ABC Rewind

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.