Summary

Award-winning journalist and author Chris Masters investigates the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s and the events that laid the foundation for Australia in the 21st Century. In Australian mythology nationhood was forged in the slaughter of Gallipoli in 1915. But in this documentary series, Chris Masters introduces a very different proposition. Far from bringing the nation together, the First World War tore the country apart and threatened to destroy the Federation Dream. The Great Depression wrecked a struggling recovery and just when light appeared on the horizon, the gates of hell reopened with the Second World War. This is the story of how the parents, grandparents and great grandparents of today’s Australians survived crisis after crisis and laid the groundwork for the nation we know today. Through the prism of his own working class family, Chris provides extra life, light and shade to the politics and economics of rapid change.