About Us
Hindsight is the only feature program on Australian radio devoted exclusively to social history. Hindsight offers new perspectives on and insights into the past, through stories that may be well known, or may have been ignored, or erased from the public record.
Whether it be memories of war, work, or popular culture, Hindsight takes the listener into the past, blending a variety of sources – oral history, archival material, research, music and sound.
The Social History Unit
Michelle Rayner - Executive producer, Social History and Features Unit, Executive producer, Hindsight
Michelle Rayner joined the ABC in 1986, and has produced most forms of radio, from comedy to science programs. She has been in the Social History and Features Unit since 1993, and in 1996 she won the NSW Premier's History Award (Audio Visual Category) for her documentary Passes and Pathways - a history of the Blue Mountains. Michelle has worked at the BBC as part of a producer exchange program, and in 1995, completed a Masters in Public History from the University of Technology Sydney
Lorena Allam - Producer
Lorena Allam is from the Gamilarai-Yawalaraay peoples of north west New South Wales, and grew up listening to stories (tall and short) of her family and cultural history. Lorena has been a radio journalist, producer and presenter with the ABC for 17 years, having worked in metropolitan and regional radio, news and Triple J ... and as a sometime 'fixer' for overseas media. Lorena's worked in a range of other positions on both sides of the media fence, and written for a range of history and social justice publications, but is most proud of her contribution to the "Bringing them Home" Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, and the National Library's oral history project of the same name.
Kirsti Melville - Producer
Kirsti Melville started at Radio National in 1994, with a BA Communications in one arm and a three-month-old baby in the other! Before joining the Social History and Features Unit, Kirsti worked for Women Out Loud, Background Briefing, and Triple J. She has also run training courses for journalists in Indonesia. Her passion for interviewing and feature-making is driven by a desire to pick apart the complexities of human relationships, a love of hearing people's stories and her maddeningly curious (some say nosy) streak!
Judy Rapley - Producer
Judy flew across the Tasman leaving behind her job with Radio New Zealand in 1978. She discovered the world of multicultural broadcasting at 2EA in Sydney before joining the ABC in 1980. Judy's been working as a sound engineer on features, documentaries and drama until recently when she began producing programs rather than mixing them with her Social History and Features colleagues.
Kerrie Ross - Producer
Kerrie Jean Ross has been a print, radio and television journalist and producer for 25 years. Despite the long innings, her 'people fascination' meter is still peaking! For Kerrie Jean, Radio National's Street Stories and Hindsight can only be described as dream vehicles for her snoopy disposition.
Nicole Steinke - Producer
Nicole Steinke has been a radio producer for almost twenty years. She's lectured at several universities, won awards for features and documentaries, had a brief stint writing speeches and media releases for former federal attorney-general, Michael Lavarch. She has also attempted to cycle around Australia. She claims her best job ever was a year waiting tables in a fish restaurant in Tasmania, surrounded by a cast of raving eccentrics – but close to a decade of work with various community radio stations produced almost as wild workmates. Radio National is now her home and while the staff may be more restrained, the flow of ideas and the sense of engagement with the community is not.
Claudia Taranto - Producer
Claudia has worked at Radio National since 1988 on a variety of programs including Life Matters, The Comfort Zone and The Listening Room. She also taught radio production to Indigenous Australians at James Cook University in the mid '90s. Claudia briefly tried her hand at television reporting on the long-defunct ABC TV's People Dimensions but found the intimacy of radio much more to her liking. She has a passion for making radio features about the kaleidoscope of ordinary life.
Annie Thomson - Producer
Annie Thomson joined the ABC in Perth in 1974 in the quaintly titled position of Relief Typist. It turned out to be a great way to discover the ABC – via the ever-so-humble cataloguing of music tracks and other necessary but monotonous tasks, through to the splendour of being the manager's secretary. Eventually it led to radio production in the Social History and Features Unit.
Some of Annie's career highlights include two programs about relinquishment and adoption in the 1960s – Solitary Confinement and Intimate Strangers, a program on life as an Army wife in PNG – Taim bilong misis bilong armi, and Stroking the Fevered Brow, the bitter-sweet memories of being a nurse trainee in the 1950s.
Catherine Freyne - Producer
Catherine Freyne brought her antiquarian sensibility to the ABC in 2001 after studying Australian history at the University of NSW. Her honours thesis looked at non-Indigenous expressions of belonging in the Australian landscape and was entitled Terra Alterius: Belonging, Dispossession and Reconciliation in Contemporary Australian Cultural Production. For several years she worked behind the scenes on Margaret Throsby's daily interview at ABC Classic FM, making frequent sojourns across to Radio National to work on programs such as The Deep End, The Book Show, Live On Stage and The Music Show. But it was Hindsight that hooked her from the start, so she is thrilled to be joining the Social History and Features team in 2008.
