The Incredible Journey

In a silent desert valley, among mountains of rose-red stone, lies a fabulous lost city once thought to be only a legend. For centuries, it was forgotten, its name erased from maps, its splendour whispered only in Bedouin tales.

Accessible only through a dramatic mile-long chasm or siq, where towering cliffs block out the sun, it is one of the most magnificent Wonders of the World.

The story of Petra is amazing: a city carved into the rocks, first home to the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, a grandson of Abraham, built by the ancient Nabatean traders, and then lost to time, seemingly forever, until 1812, when a young Swiss explorer, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, disguised himself as a Muslim scholar and risked his life in a daring and dangerous scheme to uncover its secrets once again.

Join Gary Kent on a journey to the rose-red city that time forgot. Petra isn’t just a destination; it’s a kind of pilgrimage to a place where legends are carved in stone.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels met at the Café de la Régence in Paris in 1844 and began a movement that some considered humanity’s best hope. 

Amid censorship, police raids, riots, and political upheavals, the two young German revolutionaries became lifelong friends and agreed to collaborate on The Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx was the genius; Friedrich Engels was the supporter and benefactor. Marx would write, and Engels would assist.

No other political movement in modern history has so galvanised the masses. No other single ideology has claimed so much of the world’s population so quickly. One thing is for sure: history took a dramatic turn on the day that Marx and Engels met in Paris and decided to put their ideas down on paper.

Join Gary Kent as we find out more about Karl Marx, whose ideas and influence shook the world and changed history forever, and compare him with Jesus Christ, two men on whom millions have built their hopes and dreams. 

Planet Earth is filled with wonders. Natural ones include some of the most beautiful places in the world, like mountains, waterfalls, rainforests, canyons, volcanoes, and coral reefs. Then there are man-made wonders that comprise cities, temples, statues, palaces, pyramids, monuments and mausoleums.

For thousands of years, people have been making lists of these wonders, trying to determine which are the most important and spectacular. The extraordinary places on these lists all have one thing in common: they fill us with awe. Join Gary Kent in the Philippines, as we travel 300 km north of Manila to the spectacular hanging rice terraces of Banaue. These ancient terraces uniquely combine the beauty of the natural world with the ingenuity and amazing feats of engineering that typify man-made wonders. As we marvel at this awe-inspiring place, we will discover a connection that transports us half a world away to the feet of the Master Storyteller who shared wisdom.

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.