of NSW. On board were eighteen convicts from the West Indies, including former slaves William Buchanan and Richard Holt.

Jamaica born, Sydney based author Sienna Brown goes on a deep dive into the archives to uncover the little known history of these men, and their lives in Australia.

In the lead up to Christmas 1986, a battle was fought on the streets, in the hospital wards, and on the tram lines around Melbourne. Nurses, trained to care for the sick with no complaint or question, had had enough. Tired of overcrowded wards, poor pay and lack of career opportunity, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

For most of its life, the Art Gallery of NSW was dank and dingy. In the 1970s, there was no air conditioning or electric lights in its exhibition spaces. A short history of this institutions' amazing transformation.

Nazi collaborator is a label that still resonates in Belgium 75 years after the end of the Second World War.  Peter Lenaerts grew up listening to his grandmother’s stories, about her brother Paul and how, one night in September 1944, he was dragged out of bed and nearly killed by an angry mob, about her brother Bert, who volunteered and fought in the horrors of the Eastern Front.  Peter’s intrigued and goes digging in the archives to understand why his family took one side in the war and what happened to them because of that decision.  He discovers that in war it’s never a simple story of winners and losers.

In 1899 two thousand people attended the funeral of an African-American banjo player in Sydney.  Who was he? How did he come to be in Australia and why was he so loved? Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe tells the story of Hosea Easton, along with the history of minstrel music and the banjo, in Australia and the United States.

History, tragedy, and triumph. Marrickville’s Henson Park is an icon of Sydney's inner west.

But before the unshakable Newtown Jets footy fans called it home, the community oval was a giant hole in the ground supplying Sydney's building boom.

When at least nine children drowned at the site, council took charge and began to dream big. It paid off for them when their hidden suburban park wound up on the world stage.

'I can do things no woman ever did before in the history of the circus business.' May Wirth

There's a brutal history behind the imposing walls of Melbourne's Pentridge prison, stretching from 1851 right up until its closure in 1997. Today there's a playground, supermarket, cinema and apartments on site – but not everyone's happy about it. Those who know Pentridge best offer their answers to a difficult question: how should you treat a site with such a violent past?

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 juvenile detention to jail.

When an escape attempt goes wrong, a prison warder is critically injured and the finger is pointed at Denning.

As his treatment within the correctional system deteriorates Denning begins to find his voice.

Have writers been imprisoned in Australia for their work?  Most definitely and PEN has worked to have them freed.  In this history of PEN in Australia Arnold Zable tells the story of Cheikh Kone, a journalist from the Ivory Coast who was detained in Port Hedland and writer Behrouz Boochani detained on Manus Island. As well as the letters members of PEN have written to imprisoned writers around the world, like those in Myanmar, to tell them that they are not alone.

I am a stranger to you but please know that you are no stranger to me – Maria Tumarkin in a letter to Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian writer detained in Iran until recently.

Writers go to prison for the courageous pursuit of their craft and PEN has been working to get them out.  Melbourne writer Arnold Zable tells the story of PEN International - from its creation out of the scars of World War 1 to bring societies together through their literature, to its growing human rights work across the globe, protecting freedom of speech and supporting imprisoned writers.

If you don’t know the truth you can’t act – Jennifer Clements - President of PEN International

How a South Australian geologist named Reg Sprigg helped solve Charles Darwin's dilemma

When a Norwegian container ship - the MV Tampa – rescued 438 asylum seekers from a sinking boat on August 26, 2001 who was to know the political fallout it would leave in its wake?

We travel to the west coast of Tasmania, to meet the mining communities who carry on a rich cultural tradition of storytelling in poetry and song.

On the 100th anniversary of Sydney's Archibald portrait prize, artist Wendy Sharpe takes a look at some its most controversial moments.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a lifetime companion for many violinists. And in our time of Covid-19 isolation, his Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin have taken on a new resonance. These pieces are spiritual, virtuosic, joyful - and enigmatic.

In the Cold War winter of July 1971 ALP leader Gough Whitlam made an audacious trip to Beijing. This is the story of the events, 50 years ago, that turned Australia towards communist China.

Early in 2020, a vegetarian version of the iconic Four’N Twenty meat pie hit service stations around the country. For lifelong vego Carly Godden, this re-imagining of an Aussie classic was a sign - vegetarianism had finally gone mainstream.

One soldier's incredible World War II escape story through southern Europe. Why haven't Australian's heard more about the heroic ANZAC campaign in Greece?

ON the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Tempe Gorge, the story is revealed.

Dyarubbin, the mighty Hawkesbury River, winds its way along the foot of the Blue Mountains, around the north western rim of Sydney’s Cumberland Plain. Settlement along the river, like much of Australia’s history, has been told from a colonial perspective. We hear from Darug knowledge holders about their long and enduring relationship with this country, and the river they know as Dyarubbin

Martin Orne was one of the leading psychologists of the 20th century, his specialty was the science of hypnosis. In the 1960s, his scientific method brought him to the University of Sydney, and it's world respected psychology faculty. Unbeknownst to his Australian researchers, however, Professor Orne was being secretly funded by the CIA, in their Cold War quest to control the human mind.

The whip played a central role in the development of Australia. What can it tell us about our society today?

The refreshing beverage that revolutionised the law.

An envelope is a humdrum communications device – except when it’s full of misinformation, tucked into the pocket of a dead man, and dropped by a submarine off the coast of wartime Spain.

The story of how the humble cup of tea came to represent a ruthless British Empire.

How did one long, skinny strip of paper plunge the world into the worst global economic downturn history had ever seen?

The story of the train carriage which propelled the globe from WWI, straight into WWII.

This special podcast extra episode tells the story of the world's most powerful, imaginary telephone.

This pistol lies at the centre of one of history's most famous duels - Hamilton Vs. Burr.

Umbrellas aren't known for being dangerous, but this one is famous for being deadly.

The clove and nutmeg trade not only lead to colonisation, but long before the Europeans arrived, it helped define the language, culture, religion and geographic spread of Indonesia.

What's the story behind your favourite wine? This fermented beverage has long been an important part of Australia's social and cultural history, used for ceremonial, medicinal and celebratory purposes.

Behind your humble shaker of table salt lies a curious and industrious history

By the turn of the twentieth century Australians were the world’s most obsessive tea drinkers. Four cups with a meal wasn’t uncommon. Where did this insatiable thirst start? and did it ever really stop? A story about Australia's tea drinking history, and the beverage that keeps us brewing

In the early 1950s Adelaide housewife Anne Neill made a life-changing decision: she joined the Communist Party of Australia, and ended up travelling behind the Iron Curtain and befriending KGB spy Vladimir Petrov. But what did this extraordinary woman truly believe in?

The story of 1960s surfing legend Kevin Brennan charts a young man's path to fame and to premature obscurity set against the backdrop of Sydney's Bondi Beach.

On a clear cold Sunday morning in June 1867, three little boys wandered away from their home near the town of Daylesford, on Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria. Over the next six weeks the boys’ story gripped the colony.

Immerse yourself in the sounds and histories of the old growth forests; from logging to woodchipping, protesting and preserving.

The Overland is a train whose tracks were once plagued by both squabbling and pandemic. But it is back, although both the plague and the squabbling still exist.

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.

In 1824, the British waged war against the Wiradjuri people of western NSW. It was known as the Bathurst War and it shook the new colony. But many Australians have never heard of it, or of the heroic Wiradjuri warrior, Windradyne. The town is now remembering this history.

In 1979 a man named Vico Virkez gave a surprise tip off that would lead to one of the longest criminal trials, and some say, the greatest miscarriage of justice, in Australian history.

The story of six Croatian Australian men who were incarcerated for 15 years for crimes they say they never committed.

40 years later, new evidence has been found in their favour.

A wild ride involving a Russian flying ace, an escape from Java in World War 2, and a missing package of diamonds.

In the 1950s a romantic proposition by a Russian diplomat transformed Kay Marshall from an admin worker into one of Australia’s most important double agents. It was the beginning of a four-year intelligence operation which revealed that there was more going on at the Soviet Embassy than met the eye.

Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous novel, The Master and Margarita, was written during the brutal 1930s Stalinist purges. It's become a cult classic, inspiring artists like Patti Smith and the Rolling Stones. Find out why.

Find out why, in its relatively short history, one instrument has offended ideologues, drawn the ire of dictators, and been reviled and outlawed.

A little known assassination attempt against Hitler cast its shadow over a family in Sweden. Johan Gabrielsson digs deep into the family vault and discovers the complicated truth about one of his distant relatives.

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?

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.

Every family has a secret, the saying goes. But the Ninnes family had a big one.

It wasn't until eldest daughter Mae was 80 years old that she began to talk. And the skeletons came out of the cupboard.

In this program Mae's daughter Lesley searches for answers to the silence and the secrecy of her mother's childhood.

A huge coal project by a foreign company. Environmentalists concerned about the impacts. A government talking about jobs. Sound familiar?

But this battle happened 50 years ago, when a small group waged a David–and-Goliath campaign against a coal terminal planned for the coast south of Sydney.

The September 11th attacks in the United States by Al Qaeda changed the way western countries perceived the threat of terrorism. Before the events of 2001, Australia had no national terrorism laws. But fifteen years later it would have more terror-related laws in place than any other comparable nation.

A radio journey into John Glover's 1835 painting A view of the artist's house and garden, in Mills Plains, Van Diemen's Land.

In 1881, an extraordinary teacher arrived at Maloga Aboriginal mission. His students changed Australian history. Great great grandson and Yorta Yorta man Daniel James tells the story of Thomas Shadrach James.

When Michelle Payne won the Melbourne Cup in 2015 there were three female jockeys who were with her in spirit. They all challenged the male-dominated racing industry, pushed on by the air of heaven.

In January 1868, the last convict ship to Australia, The Hougoumont, docked in Fremantle, Western Australia, off-loading its' human cargo, including a group of Irish political prisoners. This is the story of the long sea journey told through the diaries kept by some of the Irishmen and the songs and music they played on board.

Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner tells the tale of two men from the opposite ends of Adelaide society at the turn of the twentieth century. The fates of fringe-dweller Tommy Walker and State Coroner William Ramsay Smith entwined and ultimately exposed what was really going on in the mortuaries, gaols, medical schools and graveyards of South Australia at that time.

Australia's state borders have taken on new significance in this pandemic year. The history of the border between NSW and Victoria is full of strange twists and turns, a murder and some very messy politics.

Comedian David Rose digs into the archives and discovers a very personal story; one about a life lived on stage, the parallels of history, and a surprising family legacy which dates all the way back to the music hall era

Malaysian poet and writer Salleh Ben Joned is an incendiary critic with satirical wit, and at nearly 80 he’s become a bit of an underground ‘legend’. Eldest daughter Anna charts the highs and lows of her father’s return to Malaysia after an influential decade in Hobart, Tasmania.

Salleh Ben Joned is a witty, fearless and charismatic poet and writer that some have called the ‘bad boy of Malaysian literature’. Come on a wild ride through his life and times with his eldest daughter Anna, starting with the influential decade he spent in Australia as a young Colombo Plan scholar.

It's 20 years since Sydney hosted the Olympics, and one of the most memorable parts of the 2000 games was the torch relay. This story follows the journey of the flame, from the red dirt country of Uluru to the suburbs of Sydney, hearing the tales and memories that it fuelled along the way.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a lifetime companion for many violinists. And in our time of Covid-19 isolation, his Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin have taken on a new resonance. These pieces are spiritual, virtuosic, joyful - and enigmatic.

There’s a number going around audio-visual archivist circles, that has many of them worried: 2025. Magnetic tape — from reel-to-reel, to cassettes and VHS — that is not digitised by 2025 might be lost forever.

Through the chance finding of an old German book in an antiquarian bookshop we discover the life and work of Elisabeth Krämer-Bannow, an artist and ethnographer who explored New Ireland in 1908.

A cavalcade of Japanese Prisoners of War, in makeshift 'cages' on the back of utes and small trucks, makes its way across dusty western NSW. Tension in Hay ramps up, peaking on one long night of drama when it appears the POWs are making another escape attempt.

The mysterious war-time drowning of a young woman in the Murrumbidgee River leads Ann Arnold on a trail of drama and suspense, from the Torres Strait to the outback.

In the 1950s a romantic proposition from a Russian diplomat transformed Kay Marshall from an admin worker into one of Australia’s most important double agents. It was the beginning of a four-year intelligence operation which revealed that there was more going on at the Soviet Embassy than met the eye.

A little known assassination attempt against Hitler cast its shadow over a family in Sweden. Johan Gabrielsson digs deep into the family vault and discovers the complicated truth about one of his distant relatives.

Nah Doongh's story tells of a life that was lost and found; a life that spanned the entire 19th century and bore witness to the colonisation of Australia. It is also a story of love, loss and one woman’s tenacity to die on the land on which she was born.

In 1977, the New Zealand government passed the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act which made it virtually impossible for a woman to legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Enter the group known as the Sisters Overseas Service (SOS); this is their little known story.

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

Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous novel, The Master and Margarita, was written during the brutal 1930s Stalinist purges. It has become a cult classic; inspiring artists like Patti Smith and the Rolling Stones we ask why.