Home Truths – Vincent Fantauzzo
Monday, March 3, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
When celebrated portrait artist Vincent Fantauzzo first appeared on Australian Story in 2019 to talk about his dyslexia, he received a phenomenal public response.
But at that time, Vincent wasn’t able to be entirely honest about his life story. After his father died, Vincent was able to confront his traumatic childhood in a way he had previously kept hidden – even from his wife, actor Asher Keddie.
“He’s been able to break that cycle of dysfunction because he’s started to tell the truth,” Asher tells Australian Story.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of things I was hiding for a long time,” says Vincent.
Now, Vincent is unveiling the painful reality of his relationship with his father and the dark truths of his childhood. And doing so has helped him become the type of father he wished he’d had.
It was this longing that pushed Vincent into seeking out his own father figures throughout his life – most notably, Heath Ledger’s father, Kim.
Their connection was formed amid a chaotic time, after the portrait Vincent had painted of the Hollywood star won the Archibald People’s Choice award just a month after Heath’s shock accidental overdose in 2008.
The painting catapulted Vincent into the spotlight, and his career as one of the country’s most renowned portrait artists has continued to flourish since.
Seventeen years on, the close bond between Vincent and Kim has been instrumental in easing the painful void both men have experienced, and inspired Vincent in his commitment to be the best father he can be.
“I often refer to him as my surrogate son in Melbourne,” says Kim. “Just being part of that journey with him has provided me a great deal of comfort, and I feel very proud to have been a witness to the growth in him personally.”
UPDATE
Hooked – Dave Hughes
Monday, March 10, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Dave Hughes is one of the country’s most hardworking and successful comedians, winning over audiences for 30 years with his hilarious and brutally honest revelations about his life.
In this program, he channels that same honesty, revealing in detail for the first time terrifying moments from his childhood, growing up with a father whom he loved but who struggled with alcohol addiction.
Hughes had his own battle with alcohol but embraced sobriety in his early 20s.
He suspects he swapped one addiction for another.
“Maybe I’ve gotten a work addiction,” he says, “but I think it’s a healthy addiction to be obsessed with making people laugh.”
According to friend and fellow comedian Rove McManus: “There’s a difference in being a hard worker and being a workaholic. I feel he’s a workaholic.”
In this candid Australian Story, Hughes returns to his hometown of Warrnambool to explore the roots of his addiction to comedy and its impact on his life.
His wife and children, as well as friends Rove McManus and Kate Langbroek, share their insights into a contradictory and complex man who struggles in equal parts with self-loathing and self-love.
Richard spoke to Ally Langdon on A Current Affair tonight.
Born to Run – Cliff Young
Monday 24 March, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Over five days in 1983, Cliff Young shuffled into Australian folklore when he won the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon. Few people rated the 61-year-old potato farmer’s chances and race organisers feared he could die on the way, delivering them a public relations disaster. Instead, he smashed the record for a run of that distance and became an instant – if unlikely – national hero.
“He was a little fella who became larger than life,” says fellow competitor John Connellan. “Everyone who was alive at that time remembers Cliff as much as they remember the man landing on the moon. Probably both as unlikely as each other.”
Although he seemed to come from nowhere, Young’s achievement was a lifetime in the making. Growing up in the Otway Ranges, he ran for hours at a time, often in gumboots. To the locals he was a curiosity but when he started to mix with other long-distance runners, he found his people.
“Cliff was a simple man and led a simple life but he was not a simpleton,” journalist and friend Neil Kearney tells Australian Story.
With his distinctive shuffle and humble bearing, Cliff Young captured the public’s imagination and was a fixture in the media as he continued to run competitively well into his 70s. Although his short-lived marriage in 1983 to Mary Howell, more than 40 years his junior, raised eyebrows, he remained a much-loved figure until his death in 2003.
In an engaging and nostalgic Australian Story, friends and fellow runners look back at an extraordinary feat of athleticism and a man whose name still inspires wonder and delight.
“This is just a real ordinary bloke,” says his former trainer and manager Mike Tonkin. “But real ordinary blokes are capable of extraordinary things.”
The Shoot Out – Race Around the World
Monday 31 March, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Australian Story looks back at Race Around the World, the edgy 1997 documentary competition that launched John Safran and became one of the 90s unlikeliest TV hits.
Eight aspiring filmmakers were chosen from more than 1300 applicants to travel the world for 100 days making a four-minute documentary every 10 days. Although Safran was the breakout star, each of them went on to have a successful career in the film and television industry.
“We just thought, a bunch of young people going around the world making shit films – who’s going to watch that?” says Olivia Rousset, the eventual winner of the series.
But it struck a chord with viewers, who loved the rawness of the documentaries and the unvarnished opinions of the judges back in the studio. “It was a one of those weird TV dreams that actually came true,” says the show’s presenter, Richard Fidler.
Contestants, judges and producers share previously untold stories from behind the scenes of the show, which all agree was a health and safety nightmare.
“I got robbed, I got mugged, shook down, pepper sprayed,” says contestant Scott Herford, who now has his own production company. “Everyone was pushed to their absolute breaking point.”
“It was mad,” says Safran, who famously streaked through Jerusalem, broke into Disneyland and asked voodoo priests to put a curse on his ex-girlfriend. “Not only could we have died, we could have died and they didn’t know about it.”
Armed with a new generation of digital camera – small, light, with a flip screen that made it easy to film yourself – the eight young filmmakers pioneered a style of visual storytelling that is now everywhere on social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
“I don’t know if we were the original influencers,” says contestant Daniel Marsden, “but it was definitely a different style of filmmaking that no one had seen on tele before. It was pretty fresh.”
Producer: Vanessa Gorman
Class Wars: Murat Dizdar
Monday, April 7, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Murat Dizdar is the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, responsible for more than 2200 public schools and almost 800,000 students. And he’s on a mission to stem the flow of students to private schools and claw back funding from the federal government.
For Dizdar, the son of Turkish migrants raised in council housing, this mission is personal.
“I stunk of working class,” he tells Australian Story. “I stunk of what work looked like. And I don’t mind when I reminisce about that odour because that odour was hard-earned. It taught me that to get your way there was no shortcut. I’ve always been in the in the corner of the battler, the working class and that’s why I’m also so passionate about public education.”
Dizdar thrived in the public system and received one of the highest HSC marks in the state. The expectation was that he would study law or medicine, and he chose law. But while working in a law firm as a student he realised he had to follow his true passion – teaching.
A notoriously hard worker, Dizdar worked his way to the top of the department, only resting for nine days after a serious heart attack.
“Absolutely read him the riot act after the heart attack,” his wife Ceyda Dizdar says. “And I remember distinctly him saying to me, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. Can you bring my laptop?’”
Australian Story was granted extraordinary access to Murat Dizdar as he undertook the fight of his life – to secure an extra $800 million per year in funding and start the process of winning back students to public education.
“Murat has got the right idea, in my opinion,” former justice of the High Court Michael Kirby tells Australian Story. “For most of the time I was on the High Court, I was the only justice whose entire education had been at public schools. For a long time now, the federal government has been the donor of very, very large amounts of funding to private and religious schools and they’ve done that to the damage of public schools.”
The episode also features interviews with NSW Education Minister Prue Car, former public school alumnus and Socceroo Craig Foster, and former colleague and now state minister Jihad Dibb.
Producer: Conor Duffy.
Herding Katter – Bob Katter
Monday, 14 April, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Bob Katter is about to turn 80, an age when most people are long retired. But the maverick MP – a colourful character in the federal and Queensland parliaments for more than 50 years – now finds himself in the spotlight once again.
Not only is he getting the rare honour of an official portrait, Katter is one of the key crossbenchers whose support may decide the outcome of the election in the event of a hung parliament.
“When people simply ridicule him for being some Queensland hick, they do so at their own peril,” former prime minister and friend Kevin Rudd tells Australian Story.
The last time Katter was thrust into the role of ‘kingmaker’ in a hung Parliament was 2010, when Julia Gillard sought the support of three independents to form a government. Katter says he learned from that experience and would make the most of any new opportunity to influence government policy.
“I’m not locked into either side,” Katter tells Australian Story. “I’ll be pretty brutal about getting what I want.”
Australian Story secured unprecedented access to Katter over the past five months. We’ve filmed him in Canberra with his exasperated staffers, across his sprawling electorate where the TikTok sensation is mobbed by young fans, and at home with his longsuffering wife.
Think you know everything there is to know about Bob Katter? Think again.
Producer: Ben Cheshire.
This episode with be repeated next Monday 21 April.
In an encore screening, rock legend Nick Cave talks candidly about grief, addiction, religion and why he’s still making challenging music in his 60s.
Samuel Johnson and his Love Your Sister charity will feature in an upcoming episode, according to his Instagram post last week.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DINR-hJTaU5/?igsh=cThkbGk2dWp5ejMx
Duped - Donna Nelson
Monday 28 April, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
In January 2023, Perth grandmother Donna Nelson flew to Tokyo expecting to meet her future husband, following a two-year online relationship. Instead, customs officers found two kilograms of methamphetamine in a suitcase she’d been asked to carry, and she was arrested.
Last November, Australian Story followed Donna’s five daughters as they attended her long-awaited trial for drug smuggling. Despite Japan’s 99 per cent conviction rate, Donna’s daughters were confident she would be among the fortunate one per cent and be home for Christmas.
“Even though I knew what we were up against, I still felt confident,” daughter Kristal Hilaire tells Australian Story. “You can’t be guilty of something you didn’t know and didn’t have intention of doing.”
Before her trial, Donna – a 59-year-old Nyaki Nyaki woman and community leader – had spent 22 months in solitary confinement with no family contact.
“She’s pretty much confined to her cell for 23½ hours a day,” explains daughter Ashlee Charles. “She has to eat in her cell, she isn’t allowed to talk loudly, she’s not allowed to sing, she’s not allowed to talk to other people who are detained.”
Says her Japanese lawyer, Rie Nishida: “She actually told me she felt she is suicidal at a certain point. She told me she almost forget how to speak.”
Donna Nelson was the victim of a sophisticated love scam. Her fiancé, who called himself Kelly, said he was a businessman based in Japan. After two years of daily online contact, he invited her to Japan to meet in person, booking her a flight with a stopover in Laos and asking her to pick up a sample suitcase for his Japanese boutiques.
“With these romance scams, people’s usual reaction is, how could you be so stupid,” says lawyer Luke McMahon. “But it really lacks an appreciation for how sophisticated these scammers are. It’s this person’s job. That’s what they do. They do it every day.”
Donna was sentenced to six years in prison, despite the court accepting she was the victim of a scam. No effort has been made to investigate ‘Kelly’ or the syndicate he belongs to, either in Japan or Australia.
In a dramatic and absorbing episode, Australian Story reveals the details of the elaborate scam that led to Donna Nelson’s arrest and provides exclusive behind-the-scenes coverage of the family as they attend the trial, digest the shock sentence and prepare for an appeal.
Producer: Olivia Rousset.
Birds of a Feather – The Twinnies
Monday 12 May, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Australian Story was updating its episode on identical twins Paula and Bridgette Powers last month when out of the blue they became a global media sensation. An interview they gave about a gunman who’d crashed a car outside their bird sanctuary went viral and suddenly they were everywhere.
Parodies of them talking in unison flooded the internet and we were filming with them when they were interviewed live by US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. But Paula and Bridgette, better known as the Twinnies, are used to being the objects of curiosity.
The Twinnies are the closest identical twins that some experts have seen. They not only talk in sync, they dress the same and even their mother had trouble telling them apart. They’ve struggled with poor health all their lives but have found purpose in rescuing seabirds on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
“I think a lot of people make the mistake of seeing the Twinnies as being some sort of novelty act because they talk in unison,” vet and television presenter Dr Chris Brown tells Australian Story. “But I think you do that at your peril. These girls are experts. They’re absolute pros.”
After working with the late Steve Irwin, the Twinnies started their bird sanctuary more than 20 years ago. But the running costs are prohibitive and when the property’s owner decided to sell recently, the stress became so great that Paula and Bridgette’s mother Helen thought they should call it quits.
Enter philanthropist Dr Peter Sherwood – ‘Saint Peter’ as the twins call him – who shared their interest in healing and wanted to help.
“Miracles can happen if you stick at something long enough and don’t ever give up,” their mother Helen tells Australian Story.
Producers: Angela Leonardi and Rebecca Armstrong.
Better Angels – Samuel Johnson
Monday 19 May, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Actor Samuel Johnson just celebrated a milestone he never dreamed he’d reach. Love Your Sister, the charity he founded with his late sister Connie, has raised $20 million for cancer research.
It’s one of many remarkable feats Samuel has pulled off in his rollercoaster life.
The actor-turned-advocate broke the world unicycling record when he rode 16,000km around Australia, won a Gold Logie playing music legend Molly Meldrum and, more recently, survived a near-fatal road accident.
Samuel shot to fame at 21 when he starred in the hit TV series The Secret Life of Us but his 20s and 30s were a turbulent time. He lost loved ones to illness and suicide and battled mental illness and addiction.
“It seems like life deals up a lot of things to Sam and he somehow triumphs over them”, says Lucy Freeman, the managing director of Love Your Sister.
Samuel has found new purpose in his fundraising work, which focuses on helping cancer patients in regional Australia.
“I used to be a big problem for myself,” Samuel tells Australian Story. “Now I’ve tapped into something that has helped me get away from the things I hated about myself.”
Australian Story goes on the road with Samuel as he travels to halls, clubs and campsites from Queensland to Queanbeyan, raising money and speaking candidly about grief, love and self-acceptance.
Producer: Lisa McGregor.
Missing Pieces – Sue-Yen Luiten
Monday 26 May, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, adoptee Sue-Yen Luiten has returned to her country of birth in an effort to track down the family she left behind. Luiten was just a few weeks old when she was adopted by an Australian couple, but she’s spent her adult life trying to piece together her biological puzzle.
“There’s so much ambiguity and unknown,” the Melbourne-based architect tells Australian Story. “Who do I look like? Where did I start from? What have I left behind? What if my biological mother and father are looking for me and I’m just sitting here not doing anything at all?”
Luiten is also helping other adoptees find their birth families, heading up an international organisation, Vietnam Family Search.
“It’s like we’re an exclusive sort of family in a weird way,” says friend and adoptee Barton Williams.
Last month Luiten took that ‘family’ to Vietnam, cycling around the Mekong Delta and providing DNA kits to mothers in the hope the results will help connect adoptees with their biological families.
Australian Story filmed with the group as they were welcomed by local communities, including mothers separated from their children during the war. The group is now holding its collective breath, hopeful the DNA results will provide some answers.
For Luiten, the trip has been life changing. “As an adoptee driven to look for my mother, that journey can be incredibly lonely. Now there’s a community there that can hold each other.”
Producer: Jennifer Feller and Marc Smith.
Game Of His Life - Ange Postecoglou
Monday 2 June 8:00 PM
Introduced by Australian Story presenter Leigh Sales
“Something inside me told me that this was going to be my destiny.”
In an exclusive interview, football manager Ange Postecoglou sits down with Australian Story to reflect on Tottenham Hotspur’s remarkable victory in the Europa League, admitting that it was the “toughest thing I’ve ever done”.
No Australian has previously managed an English Premier League team, let alone won a major European trophy. When the Spurs lifted the Europa League Cup, it broke the club’s 17-year trophy drought, made him a hero to fans and solidified his place in the pantheon of the club’s greats.
“It took every little ounce of me, every bit of me, to get us over the line,” Postecoglou tells Australian Story.
Sports commentator Richard Hinds says Postecoglou has “redefined the possibilities for all Australian coaches. He’s stepped into a world that we’ve always seen as the realm of other, the realm of the great coaches.”
Despite the win, Postecoglou has endured a tough two years at the club, facing criticism over the team’s poor performance in the Premier League. But the uncompromising Australian has never taken the easy path.
“You put Ange with his back to the ropes, he will come out stronger than ever,” childhood friend Nick Deligiannis tells Australian Story.
Drawing on episodes from 2015 and 2017, including interviews with family and friends, we look back over Postecoglou’s eventful and at times controversial career – a career he says is far from over.
“In 10 years’ time there will be more stories to tell, more trophies to be won and that’s how I think about life,” he says.
Producers: Jennifer Feller and Lisa McGregor.
(Late schedule amendment).
Forget Me Not - Jim Rogers
Monday 16 June, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Jim Rogers thought Alzheimer’s was an old-person’s disease … until he was diagnosed at the age of 55, becoming one of 29,000 Australians living with younger-onset dementia.
A larger-than-life character with the gift of the gab, Jim was never going to take his diagnosis quietly. He teamed up with broadcaster Hamish Macdonald for the podcast Hold the Moment, spreading the message that while dementia is terminal and incurable, you can slow its progress and make the most of time left.
“You can live well with dementia,” Jim tells Australian Story. “You’ve just got to adapt to it.”
Now he’s being hailed as the “pin-up boy” for dementia.
“Dementia has just been viewed as a death sentence,” says Hamish Macdonald. “You get old, you lose your marbles and then you die. That’s why I think Jim’s contribution is so critical. He’s starting this conversation in a way that I think we haven’t really had before.”
Jim has always lived life boldly.
He migrated to Australia with his wife Lorna and three young children in the 1990s but three years later, Lorna developed melanoma and was dead within months. Bringing up the children on his own kept Jim busy so he wasn’t looking for another partner when he took a much-needed holiday. Then he met Tyler and fell in love.
“I started to think, this is ridiculous,” recalls Jim. “Like this is a man for a start. I’ve got kids. I just can’t do this.”
But the connection they both felt was too strong and they are still together, 25 years later.
Since his diagnosis three years ago, Jim has had to give up his driver’s licence and a job he loved. Initially he sunk into depression but eventually he decided to make the most of the time he has left. He now devotes himself to challenging the stigma that surrounds dementia.
“Jim is someone with a lot to give,” says Hamish Macdonald, “and my sense is he knows there’s a limit to how long he can continue to give to others but while he can, he’s doing it as much as he possibly can.”
Break It Down: The Raygun Phenomenon
Monday 23 June, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
When Australian academic and B-girl Rachael “Raygun” Gunn crashed out of the Paris Olympics in the first round of the breaking event she became a cultural flashpoint, inspiring countless memes, heated debate and a torrent of online abuse. And in the months that followed, she continued to confound public opinion.
Nearly a year since her infamous routine, with its questionable athleticism and imitations of kangaroos and sprinklers, Australian Story examines the Raygun phenomenon to try to understand why it created such a storm and why Gunn remains such a polarising figure.
There was criticism of Raygun’s routine from the outset, both at home and abroad. Some Australians were embarrassed that the nation’s record medal haul at the Olympics was overshadowed by Raygun’s performance while those in the country where breaking originated thought her performance was insulting amateurish and culturally insensitive.
“Part of the magic of hip hop culture is the fact that it was created by marginalised teenagers who came from nothing,” New York breaking pioneer Michael Holman tells Australian Story. “And so her being white and Australian and jumping around like a kangaroo, that’s going to be a loaded gun.”
Nevertheless, there was plenty of support for Gunn, not least from Australian comedian Stephanie Broadbridge, who saw in Raygun a flawed sporting hero in the mould of Shane Warne and was inspired to create an unauthorised musical parody or in her words, an “empathetic piss-take”.
But when Gunn’s lawyers demanded Broadbridge cancel the musical days before its launch on the grounds of copyright infringement, public opinion turned firmly against Gunn.
“People who had backed her the whole way felt like this was kind of betrayal of their support for her,” says journalist Jordan Baker, who covered the Paris Olympics for The Sydney Morning Herald. “It seemed like she was no longer even remotely trying to lean into the joke.”
Australian Story spoke to a range of commentators and sporting figures to make sense of this confounding cultural moment and ask what it says about us as Australians.
(Rachael Gunn declined an invitation to be involved.)
Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.