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.

Hear about the early explorer who was shot by his own camel? Tony Robinson goes to the scene of the crime, recreating one of Australia's most peculiar chapters in history. He walks in the footsteps of the early inland explorers and discovers how the grab for land led to atrocities against the indigenous inhabitants. This episode is about the mixed fortunes of these two groups - the foolhardy explorers who set out into the wilderness, and the gold seekers hungry for riches, and united as they rebelled against corrupt police and a tax hungry government. Alternative title: Tony Robinson Explores Australia.