The Years That Made Us


Genre: History


Duration: 3 x 60’


Year of Production: 2012


Production Company: Beyond Screen Production


Commissioned By: ABC Australia


Definition: HD


This is a look into the events that laid the foundation for Australia in the 21st century. Between 1919 and 1939, Australia turned from a rural backwater of the British Empire to a South East Asian nation. Award- winning journalist and author Chris Masters investigates the tumultuous 1920s and 30s and tells the stories of parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who survived crisis after crisis and laid the groundwork for the nation we know today. In Australian lore nationhood was forged in the slaughter of Gallipoli in 1915. But in The Years That Made Us, 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.