Hindsight
Hindsight is the only program on Australian radio devoted exclusively to social history. It offers new perspectives on well-known aspects of the past and brings to light those stories long-ignored on the public record. The memories of ordinary Australians are woven into complex, credible and satisfying documentaries. Hindsight is published every Sunday.
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4 Episodes of this Podcast:
Hindsight 2009-11-15
Published: 2009-11-14 09:00:00Post-war Australia was a time of large families and happy mothers, when contraception was limited and single parents invisible. In the first of two programs exploring the history of adoption in Australia, parents and children from the 1950s tell the stories of family secrets while social workers and midwives explain their part in a process which is coming under the renewed scrutiny of historians. Adoption has a lengthy history, but it was only in the 1920s that legislation for adoption was enacted across Australia. At the time there was little call for it to place babies in new homes, because of suspicion about the `quality´ of children born out of wedlock. But the establishment of church maternity homes in the 1930s prepared the way for the post-war boom in adoption, as the means of providing families to couples who could not have children, and concealing the social disgrace of an unmarried mother. Single mothers had little support -- families often refused to assist, financial benefits were not available consistently across Australia, and the illegitimate child was branded a bastard. After giving birth, unmarried women were expected to stay silent; neither they, nor their children were entitled to identifying information about each other. An adoption industry evolved, run by social workers and hospitals with the active support of the community at large. Many people now admit to knowing adopted people who were themselves unaware of their adoption; a reluctance to cause distress meant the silence was maintained. Program I of Tangled Web tracks the development of adoption in Australia till the early 1970s, when it reached its peak with almost 10,000 babies a year adopted nationally. In the absence of any audible voice against it, adoption appeared unstoppable. But in the decade to follow, it was transformed. We´ll hear how in Program II.
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Hindsight 2009-11-08
Published: 2009-11-07 09:00:00A First Fleet story through fresh eyes, this is a tale of adventure, serendipity and recently rediscovered artistic treasure. It explores the life of George Raper, a midshipman on board the Sirius, flagship for the First Fleet. As a junior officer in the British Navy, George led a historically opaque life, and yet bequeathed Australia a terrific artistic and environmental legacy. In George, talent and opportunity coalesced to produce what is now one of the National Library of Australia's most treasured collections, the Ducie Collection of First Fleet Art. The collection includes thirty-four botanical paintings, of which around twenty appear to be the first European depiction of the species. George Raper's ability to meticulously observe and represent plants and birds from the Port Jackson area at that time allows a contemporary audience to share in his enthusiasm for the captivating beauty and strangeness of his surrounds. George Raper: a young gentleman from the quarterdeck follows the story of the young man's artistic legacy, from its creation in 1788 across more than two centuries to arrive at the National Library of Australia with all its original vibrancy and colour intact.
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Hindsight 2009-11-01
Published: 2009-10-31 10:00:00Travel writer May Vivienne was born around 1857. Married twice, and twice widowed, she was an opera singer who turned her talents to writing about her journeys - particularly around the goldfields of Western Australia. She travelled alone by horse and buggy, and was a keen observer of life around the mineshafts, the countryside, and the men, whose company she enjoyed tremendously! Perth's Kings Park is very nearly eclipsed by the view it offers - across the Swan River, down over the city, and across to the hills that surround it. It's an outlook that has played its part in the history of the land upon which the park sits: the local Aboriginal people (Nyoongars) used it as a vantage point to observe who was travelling towards them. Much later, Captain Stirling saw its potential for the military fortification of the young colony. The land around this prominence -- which became known by the settlers as Mount Eliza -- was set aside as parkland by the colonial forefathers early in the history of the settlement. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the vision was clear: the land would be transformed into something resembling an English gentleman's estate, with sweeping lawns, European trees and decorative flower beds. It would be civilised and civilising, and it would remind the settlers of home. But money was always short, and the majority of the land remained as natural bushland -- as it does to the present day. Many decades later, that would be seen as a blessing -- an expanse of land on the doorstep of the city where (apart from the hum of traffic on the freeway below!) the natural environment can be observed and enjoyed, especially in the much-celebrated wildflower season. Around six and a half million people visit Kings Park every year -- it is the most visited place in Western Australia. And over the years, it's come to be used much as the Nyoongar people used it: for ceremony and celebration, as a meeting place, and a place where the local flora is valued and protected.
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Hindsight 2009-10-25
Published: 2009-10-24 10:00:00In 1921, when he was six years old, Souren Antoyan was sent from his occupied homeland of Armenia to spend the next eight years in orphanages, including the Australian-run Ghazir Orphanage, in Beirut. Souren Antoyan's story is testimony to the enduring legacy of Armenia's bitter and unresolved 20th century history, and sheds new light on the little-known role that Australia played in the international relief effort that emerged in the wake of the Armenian genocide. Producer Cara Rosehope travelled to Lebanon, where a chance meeting with 93-year-old Souren Antoyan uncovered this antipodean connection -- in Souren's own life but also within the wider play of history in the period after World War One.
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