ABC Rewind

It's 20 years since Sydney hosted the Olympics, and one of the most memorable parts of the 2000 games was the torch relay. This story follows the journey of the flame, from the red dirt country of Uluru to the suburbs of Sydney, hearing the tales and memories that it fuelled along the way.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a lifetime companion for many violinists. And in our time of Covid-19 isolation, his Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin have taken on a new resonance. These pieces are spiritual, virtuosic, joyful - and enigmatic.

There’s a number going around audio-visual archivist circles, that has many of them worried: 2025. Magnetic tape — from reel-to-reel, to cassettes and VHS — that is not digitised by 2025 might be lost forever.

Through the chance finding of an old German book in an antiquarian bookshop we discover the life and work of Elisabeth Krämer-Bannow, an artist and ethnographer who explored New Ireland in 1908.

A cavalcade of Japanese Prisoners of War, in makeshift 'cages' on the back of utes and small trucks, makes its way across dusty western NSW. Tension in Hay ramps up, peaking on one long night of drama when it appears the POWs are making another escape attempt.

The mysterious war-time drowning of a young woman in the Murrumbidgee River leads Ann Arnold on a trail of drama and suspense, from the Torres Strait to the outback.

In the 1950s a romantic proposition from 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.

A little known assassination attempt against Hitler cast its shadow over a family in Sweden. Johan Gabrielsson digs deep into the family vault and discovers the complicated truth about one of his distant relatives.

Nah Doongh's story tells of a life that was lost and found; a life that spanned the entire 19th century and bore witness to the colonisation of Australia. It is also a story of love, loss and one woman’s tenacity to die on the land on which she was born.

In 1977, the New Zealand government passed the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act which made it virtually impossible for a woman to legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Enter the group known as the Sisters Overseas Service (SOS); this is their little known story.