Australian Encounters

Presented with humour & verve, Australian Encounters celebrates historic encounters between a renowned Australian & an international mover & shaker. This episode recounts when Bob...

It was 1919 and the world's statesmen were gathered at Versailles to redraw the map of the world. Australia had sacrificed much blood to win the peace, and Billy Hughes was there t...

In December 1914, an athletic young Hawaiian strode across the beach at Freshwater, a stretch of sand between Manly and Curl Curl. He was about to perform a feat never before seen...

The imperious Australian soprano and the effusive Italian tenor had transformed La Boheme from a slow burn sleeper into a blockbuster hit that's still putting bums on seats a centu...

Herr Hitler was busy in the Rhineland, so Joseph Aloysius Lyons decided to pay a visit to Signor Mussolini instead. It was 1935 and collecting dictators was de rigueur for Australi...

Just before Christmas, 1958, Rupert Murdoch, then aged 27, met a sensitive young Tamil on the dodge from the immigration authorities. A poor scholar with black skin, Kamahl's days...

In the backroom bar of the Katsikas brothers' grocery store, amid tins of olive oil and sacks of flour, a young unknown Canadian poet met an Australian expatriate named George John...

Kylie Minogue met Michael Hutchence at a bash after the Countdown Awards in 1987. By the time their two-year affair ended, it had transformed a singing budgie into a femme fatale,...

Twenty-year-old boxer Lionel Rose was in Los Angeles to defend his world bantamweight title. When he received the message that Elvis wanted to meet him, he jumped under the shower...

In 1880, an unschooled Catholic bushman and a Protestant judge traded points, back and forth, neither ultimately persuading the other. "Edward Kelly," concluded Redmond Barry, "I h...