ABC Rewind

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.