Airdate: Lost and Found: Australia’s Hidden Treasures

Next week The History Channel screens a Lost and Found: Australia’s Hidden Treasures, documentary that delves into the artefacts at The State Library of New South Wales.

The one hour doco is presented by Warren Brown, former co-host of the first series of Top Gear Australia.

This exclusive one-hour documentary is testament to the fact that the life of an object can be every bit as interesting as the lives of famous people in history. The stories surrounding these hidden treasures are beyond belief and are brilliantly brought to life by history enthusiast, Brown.

What could the letters of renowned poet and lover of Oscar Wilde, Sir Alfred Douglas, to Sydney resident Maurice Schwabe, be doing in The State Library? The answer involves one of the greatest scandals ever to hit London society and a mysterious Sydney detective called Jules Rochaix, who deposited the letters in the State Library in 1919.

How did a lock of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley’s hair end up in Australia? While Mary was living a life of scandal and tragedy with famous poets Shelley and Byron in Europe, her cousin Edward Wollstonecraft was establishing a new suburb in Sydney.

Lost and Found also uncovers Australia’s earliest photograph depicting a convict sent to Australia for murder who went on to become a leading surgeon and founder of Sydney Grammar School; a Tasman map from 1647 that comes with an outrageous story involving everyone from Bonaparte to Breaker Morant and extremely rare indigenous language lists containing thousands of words from long-lost Aboriginal languages around the country.

Lost and Found: Australia’s Hidden Treasures is produced by WTFN Entertainment Australia and is exclusive to The History Channel.

Wednesday, November 30 at 7.30pm AEDT.