Tony Robinson Down Under

In the final episode of Tony's exploration, he looks at the legacy of 222 years of British settlement. How did the country founded as a penal colony grow into a nation, and where are its loyalties today? Tony goes to the true birthplace of The Ashes, helps re-create the first powered flight by an Australian, goes on a legal fox hunt, takes a spin with invention buff James O'Loughlin in the first model ute, retraces The Dismissal with cartoonist Warren Brown, and interrogates former prime minister Kevin Rudd about his convict past.

Tony Robinson does an entrance examination to see if he'd qualify as an acceptable migrant to Australia. From its earliest days, Australia needed free migrants to grow and prosper, and it needed women. Schemes were devised to achieve both objectives, with bounties offered for bringing boatloads of human cargo from the UK and Ireland. But the people merchants got greedy, and the human toll was terrible. Tony traces immigration and multiculturalism from the early 1800s, through the White Australia Policy, to the first arrival of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s. He decides that the best way of exploring a country's diversity is to talk to taxi drivers. Alternative title: Tony Robinson Explores Australia.

As the early settlers began to sink their roots deeper into the soils of the new colony, the first rumblings of liberty and freedom began. The authority of the penal government is questioned more and more by the convicts and by the soldiers themselves. Early attempts to escape betrayed a complete ignorance about where they were in the world. Tony visits Port Arthur, and subjects himself to solitary confinement to find out firsthand what it was like for the wretched souls who were incarcerated there. But later the lone voices of dissent became a chorus. And on at least one occasion, the fledgling country faced its destiny: remain loyal to mother Britain, or break away like America into the uncertain waters of Republicanism? Tony finds out just how close Australia came to choosing the latter. Alternative title: Tony Robinson Explores Australia.