ABC Rewind

It’s 1994 and fugitive billionaire tycoon Christopher Skase lies in a Majorcan hospital bed under police guard. A Spanish court has ordered he is well enough to be extradited back to Australia to face corporate crime charges. But Skase is appealing. When the decision finally comes, it’s a shock.

In June 1993, the Australian Federal Police get a call. Someone from Christopher Skase’s inner sanctum, someone who knows all the ins and outs of his business dealing, who knows exactly where all the bodies are buried, is defecting. But Skase isn’t going down without a fight and he’ll use every trick in the book to avoid extradition back to Australia.

It’s April 1989 and Christopher Skase is reclining on his private jet, sipping a flute of champagne as he flies home from Hollywood. He's just made a $1.2 billion bid for the MGMUA/United Artists film studio. There’s one small problem though - he doesn’t have the money.

In the 1980s, Christopher and Pixie Skase are headline news, right on top of the billionaire food chain. Australia can’t get enough of them. Skase builds the luxury Mirage resorts in Queensland and throws epic, over-the-top, star-studded parties. Pixie flies in flowers, chefs and dresses on their private jet. It’s a wild ride. But if something seems too good to be true it quite possibly is.

Christopher Skase wants to be a corporate cowboy. He’s handsome and elegant, with Hermes ties and flowing locks. His wife Pixie is beautiful, in a 1980s kind of way, with bouffant blonde hair and more diamonds than a high street jeweller. Together they take on the Melbourne business establishment and start building the Qintex empire.

It's 1980s Australia and everyone wants to be seen with billionaire power couple Christopher and Pixie Skase. They have it all — money, power, fame and big hair. Then, in the blink of an eye, they don't.This is the story of Australia's most famous fugitive entrepreneur, his epic fall from grace and the multi-million-dollar chase for Skase.By the age of 40, Christopher Skase's Qintex empire is worth $2 billion, his extravagance legendary, the couple's lavish taste questionable. It's said a glass dome sits in his home office with a million dollars inside. Shredded. An homage to his first mill.But when Skase makes an audacious tilt at Hollywood, his empire collapses.In one of the greatest escapes Australia's ever seen, Christopher and Pixie skip the country owing a whopping $1.5 billion.The Australian courts, government and media are baying for blood. But the billion-dollar question is — will Skase outfox them all?To binge more incredible podcast episodes about 'Australia's fugitive entrepreneur,' the billionaire con man Christopher Skase, hosted by Mark Humphries; search 'Rewind Skase: Fall of a Tycoon podcast' on the ABC listen App (Australia), or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mercia Masson is one of Australia’s longest serving undercover spies in Cold War era Australia. But her double life remains a secret to those closest to her, including her family, for nearly 50 years 

Young Alexandrina Grant is an audacious liar. Host Richard Roxburgh follows this clever and ambitious crook as she travels from the alleys of Aberdeen to a convict cell in Van Diemen's Land, then onto the streets of colonial Melbourne. It's there that Alexandrina Askew emerges, transformed into a squatter’s wife, with a distinguished pedigree and connections. But when her disguise is revealed, the newspapers pounce. And this notorious fraudster has serious questions to answer. 

It's May 1971, and Qantas flight 755 takes off from Sydney on a routine flight to Hong Kong. Then a man calls the airline, saying he wants a half a million dollars, or else 'the plane will blow up'.The public anxiously watch the skies above Sydney, as bomb experts are called in, and the plane's fuel runs dangerously low.How can someone hold a plane full of passengers to ransom?  Host Richard Roxburgh takes a deep dive into the events of that fateful day. 

Is he a baronet or a butcher from Wagga Wagga? Can he claim the estate of an English aristocrat thought to be lost at sea?Throughout the 1870s, this question attracted global attention, and was the subject of one of the longest, most sensational court cases Britain had ever seen. Guests: Robyn Annear (author) The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne ClaimantZadie Smith (author) The FraudClaire Campbell (former) Wagga Wagga head librarian and Tichborne aficionadoCredits: Narrator - Richard RoxburghProducer - Lyn GallacherSound engineer - Angie GrantScript Editors - Kirsti Melville & Tom WrightMusic - Matthew CrawfordArtwork - Lachlan Conn

One of Australia’s craftiest counterfeiters forges two million dollars in his suburban basement in the 1950s. Richard Roxburgh, renowned for playing shady characters on screen, tells the story of Robert Baudin and his brazen ability to make fake money.

After help from the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, the people of Rongelap atoll, in the Marshall Islands, have a new, safer place to live. But at what cost? What does the future hold for them? And will they ever be able to go home? Credits:Writer, producer, host: James NokiseWriter, script editor: Sophie TownsendWriter, producer: Justin GregoryHead ABC Radio Australia: Justine KellyExecutive Editor Audio RNZ: Tim WatkinContent Director ABC Radio Australia: Faleagafulu Inga StünznerRNZ Production Coordinator: Briana JuretichABC Production Manager: Alison BarclayAudio engineer RNZ: Rangi PowickDesign RNZ: Dexter EdwardsEditorial Policies advisor ABC: Tiger Webb

It’s July 1985, and public anger is at its peak in New Zealand, as the hunt begins for those responsible for bombing the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. Shockwaves ripple around the globe once it’s discovered who is behind the attack.

By 1985, nearly four decades after the US nuclear testing in the Pacific's Marshall Islands,  advocate Jeton Anjain has had enough. He decides to act to save his people of Rongelap Atoll. And with the help of some well-connected friends, he pulls off one of the great humanitarian feats of the 20th century.

In the days following the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear detonation, the people of Rongelap, in the Marshall Islands,  desperately need help.  But when that help arrived, it came with something they didn’t expect and never agreed to.

The Atomic age arrives in the Marshall Islands as the US turns the region into a nuclear testing ground. But after one massive detonation, nothing will ever be the same for the people of Rongelap Atoll.

The crew of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior should have felt safe and welcome when they arrived in Auckland, New Zealand in July 1985. Instead they became the target of a violent attack, which led one person dead. But why – what is the twisted back-story to these events, which led to spies, secrets and bombs?  

Miyakatsu Koike was a mild-mannered Japanese bank official who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was working in Surabaya in Indonesia when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.Koike was arrested by the Dutch East Indies authorities and sent to Loveday detention camp in South Australia where he spent four long years behind the wire.

Italian anarchist Francesco Fantin fled Mussolini's Italy for the freedom of the Queensland cane-fields, only to find himself locked up in a detention camp in wartime Australia, surrounded by his political enemies.

The extraordinary tale of one man's mind-bendingly long kayak journey that begins in Germany and ends up in an Australian Detention camp during World War 2.