The Incredible Journey

They were told they were going somewhere better. Most never saw their families again.

In the 17th century, King James I began shipping orphaned and delinquent children across the ocean to the British colonies. The first group was a hundred street children, sent to Virginia as workers. They were the beginning of something far larger.

Through the Victorian era, the practice continued. Unaccompanied children were sent to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe. Many of them had been born in workhouses, or handed over to institutions after their parents fell on hard times. Some were orphans. Others still had mothers and fathers who never agreed to let them go, and in many cases never even knew they were leaving. The children themselves were given no choice.

Decades later, a social worker in Nottingham stumbled onto the scheme and opened a wound that had never properly closed. Her work became a search: helping traumatised adults find the parents they had been separated from as children.

In this program, we follow the story of the lost children of the empire, and the long, quiet effort to bring them home.

One of the most important battles ever fought took place in the skies over southern England in the summer and autumn of 1940. After the successful Blitzkrieg invasion of much of western Europe, the fall of France, and the forced evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk in early June 1940, the next step in Hitler’s grand plan was the conquest of Britain.

And to make that happen, Hitler knew that he must first control the skies. So he sent the combat-experienced Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, to the skies of Britain. The air battle pitted the powerful German Luftwaffe against the British Royal Air Force in a duel for air supremacy over southern England, a vital preparation for the planned Nazi land invasion. This fight for control of the skies was called the Battle of Britain and raged from July to the end of October 1940. The Luftwaffe was the largest air force in the world at that time, and it expected to defeat and subdue the RAF quickly, but Hitler hadn’t counted on the determination and fighting spirit of the British nation and its forces.

Join Gary in England as we investigate major events, exploits, and figures associated with the British and Allied armed forces in their defence of their country, independence, and freedom. This was not just a physical conflict; it was also a battle for people’s hearts and minds.

From Federation in 1901, Australia’s military story has been written on foreign battlefields: the Boer War, two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But in 1932, the only military campaign ever fought on Australian soil unfolded in the wheat belt of Campion, Western Australia.

While the Great Depression crushed farmers, some 20,000 emus descended on their crops. Powerful, flightless, and contemptuous of fences, the birds systematically destroyed livelihoods. Desperate, the government deployed soldiers with machine guns against an enemy that refused to fight like one.

What followed became one of the most peculiar episodes in military history: strategy versus stubborn birds, and an army that discovered its most unconventional opponent. Join Gary Kent as we investigate the Great Emu War, the conflict Australia never expected to fight at home.

There is something magical about flight. Since the dawn of time, humans have yearned to soar like birds. Lacking wings of our own, we built machines to conquer the sky, and in today's jet age, roughly 4.5 billion people take to the air each year. 

Yet the sky is not our natural environment, and the dangers multiply rapidly high above the ground. In this program, we meet a man who knows those risks all too well. Chris Rantall fell 10,000 feet (3 kilometres) to the earth and lived to tell the story. But his survival came at a devastating cost.

On July 30, 2021, Chris boarded a light aircraft at Torquay on Victoria's coast in Australia. It was meant to be a celebration: a tandem skydive with his daughter, Raya, for her 30th birthday. Raya and her instructor jumped first. Moments later, Chris followed, harnessed to Arron Toepfe, an experienced jumper with more than 6,000 descents to his name.

What should have been a routine freefall and a smooth landing was about to go terribly wrong.

Shoichi Yokoi was a Japanese soldier who refused to surrender at the end of World War II. Instead, he vanished into the jungles of Guam and lived in an underground cave for nearly 28 years after the war was over.

He survived on fruit, nuts, snails, shrimp, eels, and rats. Today, he is remembered for the ingenuity that kept him alive and unseen for almost three decades. But it is hard to admire that feat without feeling the sting of its irony. Yokoi did eventually return to Japan. What he could never recover was half a lifetime spent on a struggle that no longer needed to be fought.

How could a soldier stay hidden that long, and why was he so afraid to come out? In this program, Gary Kent tells the heroic and tragic story of Shoichi Yokoi, the fear that kept him underground, and what that story has to say about your life.

One of the most fascinating events in modern political history is Watergate, the scandal in Washington, D.C., that led to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. 

What started as a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters quickly grew into a nationwide crisis involving wiretapping, illegal funds, secret tapes, and a cover-up that reached the White House itself.

Coober Pedy is also known as the Opal Capital of the World. Most of the world’s opal comes from this tiny Outback town and is located in the harsh outback of South Australia. The town is 845kms north of Adelaide and 685 kms south of Alice Springs along the Stuart Highway. About 95% of the world's precious opals come from Australia. And 85% of them are found right here in the 70 opal fields in the region.  But it’s not only famous for opals, but also for its unique accommodation, and legendary stories of courage and endurance. 

This program tells the story of Opal mining in the outback town of Coober Pedy and one man, “Iron Man” Jim Shaw who in 1920 pushed a loaded wheelbarrow across the desert in the height of summer from Tarcoola to the opal fields and became a legend of the outback.

Fukushima is a place forever marked by a triple disaster. Within minutes, a massive earthquake, devastating tsunami, and nuclear meltdown unleashed an unprecedented wave of death, displacement, and destruction across the Tohoku region of Japan. Thousands of people and most of their worldly possessions were washed away in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of thousands of survivors were left displaced. It began at 14:46 on 11 March 2011, when the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck off the country’s eastern Pacific coast. The two tectonic plates along the long offshore fault line ruptured with a force at least 1,000 times more powerful than the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. The resulting 9.0-magnitude quake was so powerful that it triggered a 15-metre (50 ft) high tsunami. The giant wave swept over parts of the Sanriku coastline of Japan’s main island of Honshu, killing around 20,000 people, including several thousand whose bodies were never recovered, and wiping entire towns off the map.

Troy is one of the most amazing and sensational deceptions in human history. Its story in Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey has become one of the most famous works of literature in all of history.

Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. When Paris, a prince of Troy, was welcomed as a guest, he sailed back with Helen, whether by seduction or abduction. Humiliated and furious, Menelaus led the powerful Greek army against Troy’s impenetrable walls. For ten long, agonising years, the city held firm, heroes fell, yet Troy stood unyielding… until the night of the ultimate lie.

The Greek camp lay abandoned and silent. All that remained was a colossal, hollow wooden horse, a magnificent and terrifying gift. Deep within sat the greatest warriors of Greece. Ignoring frantic warnings, the Trojans pulled it into their city. That night, as Troy slept exhausted from victory celebrations, the trap door opened, and one of history’s most cunning deceptions was unleashed.

Join Gary Kent in the ruins of ancient Troy in modern-day Turkey as we relive how the Greeks defeated Troy by a master stroke of deception.

We are all familiar with the heroic deeds of the gladiators of ancient Rome. But did you know the Bible records a gladiatorial-style contest in the early history of the Israelite kings? It pitted a heavily armed giant, equipped with the latest fighting gear, against a simple shepherd armed only with a sling and a stone. The story sounds highly improbable. Was it true? Even though David was one of the most famous kings of ancient Israel, many historians and Bible critics rejected the Bible stories as myths. Many said King David didn’t really exist. Was he just a mythical hero? Join us as we search for evidence of King David.