Australian Story - Season 30

Celeste Barber went from unemployed actor to social media sensation for her celebrity parodies. But behind the hilarity is a story of struggle and self-doubt.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is both loved and loathed - a rising star in Coalition ranks accused of betraying the hopes of Indigenous Australians. She reveals the deeply personal experiences that shaped her political views.

When Col and Laura met, they were both grieving the sudden death of a cherished spouse. They soon had to confront a thorny question - when is an appropriate time is to find love after loss?

On the brink of death in India, Bharat Sundaresan turned to cricket, gathering millions of followers. But it's now in Australia that the colourful commentator has found true acceptance.

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."

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.

Australian Story reflects back on marathon runner and 'gumboot shuffler' Cliff Young.

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."

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."

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.

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. 

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.

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.

On Monday Australian Story profiles actor and charity advocate Sam Johnson.

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.

Adopted by an Australian couple 50 years ago, Sue-Yen Luiten is cycling through Vietnam with DNA kits in a last-ditch effort to find family.

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".

Jim Rogers has always been a big personality so when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at 55, he wasn't going to keep quiet. Now he's become 'the poster boy for dementia', determined to speak out while he can.

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.

When a Lithuanian rafter became trapped in rapids on the Franklin River, it set in train a perilous 24-hour rescue mission that presented rescuers with a terrible choice. (Part 1 of 2)

The dramatic conclusion to Australian Story's two-part account of the extraordinary 24-hour rescue effort to save Lithuanian rafter Valdas Bieliauskas from rapids on Tasmania's Franklin River.

Tonight Australian Story looks at the side effects and impact of an important drug on users and the warnings they seek to share.

Liz Heggaton and Tim Baker should never have met. She's a recently widowed sheep farmer from Western Australia; he's a surf writer from northern NSW. But a shared traumatic experience has brought them together to highlight the potentially deadly side effects of a widely used treatment for prostate cancer.

Tim Baker was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer at 50 and put on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a hormone treatment that works by blocking the testosterone that feeds the cancer. While the treatment was effective, it had side effects that he likens to "chemical castration".

"It absolutely feels like your masculinity is being taken from you," he tells Australian Story. "I consider myself entirely asexual. It causes breast swelling, genital shrinkage, loss of muscle mass. I think emotionally, it just leaves you feeling really, really vulnerable."

There were times he felt suicidal and as a form of therapy he started writing and speaking publicly about his experience.

When Liz Heggaton heard Tim on a podcast, she had the terrible realisation that her husband's suicide months earlier could have been a result of him being on ADT.

Liz's husband Craig was diagnosed with prostate cancer at 56 and had his prostate removed. But four years later the cancer returned and he was put on ADT, despite having a history of depression. He took his own life not long after.

"If only we'd been forewarned that this could be a side effect to this drug," Liz says. "What was going down for Tim could well have been what was going down for Craig."

Liz and Tim recognise that ADT is a lifesaving treatment and men should not stop taking it. But they insist much more needs to be done to prepare patients for the potential psychological impacts of the treatment.

"I think every man and their partner, if they're going on ADT, need to be counselled to ensure that they're fully warned how their body's going to feel when they commence it," Liz tells Australian Story.

"I know Liz isn't going to cop this lying down," Tim says, "and she wants there to be a legacy for her husband and for him not to have died in vain."

Producer: Ben Cheshire