ABC Rewind

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.