

ABC Rewind
ABC Australia
The History Listen is now ABC Rewind, the home of gripping narrative history series. Dive into true stories told by the people who lived through them.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 22, 2024 • 29min
Great Aussie Cons | The Lady Imposter
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.

Jun 15, 2024 • 29min
Great Aussie Cons | The Qantas Con
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.

Jun 8, 2024 • 29min
Great Aussie Cons | The Tichborne Claimant
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?

Jun 1, 2024 • 29min
Great Aussie Cons | The Flying Forger
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.

May 30, 2024 • 0sec
INTRODUCING — Great Aussie Cons
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.

May 28, 2024 • 0sec
Fight for the forest
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.

May 21, 2024 • 30min
Partition's children
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.

May 11, 2024 • 29min
Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 2
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.

May 4, 2024 • 29min
Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 1
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?

Apr 27, 2024 • 29min
Michael Mansell: a life of radical resistance
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


