A cultural history of the Australian landscape: Big Sky Stories

The Australian Landcape series is in four parts. In Big Sky stories we take an aerial journey and find that the sky provides a rich palate through which to explore our history. We move from the Indigenous dreaming beings that roamed freely between heaven and earth to the radio waves and satellites that invisibly bring us the communication technologies we depend on today. Post-settlement, we find that it's war that has driven much of the history of Australia's sky. We flit from the first woman pilot, Nancy Bird Walton, and the activities of women pilots during World War II, to photographer Frank Hurley, whose first photographs were taken from the cockpit of a World War I fighter. We hear how military technology influenced the development of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and our ability to predict the coming of cyclones. We also explore how artists and writers have documented the Australian skies.