Introduced by Debra Newell, real-life subject of the Netflix stalker drama ‘Dirty John’
In 2014 Di McDonald was recently divorced and dating was the last thing on her mind.
But a chance encounter with a customer at the store where she worked changed her life.
When she ended her brief relationship with Max Gardiner, he retaliated by embarking on a relentless three-year stalking campaign.
This exclusive two-part investigation highlights the difficulties women face in having stalking cases taken seriously by police and explains in forensic detail how Max Gardiner managed to act unapprehended for so long.
Two-part Australian Story starts Monday October 12, 8pm (AEDT), on ABCTV and iview.
Continuing the story of Di McDonald’s quest for justice after being stalked by ex-boyfriend Max Gardiner for three years.
After police seemed powerless to stop Gardiner, Di’s case is finally handed to young detective Beck Norris.
Detective Senior Constable Norris conducts a search on Gardiner’s house and finds evidence implicating him in an anonymous campaign of offensive posters targeting Di.
But it’s not enough and to secure a conviction, the young detective enlists the help of the famous FBI profiler who helped crack the Unabomber case in the US.
Can linguistic analysis finally prove that Max Gardiner is Di McDonald’s stalker?
Quaden Bayles is a nine-year-old boy with dwarfism who just wants to fit in.
But he unwittingly found himself the target of a vicious social media pile-on when his mum Yarraka posted a video of him distraught after being bullied at school.
The video went viral and there was a huge outpouring of support.
But the haters also came out in force, accusing Quaden of being an adult who was scamming the public for financial gain.
When she first appeared on Australian Story in 2014, singer Megan Washington was on a high, having released a successful album and gone public with her "shameful’ secret – a serious stutter.
But in the years that followed, this multi-talented musician’s career stumbled as she tried and failed three times to make her next album.
Instead Megan channelled her energy into facing her fears and did the previously unthinkable. She’s embraced her stutter and become a voice actor, including for the popular children’s show Bluey.
And when COVID struck, Megan began making records again, this time on her own terms.
Five hundred kilometres from the nearest capital city, the outback mining town of Broken Hill is fighting to save its only newspaper.
For over a hundred years, the Barrier Truth has told the town’s stories, documented wars, droughts and the Depression, and recorded the lives and deaths of its citizens.
But when the pandemic struck, advertising revenue collapsed, forcing the newspaper to shut down.
Former Broken Hill resident and mining executive Robert Williamson heard about the community’s distress and raised enough money to restart the printing presses temporarily.
Now the newspaper’s union owners face a tough decision: should they sell their beloved paper to private interests?
Sixteen years after Australian Story first covered the case of the Claremont serial killer, the program returns with a forensic investigation of how police solved two murders and exclusive interviews with victims’ families.
Three young women disappeared from the streets of Claremont during the mid-90s but, from the start, police struggled to crack the case.
In 2004, Australian Story interviewed experts who suggested a full review of police evidence. That became a “turning point” in the investigation.
By 2016, police had amassed enough forensic evidence to arrest Bradley Edwards who was found guilty of murdering Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon this year. There was not enough evidence to convict him over the death of Sarah Spiers.
Sarah’s father Don and Jane’s mother Jenny speak for the first time since the verdict was delivered.
Introduced by John Eales, former Wallabies Captain
It was Christmas Day 2018 and father-of-two Mick O’Dowd was experiencing muscle pain in his glute.
By Boxing Day, he was fighting for his life in intensive care.
Mick was diagnosed with sepsis, a little known but life-threatening illness that occurs when the body’s response to an infection damages its own tissues and organs.
To save his life, doctors were forced to amputate all of Mick’s limbs.
This is the incredible story of determination and love in the face of an incomprehensible situation.
As the nation begins to emerge from the grips of COVID-19, Australian Story explores the Spanish Flu of a century ago and the eerie similarities to today.
Until COVID-19 struck, very few had ever spared a thought for the “forgotten flu” and the up to 15,000 Australians who died from the brutal pandemic that swept the globe during 1918-19.
Despite the topic being memorialised extensively in the northern hemisphere, Australia’s experience of Spanish Flu was largely overlooked, perhaps because it was buried in the trauma of World War One which had just ended.
In this episode, Australian Story delves into the archives and hears from the country’s top expert historians to uncover just how this outbreak changed our society and what we can learn for the future.
For our season finale, we bring you two very different stories.
Cradle of Life tells the story of 81-year-old inventor Professor John Grant-Thomson who designed a space age capsule to retrieve extremely premature babies from the bush.
By chance he met one of his Neocot’s first patients, leading to a lifelong friendship.
Now they’re working out how to deal with their newfound fame — there have been three movie offers and an invite to the Russian Embassy in Canberra — while still staying true to their values.
Celebrating 25 years of putting the ‘real’ back into reality TV. Award-winning series with no narrator and no agendas – just authentic stories told in people’s own words.
Immerse yourself in the life of an extraordinary Australian.
Teenage pilot Bob Bramley takes to the skies to break a solo flying record and shine a light on youth mental health, galvanised by the desperate struggles of his two friends.
There’s a hidden danger lurking in every home. Meet the two mothers who’ve achieved a world first to protect our children.
Button batteries lurk inside many seemingly harmless household items from musical birthday cards to remote controls to stuffed toys.
To an adult they’re just a battery but to a small child their shiny appearance can be fascinating and potentially lethal.
When Andrea Shoesmith and Allison Rees lost their children to button battery accidents, they channelled their grief into lobbying to make the industry more accountable.
What they’ve achieved is remarkable and their passion for change will ultimately protect children around the country.
Scientist Veena Sahajwalla is a recycling superstar with some bold new ideas about how to save waste from landfill.
As Australia’s collective garbage guilt builds alongside the tonnes of plastic piling up in recycling depots, her innovative inventions may offer some exciting new solutions.
Inspired walking the streets of her Mumbai neighbourhood as a child, Veena observed almost everything was reused and “nothing was wasted”.
This can-do attitude shaped her engineering career and sowed the seeds for some ground-breaking ideas, including making steel from car tyres.
Now she’s unveiling her latest invention, a “micro factory” that creates building materials and tiles from dumped clothes and glass.
It’s a revolutionary concept. But will it work outside the lab?
In the 70s and 80s, scores of women would arrive at Channel Nine’s Sydney studios each day to see flamboyant entertainer Jeanne Little on The Mike Walsh Show.
Though never a favourite of the comedy cognoscenti, viewers loved her and she won the Gold Logie award for Most Popular Television Personality in 1976, just two years after her first TV appearance.
But behind the funny lady and outrageous costumes was an illness long kept secret, a husband with a surprising background, and a daughter searching for answers.
Shayna Jack has worn the label of “drug cheat” since she tested positive for a banned substance in 2019.
The 22-year-old swimmer maintains she did not knowingly take the drug and is fighting to clear her name and get back in the pool.
Jack had her sights on the Olympic Games, but a positive tested meant she was banned from competition for two years.
As an appeal looms to increase her ban, she’s found herself at the centre of a much larger debate about world anti-doping rules that some say are railroading athletes.
Devastated by the 2020 bushfires and determined to do something to help, actor and writer Magda Szubanski joined forces with an unlikely partner, teenager Will ‘Egg Boy’ Connolly.
Will had been struggling with unexpected fame after footage of him cracking an egg over a former politician’s head went viral.
Magda took him under her wing and together the odd couple raised nearly $200,000 which after careful research they directed into art therapy classes for bushfire survivors in the Snowy Mountains region.
Australian Story joins them both on the road as Magda shares her own experiences of family trauma — and lots of laughs — with the Snowy Mountains locals.
From small town public schoolgirl to the International Court of Justice, Jennifer Robinson has had a meteoric rise to the top of her field.
In a “full on” few months last year, the human rights lawyer was involved in two of the most high-profile court cases in the world. She represented Amber Heard in Johnny Depp’s defamation action against The Sun newspaper in the UK and helped fight attempts to extradite long-term client Julian Assange to the US.
At just 40, Robinson has achieved more than most lawyers will in a lifetime. Now she is giving back to the public school system — a cause close to her heart.
