ABC Documentaries

Journey to Australia's southern coast and uncover one of its best-kept secrets - a natural phenomenon called the "Bonney Upwelling" that sparks a feeding frenzy all the way up the food chain to the planet's largest living creature, the Blue Whale. As long as two buses with a mouth big enough to capture 50 tonnes of seawater, a feeding Blue Whale is a sight to behold. Filmed in Hi Def, this blue-chip natural history documentary captures, for the first time, the extraordinary spectacle of this unique event.

From Dr Who to The Dark Side of the Moon to modern day dance music, the pioneering members of the Electronic Music Studios radically changed the sound-scape of the 20th century. Screening Tuesday 18 September at 10pm, What the Future Sounded Like tells the fascinating story of British electronic music. In postwar Britain, musician and composer Tristram Cary was using materials left over from the war to experiment with electronic music. Uninhibited, anything went with regard to the sounds he invented. He also moonlighted as a composer for pop cult films like The Ladykillers and the seminal television series Dr Who. In the 1960s an exiled Russian aristocrat Peter Zinovieff, borrowed money from his rich British wife to purchase two military grade computers. Costing as much as a house at the time, he used them specifically for his personal experiments in electronic music. But it was his collaboration with music engineer David Cockerell that helped revolutionise electronic music. By the end of the 60s, Cary joined forces with Zinovieff and Cockerell to establish EMS (Electronic Music Studios). EMS was the most advanced computer-music facility in the world. They created incredible sounds for films about nuclear power reactors, adverts for early Olivetti computers and for the British Pavilion at the 1967 World Expo. Played back today this early electronic music still arouses wonder at its creation and power. EMS's great legacy is the VCS3, Britain's first synthesizer and rival of the American Moog. The VCS3 was a uniquely British invention used by some of the most popular artists of the time including: The Who, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and David Bowie. Almost 30 years on, the VCS3 is still used by modern electronic artists like Aphex Twin and Radiohead. What the Future Sounded Like explores a lost chapter in music history, uncovering a group of passionate composers and innovators who harnessed technology and new ideas to re-imagine the boundaries of music and

In mid-1995, a group of Sydney businessmen backed by Kerry Packer made an audacious attempt to steal the amateur game of rugby union and transform it into a lucrative, world-wide professional sports franchise. At the same time, the custodians of the code in the Southern Hemisphere - the Union officials of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa - were negotiating with Rupert Murdoch's vast News Corporation. Their aim was to sell TV rights to the code for enough money to begin paying their players a generous wage. They, too, saw professionalism as inevitable. For two months both sides worked in secret to bring their dreams to fruition. Then, on the day before the World Cup final in Johannesburg, this secret war to control the brave new world of professional rugby burst into public view. What soon emerged was a classic showdown: while the Unions had secured an incredible $555 million from Murdoch for the TV rights, Kerry Packer's rebels had secretly contracted all their best players. It would be a fight to the death, winner take all. For the first time on television, Stealing Rugby tells this extraordinary story in the words of the major participants. We hear from the players, the officials and the businessmen, including Phil Kearns, Sean Fitzpatrick, Francois Pienaar, Sam Chisholm, Ian Frykberg, Simon Poidevin, Ross Turnbull, Dr Louis Luyt and journalist Peter Fitzsimons. The program also contains never-before-seen 1995 footage from a secret three-way international video conference held at the height of the rugby war. It features key players from all three Southern Hemisphere countries and the cream of Kerry Packer's management team of the time. Stealing Rugby documents an extraordinary moment when sport and business collided. It gives a unique insight into the turbulent events that helped make rugby the game it is today.

On a warm November afternoon in 1982, a man walked into a Sydney hospital, complaining of simple symptoms – fever, fatigue, sweats. He was from New York. A gardener – young and fit. With a crowded sexual history. And he was gay. The doctors made their diagnosis, the first in Australia: this man had AIDS. He was discharged and vanished into the streets. This is the little known story of how a strange coalition of doctors, nurses, nuns, gays, whores, junkies and politicians pulled off one of the first and boldest defeats of AIDS in the world. Together they broke the law, offended everyone, and saved tens thousands of lives.