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 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.