ABC Documentaries

The bigger the drought, the bigger the flood. That certainly held true over the past year for the eastern half of Australia, with flooding rains ending the worst drought in history. The signs that the weather was turning began in 2009, when a deluge in the tropical north set the great desert rivers flowing through Central Australia. For the first time in years, the water flowed all the way to Lake Eyre, the huge salt pan in the dead heart of the continent. ABC TV reporter Paul Lockyer covered the drought in 2009, and now returns to Lake Eyre 12 months later to investigate the floods sweeping across much of south-west Queensland. The deluge was delivered by a series of tropical lows which swept through the middle of Australia.

A one-hour documentary on the flash flooding that decimated the Lockyer Valley on Monday January 10 and its aftermath. Seasoned and young ABC reporters who covered the stories from the flood revisit the ravaged areas to see how communities are faring after the disaster. Detailing the constant rain over the preceding months, the film will touch on the extraordinary events in Toowoomba and the combination of planning, luck, and timing that saw Paul Lockyer and ABC crew Gary Ticehurst and Berger Breland land in the devastated Lockyer Valley town of Grantham the day after an inland tsunami destroyed it - and 24 hours before other media. Reeling with the horror at the stories of death and destruction they gathered the townspeople, and joined by other ABC staff, they spent two days documenting Grantham's fate in words and pictures and also the efforts to find survivors and catalogue the dead. The experience, even for seasoned journalists, was shocking and unforgettable. ABC colleague Kirrin McKechnie covers the early return of people to Grantham and the Lockyer Valley. Two weeks after the town was washed away, McKechnie found people still traumatised. "It was like the whole town had been put through a shredder," she said. Combining the personal stories of the ABC journalists and the amazing tales of survival, with previously unseen footage of water engulfing Grantham, this film is a compelling record of an event unparalleled in Australian history.

Jandamarra's War is the story of an Australian Aboriginal man who should be as famous as Ned Kelly. In 1894, Jandamarra led a rebellion against invading pastoralists in defence of his people's ancient land and culture. Until his death in brutal retribution, this formidable Bunuba warrior waged a 3-year guerrilla war, earning him both the admiration of his people and international notoriety.

Sydney, Australia 1953, a city in the grip of a deadly crime wave. In just over a year more than one hundred people were poisoned. The shocking truth is that most of the killers were women. In 1952 two NSW detectives commenced a murder investigation. What they found was so diabolical that it created a storm of public outrage... women were adding rat poison to cakes and cups of tea and feeding it to their unsuspecting loved ones. Unlike the popular images of 1950s domestic harmony, Sydney was a melting pot of violence, poverty and tensions between the sexes. In this claustrophobic post-war society, both men and women were trapped in roles that no longer fitted. But there was a way out. With no colour, no taste and no smell, Thallium, the active ingredient in rat poison was the perfect murder weapon. Banned in the rest of the Australia and most of the developed world, incredibly Thallium was freely available in Sydney... at every corner store. Recipe For Murder tells the true story of three notorious poisoners; blonde 'good time girl' Yvonne Fletcher, sixty-three-year-old grandmother Caroline Grills, and the attractive 'older woman' Veronica Monty.

When Australia stopped the refugee boats in 2001, most Australians applauded. Ten years later, the people who were there tell us what we didn't then know. In late winter 2001, the crew of the Norwegian tanker the Tampa pulled more than 400 refugees out of a fishing boat that was sinking off the north-west coast of Australia. The refugees demanded to be taken to Christmas Island. As the captain complied, the Australian authorities radioed. They threatened to seize his ship and throw him in prison if he entered Australian waters. The order had come from the very top.