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Well-known Australians play detective as they go in search of their family history, revealing secrets and surprises from the past. Six-part series premieres Sunday 13 January 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

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Page 1: revealing secrets and surprises from the past. at 7:30pm ...purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b2657908_1.pdf · Catherine Marciniak (Jack Thompson episode), Kay Pavlou (Kate Ceberano episode),

Well-known Australians play detective as they go in search of their family history, revealing secrets and surprises from the past.

Six-part series premieres Sunday 13 January 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

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SBS Contact Details SBS Marketing

Bridget Stenhouse Senior Communications Specialist SBS Tel: 02 9430 3792 Fax: 02 9430 3052 Email: [email protected]

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�WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV

Featuring Jack Thompson (Actor)

Kate Ceberano (Singer and Entertainer)

Geoffrey Robertson (QC and Human Rights Advocate)

Catherine Freeman (Gold Medal Olympic Athlete)

Dennis Cometti (Sporting Commentator)

Ita Buttrose (Publishing Pioneer)

Series Key Credits Narrated by: Richard Mellick

Writers/Directors: Catherine Marciniak (Jack Thompson episode), Kay Pavlou (Kate Ceberano episode), Judy Rymer (Geoffrey Robertson episode), Jane Manning (Catherine Freeman episode), Franco Di Chiera (Dennis Cometti & Ita Buttrose episodes)

Post-Production Writer / Directors: Alan Carter, Andrew Saw

Senior Researcher: Robyn Smith (Jack Thompson, Geoffrey Robertson, Ita Buttrose, Kate Ceberano episodes)

Researchers: Jane Manning (Catherine Freeman episode), Diana Pepper (Dennis Cometti episode)

SBS Independent Commissioning Editor: Ned Lander

Series Producer: Celia Tait

Executive Producer for Serendipity Productions: Margie Bryant

Executive Producer for Artemis International: Brian Beaton

Executive Producer for Film Australia: Penny Robins

Line Producer: Robin Eastwood

Duration: 6 x 52 minutes

Who Do You Think You Are? is a Film Australia National Interest Program, Serendipity Productions, Artemis International production in association with ScreenWest and Lotterywest and SBS Independent.

© 2007 Film Australia, Artemis International, Serendipity Productions, ScreenWest and Lotterywest and SBS Independent.

Who Do You Think You Are? format licensed by Wall to Wall Media Ltd.

[Who do you think you are?]

SERENDIPITY PRODUCTIONS

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KITSIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV�

One Line Series Synopsis: Well-known Australians play detective as they go in search of their family history, revealing secrets and surprises from the past.

One Paragraph Series Synopsis: Well-known Australians play detective as they go in search of their family history, revealing secrets from the past. Taking us to all corners of Australia and the globe are six stories of individuals seeking to find the definitive answer to where they came from. Along the way secrets are uncovered and histories are revealed, as each person discovers just who their ancestors were. Combining emotional and personal journeys with big-picture history, these inspiring stories remind us how Australians have come to be the people that we are today.

About the Making of the Series What mysteries are hidden in old family photographs? Can old documents reveal secrets, long forgotten by family members? What role does family history play in our daily lives? Can a person know who they really are?

Who Do You Think You Are? is a landmark documentary series chronicling the social, ethnic and cultural evolution of our national identity through the personal family histories of prominent Australians.

It offers an alternative way of looking at the history of modern Australia – showing the development of a nation from six personal perspectives while allowing us to share their private stories.

Developed and first produced by a British production company, Wall To Wall Television, the format has been a hit since it premiered on the BBC in 2004, inspiring millions of Britons to research their family trees. The Australian series of Who Do You Think You Are? was produced under Film Australia’s National Interest Program.

One Page Series Synopsis: Well-known Australians play detective as they go in search of their family history, revealing secrets from the past.

Taking us to all corners of Australia and the globe are six stories of individuals seeking to find the definitive answer to where they came from. Along the way secrets are uncovered and histories are revealed—from adultery and madness to children born out of wedlock and even the whiff of a right royal scandal—with each individual discovering that their ancestors form an integral part of not only their own identity, but that of the nation.

Combining emotional and personal journeys with big-picture history, these inspiring and sometimes challenging stories remind us how Australians have come to be the people that we are today.

Considering Australia’s multicultural background, this is a global story, with each celebrity tracing their ancestors around the world. They travel to the places where their forebears would have lived, loved and died, and learn about the hardships and hurdles their ancestors overcame.

This is a fascinating chronicle of the social, ethnic and cultural evolution of Australia’s national identity.

[Who do you think you are?]

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�WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV

Sydney-based executive producer Margie Bryant, of Serendipity Productions and Perth-based executive producer Brian Beaton of Artemis International both saw the first episode when it screened in the UK. They each pitched an Australian version to SBS Independent’s General Manager, Ned Lander. Ned felt the program perfectly suited SBS and suggested the two producers join forces. “Exploring the truly diverse nature of our national identity in such an entertaining way was a “must have” for SBS Independent, I was very keen to commission the program”, says Lander. Film Australia came on board as the main investor and production partner with all players working closely with WA state investors ScreenWest and Lotterywest to shape the series.

Although based on a deceptively simple idea, making the series involved months of research and planning, with each celebrity carefully cast so that their personal journey unlocked a different theme in Australia’s development as a nation.

“It’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done,” Bryant says. “The whole signing up of celebrities was really difficult because even if they had an interest in the idea, the amount of time we were requiring was more than most of them took for their annual holidays.”

When they began the process of casting, the producers contacted hundreds of potential subjects.

Depending on the travel commitments required to tell each story, the six people chosen to take part in the series – each a successful and busy Australian – had to commit up to three weeks to film their episode.

“They had to be passionate about being part of the program because it was a considerable commitment that we required,” says series producer Celia Tait, of Artemis International.

“They were all very brave to take part because they had no idea what we might find. But they were supported along the way and they were told that if there was anything they knew about that they wanted to avoid, then we could work around that. Mostly they’d say, ‘Oh I don’t think you’ll find anything very interesting in my ancestry’.”

Making the series was an enormous collaborative venture with producers and executive producers working in Perth and Sydney. The logistics – juggling time-zone differences, couriers and frequent travel – made it a complicated undertaking. The shoot teams were relatively small - consisting of a field director, sound recordist, director of photography, assistant producer/producer and the subject. Rushes from around Australia and the world were brought back to Perth-based post-production directors who shaped the edit.

Add to that a research team, led by Robyn Smith, working for up to four months on each of the stories, tracking leads in Germany, Italy, the United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand and the Philippines. On several occasions, promising research trails simply stopped dead and had to be abandoned.

“You basically start with the name of a celebrity and perhaps the name of their parents, and from that you must find 52 minutes of rich, interesting history and personal story,” Tait says.

“It’s terrifying, really, because you have no idea what you will find. It has some comparisons with the process of making natural history, where you have a cameraman down a ditch or up a tree for months on end waiting for an animal to return to its burrow and just hoping that tonight will be the night that you strike gold,” she says.

“With this series, you have lots of balls in the air, but you never know where a trail might end. Then every now and again you find a nugget – a birth certificate or a death certificate or some piece of the person’s history that develops a story and makes it all worthwhile.”

[About the Making of the Series]As well as the professional help the production team received from national and state archival bodies, they also were grateful for the support of an extensive family of genealogists and amateur historians, “people who work in tiny cupboards, often for no money, in the middle of nowhere”. Many of these people appear in the show.

The executive producer for Film Australia, Penny Robins, says the resulting series is worth the hard work and long hours.

“What this format offers is an innovative and fresh approach to telling history stories,” Robins says.

“It’s a very important project for Film Australia. It’s an absolutely natural fit for the National Interest Program, it’s a project that reflects on our recent and distant past, it provides a broad spread of history that we haven’t previously been able to encapsulate, and it also takes in popular culture, which adds a new dimension. It ticks all the boxes.

“I think this is a very good addition to Film Australia’s collection.”

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Ep �: Jack Thompson Sunday 13 January 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Australian acting icon Jack Thompson unearths more than a couple of surprises – and significant Australian heritage – but where does he come from and who does he think he is?

One Paragraph Synopsis: Australian acting icon Jack Thompson unearths more than a couple of surprises – and significant Australian heritage –

but where does he come from and who does he think he is? Born John Hadley Pain in Sydney in 1940, Jack took on the name of the Thompson family, who adopted him as a child after the death of his mother. In Who Do You Think You Are? Jack will for the first time endeavor to discover the real family history of his biological relations. He discovers links to a bushranger and Indigenous Australians – and finds a reason behind his emotional connection to the forests of southern Queensland. As Jack’s aunt, the family matriarch hands over the family reins to him, he is about to find out more than he could have imagined.

Jack Thompson

� SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT

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One Page Synopsis: Australian acting icon Jack Thompson unearths more than a couple of surprises – and significant Australian heritage – but where does he come from and who does he think he is?

Born John Hadley Pain in Sydney in 1940, Jack took on the name of the Thompson family, who adopted him as a child after the death of his mother.

In Who Do You Think You Are? Jack will for the first time endeavor to discover the real family history of his biological relations He discovers links to a bushranger and Indigenous Australians—and finds a reason behind his emotional connection to the forests of southern Queensland.

As Jack’s aunt, the family matriarch hands over the family reins to him, he is about to find out more than he could have imagined.

Through his father’s United States-based sister Beverley, Jack traces his heritage to some of Australia’s earliest arrivals, before heading to Ireland to find out exactly how his family came to live–and thrive–in Australia.

He learns about his great grandfather, ships captain Thomas Pain and Alfred Lee, a wealthy and significant man in 19th century Australian history, and the Byrne family, Irish Catholics who settled in northern NSW, not far from where Jack now lives.

Jack Thompson’s Journey To many, he is an iconic Australian; an actor who strides the international stage with a career spanning from Australian classics such as Sunday Too Far Away, Breaker Morant and The Man from Snowy River, to global hits including Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

But how Australian is Jack Thompson? Thompson knew little of his genetic family’s history when he agreed to take part in Who Do You Think You Are?. By the end of the journey – which took him from Sydney to Ireland and then surprisingly near to where he now lives in northern NSW – he felt he had secured his place as “Australian royalty”.

The journey itself has been like a wonderful childhood game, Thompson says.

“It’s been like Alice falling down the rabbit hole and finding herself...yourself in this other wonderland and turning a corner and things being revealed and the white rabbit handing you the glove and you get taller! What will happen this time? What’s going to be revealed this time?”

Born John Hadley Pain in Sydney in 1940, Jack took on the name of the Thompson family, who adopted him as a child after the death of his mother.

“I have never really known very much about my family,” he says. “I was adopted at the age of 10 having lost my mother at the age of four and my father was away at war…I’m very sure that some of the passions that I have in my life have their origins in my family background. I am, in some way or another, a product of my ancestry and I have no idea what that ancestry is.”

Thompson begins his sometimes emotional journey with his father’s sister, Aunt Beverley, a war bride who has lived in the United States since Jack was a boy. Aunt Beverley sets Thompson on a trail that leads him to his great-grandfather, maritime Captain Thomas Pain, then to Captain Pain’s son, Dr Albert Pain, who is Aunt Beverley’s father, and her mother, Vera Lee, who suicided when Beverley was a girl.

In following the Lee family tree, Thompson unearths an extraordinary connection – a trip to Sydney’s Mitchell Library reveals that his great uncle Alfred Lee was one of the wealthiest men in Sydney; a founding father of the Royal Australian Historical Society in whose personal collection was held the original journal kept by Joseph Banks on Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia.

“It’s stunning!” he declares in amazement. “Can you imagine what it is like to have never known this?”

A report of a mysterious family rift between his great uncle Alfred Lee and his great grandfather, German Lee, apparently over the “unsuitable marriage” between German and his wife, Katie Byrne, eventually leads Thompson to northern NSW where he discovers a family heritage beyond anything he could have imagined.

About Jack Thompson Jack Thompson looms large in the Australian imagination from such iconic films as Breaker Morant and The Man from Snowy River.

Born John Hadley Pain in Sydney on 31 August 1940, Thompson was adopted as a child by the Thompson family, from whom he takes his name, after the premature death of his mother.

He first gained prominence as the star of Australian television series Spyforce before securing roles in classic Australian films such as Sunday Too Far Away (1975) and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978).

In 1980, Thompson gained international exposure with an award-winning performance in Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant, for which he picked up the Cannes Film Festival Best Supporting Actor Award and the Australian Film Institute Best Actor Award. Two years later he appeared in another internationally successful Australian film, The Man From Snowy River.

Thompson was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 1986 for his service to the Australian film industry.

His varied career has included a string of American film and television productions including A Woman Called Golda (1982), starring Ingrid Bergman; A Woman of Independent Means (1995), with Sally Field; The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years (1996), the big screen adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) and The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) with Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Don Cheadle.

He also has starred in Australian films including The Sum of Us (1995) with Russell Crowe, Oyster Farmer (2004), the ABC Television miniseries Bastard Boys (2007) and a low-budget feature, Ten Empty (2008).

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV �

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Ep �: Kate Ceberano Sunday 20 January 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Singer Kate Ceberano is convinced she is descended from ‘pirates and bums’ but as she delves into her family tree she uncovers links to landed gentry, as well as an artistic past.

One Paragraph Synopsis: Singer Kate Ceberano is convinced she descended from ‘pirates and bums’ but as she delves into her family tree she uncovers links to landed gentry, as well as an artistic past. . Kate’s expectation of pirates and bums is squashed when she learns that one early ancestor, an entrepreneurial Swede, was an inventive pioneer and ultimately a pillar of the establishment of the Mallee region of Australia. On the trail of a mysterious Spanish sea captain, she heads to Tasmania and finds, to her delight, a relationship with music teacher turned artist Henry Mundy. Kate will cross cities and cultures in the search of her past, uncovering pioneers and colonialists along the way.

One Page Synopsis: Singer Kate Ceberano is convinced she descended from ‘pirates and bums’ but as she delves into her family tree she uncovers links to landed gentry, as well as an artistic past.

Kate’s expectation of pirates and bums is squashed when she learns that one early ancestor, an entrepreneurial Swede, was an inventive pioneer and ultimately a pillar of the establishment of the Mallee region of Australia.

On the trail of a mysterious Spanish sea captain, she heads to Tasmania where she finds, to her delight, a relationship with music teacher turned artist Henry Mundy.

It is a thrilling discovery. After years of being asked where she found her passion for music, finally she knows—it is in her genes.

Kate will cross cities and cultures in the search of her past, uncovering pioneers and colonialists along the way. Venturing back six generations, she discovers that far from convict stock, one of her earliest Australian ancestors was the commandant of a penal colony.

Most importantly, the experience convinces Kate that she should continue along her path, making music for others to enjoy.

� SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT

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Kate Ceberano’s Journey With her exotic appearance, artistic leanings and rock’n’roll lifestyle, Kate Ceberano has always been convinced she is descended from “pirates and bums”.

So when she had a chance to find out on Who Do You Think You Are?, she was surprised and amused to learn the truth.

Ceberano’s journey begins with her mother, Cherie Joyce, and a desire to understand her extraordinary strength of will.

“I would love to find out what drives my mum,” Ceberano says. “I’m intrigued by her family, there’s somebody along her lineage who had a lot of force and will and the will is genetic.”

First she traces the family of her great grandmother Minnie, a “bleak, grim, mean” woman, and Minnie’s father, Swedish immigrant August Anderson.

Travelling to South Australia, where the Anderson family lived, Ceberano learns that her great great grandfather ran away from

home in a small Swedish town at the age of 13 and sailed the world before deserting his ship in Adelaide eight years later. While his personal life was marred with hardship and the loss of several of his 12 children, Anderson went on to make his fortune drilling artesian bores, transforming dry mallee scrub into thousands of acres of productive farmland. His legacy continues to this day.

But it’s once Ceberano starts tracing the story of a mysterious Spanish sea captain swirling around the life of her great great grandmother Lavinia, that the story gets even more interesting; a tangled web eventually revealing that Lavinia’s father was famed portrait artist Henry Mundy, one of the greatest artists in Tasmania history. English-born Mundy arrived in Australia to teach music to girls at a Tasmanian private school – one of them he later married. Ceberano is thrilled.

“All my life I have been asked why do you love music and I don’t know, I have always just been compelled to do it,” she says. “I now have the answer to the question…Because it was inevitable that I would become an artist, I come from artistic stock. And that’s a really reassuring feeling for me.”

Tracing the family back even further, Ceberano discovers Major Thomas Lord who served in the West Indies before moving to Australia as the commandant of Maria Island penal colony in Tasmania. Though she initially fears she may find him to have been a despot, she believes he was forward thinking and compassionate, encouraging training and education for the convicts.

Far from the “pirates and bums” she expected, the facts reveal Ceberano to be descended from the establishment families of Tasmania and South Australia.

“I was pretty convinced I had to be convict stock because of the rock and roll, the nature of where my whole family has been compelled to follow music, arts and the whole thing. It’s been a complete surprise to me to discover landed gentry,” she says.

“I feel like having gone so deeply into the past has fattened my roots. I feel solid at the foundations and now I feel really inspired to just continue…I have to keep going and just embellish this career that I’ve started and do it for people like Henry. And do it in my own lifetime. It would be nice to be able to create some immortality in my own lifetime.”

About Kate Ceberano Renowned for her soulful and powerful vocal style, singer and songwriter Kate Ceberano has won almost every entertainment award in Australia.

Ceberano first found fame with her funk band I’m Talking. The group’s album produced three top 10 singles, went Platinum and won Best New Talent at the Countdown Awards in 1984. Ceberano won Best Female Vocalist at the Countdown Awards the following year as well as Best Female Singer at the ARIA Awards.

After one album the band broke up and Ceberano went solo, finding success with a soul, jazz and pop repertoire.

She has released five Platinum albums, four Gold albums, selling in excess of 1.5 million albums in Australia alone, performed countless sell-out tours, starred in several movies and television shows. In 2007, she won the Australian television series Dancing with the Stars.

Ceberano was recently appointed the Victorian Ambassador for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

She is married and has a daughter, Gypsy.

[Kate Ceberano]

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV �

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Ep 3: Geoffrey Robertson

Sunday 27 January 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Barrister and human rights advocate Justice Geoffrey Robertson QC believes that it is nurture not nature that shapes moral integrity, but does his family history provide an aside to his theory?

One Paragraph Synopsis: Barrister and human rights advocate Justice Geoffrey Robertson QC believes that it is nurture not nature that shapes our moral integrity, but does his family history provide an aside to his theory? Fifth generation Australian Geoffrey has lived in London for decades, but he remains proudly Australian. He traces his Scottish ancestors—early mountain cattlemen who were the first of the self-made Robertsons in Australia—as well as another part of his family, surrounded by a life of wealth and privilege. Within his family history he finds links to royal patronage, the whiff of a cover-up and even a royal scandal. His own family, he discovers, is a perfect example of the cultural and ethnic melting pot that makes up Australia.

SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT

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�WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KIT SIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV

One Page Synopsis: Barrister and human rights advocate Justice Geoffrey Robertson QC believes that it is nature not nurture that shapes our moral integrity, but does his family history provide an aside to his theory?

Fifth generation Australian Geoffrey has lived in London for decades, but he remains proudly Australian. He traces his Scottish ancestors—early mountain cattlemen who were the first of the self-made Robertsons in Australia—as well as another part of his family, surrounded by a life of wealth and privilege.

Throughout his family tree there is evidence of hard work and determination, from his great great grandmother, the first female chief steward of Australia’s Parliament, to the God-fearing peasants who fled years of poverty and hardship in Scotland to sail for the ‘promised land’.

Within his family history he finds links to royal patronage, the whiff of a cover-up and even a royal scandal. Could Geoffrey be descended from a Prussian king? And if he is, does this change who he is today?

His own family, he discovers, is a perfect example of the cultural and ethnic melting pot that makes up Australia.

Geoffrey Robertson’s Journey From a Scottish hovel to a Prussian palace Who Do You Think You Are? takes an extraordinary journey into the ancestry of barrister and judge Justice Geoffrey Robertson.

Robertson, a leading international human rights advocate, is remembered by many for his work as the host of a series of televised Hypotheticals. He was born and bred in Australia but moved to England in 1970 to pursue a career in the law.

“The reason I have never bothered to delve into family history is that I believe that we are what we make of ourselves,” he says. “DNA may determine your length of life, heredity may determine health, but it is nurture not nature that shapes our moral character and our integrity.”

Robertson begins his search in Sydney, quickly finding his great uncle Bill, a tartan-clad military piper killed within a week of landing at Gallipoli in 1915. Piper Bill was the son of William “Red Bill” Robertson, a real-life “Man from Snowy River” whose own father Alexander – Robertson’s great great grandfather – migrated with his family from Scotland in 1837 and settled in Kosciuszko as a squatter.

Travelling to Scotland, Robertson learns that Alexander and Christina Robertson were the poorest of the poor, landless peasants who fled several bad seasons of poverty and hardship to sail for a promised land after being recruited by John Dunmore Lang, a Presbyterian preacher eager to balance out the “Irish Catholic convict culture” he feared was dominating the colony. It wasn’t easy – the ship was overloaded, there wasn’t enough food and many people, including 10 children, died on board.

“It might be 170 years ago but my blood still boils at the way these people were treated,” Robertson fumes.

But within a few years the starving landless peasants were landowners – and the first self-made Robertsons in Australia.

It was a completely different path to that taken by the ancestors on Robertson’s maternal side, beginning with his great great grandmother, Agnes Kroll, who, following the death of her husband Louis Dettman, became the first female steward at Australia’s new Parliament House.

Although identified on her birth certificate as the daughter of Joseph Kroll, one of the wealthiest and most influential people in Berlin and owner of the famous Kroll Opera, Agnes may have been the illegitimate daughter of German Prince Wilhelm (later the emperor), by way of Kroll’s wife who, strangely, has disappeared from all records.

While he still feels Australian despite a complex mix of heritage, Robertson says participating in the show has given him a greater appreciation of what Australian means.

“My story isn’t unique, by any means. My story is the story of millions of Australians. We are, in a sense, a race apart and our culture, our morality, our mentality, is a product of just so many races. We are a great melting pot and out of that we’re polyglot and that’s something I think I’m quite proud of.”

About Geoffrey Robertson Born in Sydney on 30 September 1946, Geoffrey Ronald Robertson QC is a human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster, who holds Australian and British citizenship.

Robertson obtained his law degree from the Sydney University Law School before studying in the UK under a Rhodes Scholarship.

Robertson has worked for the European Court of Human Rights, the UN and various courts that examine human rights and constitutional law. He has served as a UN war crimes judge. He has worked on several cases on civil liberties throughout the Commonwealth and Europe.

As host of the television series Hypotheticals, Robertson served as moderator, to a panel of high-profile guests, including former and current political leaders, who debated contemporary issues by assuming imagined identities in hypothetical situations.

He is head of Doughty Street Chambers and serves as a Master of the Middle Temple, a Recorder and visiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London.

Robertson has written several books, including The Justice Game and The Tyrannicide Brief.

He is married to author Kathy Lette and has two children.

[Geoffrey Robertson]

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? PRESS KITSIX-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2008 AT 7:30PM ON SBS TV

Ep 4: Catherine Freeman Sunday 3 February 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Athlete Catherine Freeman goes in search of the source of her drive and determination, unearthing an unexpected family heritage.

One Paragraph Synopsis: Athlete Catherine Freeman goes in search of the source of her drive and determination, unearthing an unexpected family heritage. Gold medalist in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Catherine is an inspiration to many. She possesses an irrepressible pride in her country and her people. Her strong sense of identity is something she believes has been passed down from her ancestors. Her mother Cecelia was born on Palm Island, a penal settlement for Aborigines and her father Norman, also a ‘Murri’, was a rugby league footballer, but little more of the family history is known. Now she’s on a journey to find out where her fighting spirit comes from.

One Page Synopsis: Athlete Catherine Freeman goes in search of the source of her drive and determination, unearthing an unexpected family heritage.

Gold medalist in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Catherine is an inspiration to many. She possesses an irrepressible pride in her country and her people.

Her strong sense of identity is something she believes has been passed down from her ancestors. Her mother Cecelia was born on Palm Island, a penal settlement for Aborigines and her father Norman, also a ‘Murri’, was a rugby league footballer, but little more of the family history is known.

Now she’s on a journey to find out where her fighting spirit comes from. She finds many of her ancestors display the strong will and sense of purpose that have helped her to succeed at the highest levels of competition.

Catherine is shocked by the discrimination and hardship that her Aboriginal ancestors have faced even as recently as her parents, who were prevented from spending Christmas with their families by white authorities who insisted they remain on an Aboriginal settlement.

[Catherine Freeman]

�0

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But while learning about her family, Catherine learns much about herself. Having lived with a power and freedom that her ancestors could never have known, she believes she has not yet achieved her full potential having never been tested in the same way and wonders what that potential may be.

Catherine Freeman’s Journey When she won a gold medal during the 2000 Olympic Games in front of a rapturous home crowd and a global TV audience of millions, Catherine Freeman carved a place in Australian sporting history and cemented herself as a symbol of black and white unity and of national pride.

But as a child growing up in a comfortable, supportive environment, she often wondered where she found the determination to achieve.

When asked to take part in Who Do You Think You Are? Freeman didn’t hesitate. She has always believed her strong sense of identity must have come from her ancestors. Finally she would know.

“I have always had this belief that the truth actually makes you stronger and I’m getting the opportunity to be given answers that I have had questions to for all my life.”

Freeman’s sometimes sad journey begins at the home of her mother, Cecelia Sibley, where she reads an official letter sent in 1963, refusing permission for Catherine’s parents to leave the Aboriginal settlement where they were forced to live in order to spend Christmas with their families. It’s a confronting revelation about recent Aboriginal history.

Then she learns that her paternal grandfather, Frank “Big Shot” Fisher, was a renowned sportsman and captain of the all-conquering Barambah rugby league team. Perhaps this is where she inherited her athletic skill?

Going back a generation, Freeman is thrilled to discover a picture in the council chambers of her great grandfather, Frank Fisher Senior, who served as a light horseman during World War I. But the pride is tempered with disgust and anger when she learns his family struggled to survive because his wages were taken by the authorities, who did not trust Aborigines with money.

“If I had known all of this kind of information before I went out and achieved my childhood dream, who knows how fast I could have run!”

There are several moments of revelation: the banishment of her grandfather to the brutal Palm Island penal colony for standing up to white authorities; tracing her great grandfather, Chinese station cook Tommy Ah Sam; and another great grandfather, George Sibley, an English dairy boy who immigrated to Australia in 1883 in search of a better life.

“Australians see me as predominantly an Indigenous woman and this is a surprise. I’m of British ancestry; I have British blood flowing through my veins!”

But while repeatedly confronted by the hardships her ancestors experienced, Freeman says she now has a clearer idea of where she got her sense of purpose.

“In learning about my ancestors I think the thing I have learnt most about myself is that I am clearly still under-estimating my potential because I haven’t been tested to the same extent in which they have,” she says. “I have the freedom and the power that they didn’t know could exist.”

About Catherine Freeman One of Australia’s best known athletes, Catherine Freeman was born in Mackay, Queensland, on 16 February 1973.

Freeman won the Olympic title in the 400 metre event in front of her home crowd in Sydney at the 2000 Olympic Games. In her own words, she “ran her little black butt off”.

As an Aboriginal woman, she is regarded as a role model for her people, and by many in the non-Aboriginal community as a symbol of national reconciliation between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

She created a storm of controversy at the 1994 Commonwealth Games by waving the Aboriginal flag as well as the Australian flag during her victory lap of the arena. Traditionally, athletes carry only their national flag. There was no such controversy when she did the same after winning her gold medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Freeman’s mother, Cecelia, was born on Palm Island and moved to Woorabinda, another Aboriginal mission west of Rockhampton. Freeman’s father, Norman, was a talented footballer who died aged 53. Her sister Anne-Marie also died young.

In 2001 Catherine was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to sport, particularly athletics.

She recently established the Catherine Freeman Foundation which encourages disadvantaged individuals and communities to achieve positive change - www.catherinefreemanfoundation.com.

[Catherine Freeman]

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Ep �: Dennis Cometti Sunday 10 February 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Sports commentator Dennis Cometti finds mystery, murder and a gift for the gab as he follows his family tree back to Australia’s settlement.

One Paragraph Synopsis: Sports commentator Dennis Cometti finds mystery, murder and a gift for the gab as he follows his family tree back to Australia’s settlement. From a remote Western Australian goldfield to northern Italy, Dennis uncovers a rich Italian heritage before heading to east coast Australia where several more surprises–and more than one shady character–are revealed. It is a journey that leaves him with a lifetime of anecdotes and an extended family he never imagined possible.

One Page Synopsis: Sports commentator Dennis Cometti finds mystery, murder and a gift for the gab as he follows his family tree back to Australia’s settlement.

From Meekatharra in Western Australian to northern Italy, Dennis discovers not only the hardship his grandfather faced in the mines, but a rich Italian heritage, as well as solving a mystery surrounding the absence of his grandmother from family photographs, and the bitterness his father felt towards her.

But it is on Dennis’ maternal side that the story proves a real revelation, as he sets out to trace the feistiness common to women in his family.

The journey is full of surprises–adultery, murder, tragedy and mayhem–and more than one shady character, much of it centred on the enigmatic Emma Hines, Dennis’ great great grandmother, and her forebears.

It is a journey that leaves him with a lifetime of anecdotes and an extended family he never imagined possible.

Dennis Cometti

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Dennis Cometti’s Journey As one of Australia’s most respected and authoritative Australian Rules commentators, Dennis Cometti knows everything there is to know about the genealogy of the AFL and can confidently recall a player’s pedigree, background and performance statistics.

But ask him about his own family history and he draws a blank.

An only child who lost his father at the age of 18, Cometti knows little about his family tree, beyond that his grandparents were

Italian immigrants. Now aged 58, he says that despite being called racist names as a child he always has felt “quintessentially Australian”.

“I think I was one of those people who wanted to speed on through life and get certain things accomplished, but now I do look back and think there are certain traits that I have and I wonder where they came from,” he says.

Cometti’s journey takes him from Perth to Italy and then to the east coast of Australia, where he follows his roots to some of Australia’s earliest settlers.

It begins in the very distinctly Australian goldfield town of Meekatharra, where Cometti’s grandfather Giovanni arrived in the early 1900s seeking employment and a better life than that offered by the northern Italian farming area that he left.

There Cometti learns about his grandmother, Giovanni’s wife and fellow Italian immigrant, Giovana Maria Della Vedova. Missing from family photos, she abandoned her husband and three teenaged children on the goldfields and left town with another man – a decision Dennis’s father, Jim, never forgave.

“Giovanni was left in a very awkward situation, three children, on the goldfields, all of them turned out to be successful; I feel he would have been very proud of what they have achieved,” he says.

Cometti follows the family trail to Italy – a journey his own father always dreamed of making – and visits the picturesque stone village of Baruffini where his grandfather was born, picking up an extended Italian family along the way.

“Coming to the place where Giovanni was born is a bit like an out-of-body experience, it’s very strange; 100 years ago he set out from here and here I am coming full circle.”

Next he investigates his maternal heritage, eager to learn whether the strong will and feistiness displayed by his mother is typical of women in the family.

This branch of the family proves “a revelation in all respects” as he uncovers an extraordinary tale populated by strong women, murder, mayhem, adultery and more than one shady character – much of it centred on Cometti’s great great grandmother Emma Hines and three of her four grandparents.

“Clearly as we go back there were plenty of feisty women so it may be that this thing flows down through the generations,” he says.

“It seems particularly on the maternal side that the women have made the running, have survived and, because of that, I am who I am and I am here and talking about it today.”

About Dennis Cometti Born in Western Australia on 26 April 1949, Dennis Cometti is arguably the best known and most authoritative Australian Rules football commentator in Australia. Football fans around the nation admire and respect his droll, quirky commentary and his “Cometti-isms” have become synonymous with Australia’s home-grown sport.

In September 2007, Cometti won the Australian Football Media Association’s Most Outstanding Television Caller award for his colourful commentary on the Seven Network. He was named the Most Outstanding Media Contributor the previous year.

A former first-grade player himself, Cometti coached the Western Australian Football League team West Perth from 1982 to 1984.

He knows everything there is to know about the genealogy of the AFL, confidently recalling any player’s pedigree, background and performance statistics; he spends hours researching the history of the game.

As well as his commitments with the AFL, Cometti has commentated at three Olympic Games and has published three books: Back to the Place, Back to the Time; Centimetre Perfect and That’s Ambitious.

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Ep �: Ita Buttrose Sunday 17 February 2008 at 7:30pm on SBS TV

One Line Synopsis: Media personality and publisher Ita Buttrose discovers determination and drive may be hereditary as she puts her journalistic skills to the test to trace her global family.

One Paragraph Synopsis: Media personality and publisher Ita Buttrose discovers determination and drive may be hereditary as she puts her journalistic skills to the test to trace her global family. She knows of a relation named William Butters who sailed from Scotland to Adelaide but not how the family name changed from Butters to Buttrose. Following her maternal side, Ita discovers she has a strong Jewish connection, including a chief rabbi, in her family. She traces her Jewish ancestors to New York and Hungary. Along the way she finds the Buttrose will to ‘fight the system’ is flowing through her veins.

One Page Synopsis: Media personality and publisher Ita Buttrose discovers determination and drive may be hereditary as she puts her journalistic skills to the test to trace her global family.

She knows of a relation named William Butters who sailed from Scotland to Adelaide but not how the family name changed from Butters to Buttrose.

Following her maternal side, Ita discovers she has a strong Jewish connection, including a chief rabbi, in her family.

She traces her Jewish ancestors to the once impoverished Jewish ghetto where they had lived in New York and Hungary and learns that poverty and hardship drove them to seek a better life in Australia.

Along the way she finds the Buttrose will to ‘fight the system’ is flowing through her veins.

[Ita Buttrose]

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Ita Buttrose’s Journey For journalist Ita Buttrose, tracing her family history was a good way to satisfy the curiosity she has felt throughout her life.

Buttrose is a trailblazer; the first female editor of a major Australian newspaper, a journalist, publisher, broadcaster and campaigner for equal rights for women.

“I have always been curious about my family’s history. It probably has something to do with the fact that I’m a journalist and I want to know as much as I possibly can about everything and everyone,” she says. “That would answer all the little questions I have got in my head and maybe then the journalist would be satisfied. I’d have my story.”

In particular Buttrose was curious about the women in her family – all “doers” who lead active and healthy lives. Could it be genetic?

Who Do You Think You Are? introduces Buttrose to one such dynamic woman, her great great grandmother, Frances Adelaide Buttrose, who migrated from Scotland with her husband William in 1852, but was widowed young and left to raise six children alone.

Moving to Adelaide, the enterprising Mrs Buttrose opened a school was but was stopped by the authorities.

“Isn’t it just typical? Even in 1866 a good woman was being thwarted,” says Buttrose, who believes her ancestor would have been “highly miffed” by the glass ceiling she’d hit.

“I know what it’s like to have male opposition to where you want to go in your career, absolutely, most women with ambition know and obviously my great great grandmother had it early.”

The journey back in time then takes her to New York, where Buttrose uncovers more about her maternal grandmother and her Jewish heritage, including a Chief Rabbi.

Eventually she learns about Casper Marks, a Hungarian Jew who fled to New York to escape political unrest and anti-Semitism, then moved to Australia in the 1840s seeking to break the cycle of poverty.

But while Buttrose relished the “fantastic once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to learn about her heritage, she occasionally found the documentary process difficult to take. The filmmakers employed a technique for the series where stories were unravelled step-by-step on location to the surprise of the subject.

“It’s very difficult for a person like me who likes to be in charge, waiting for others to tell me what I am going to do,” she says. “If you look and listen and chat to people, they happily tell you things which... Sometimes I could see the director faint and go pale! And I promise, I promise, I wasn’t intentionally trying to find things out, I was just naturally interested, and suddenly I thought, ‘Oh, they’ve told me something I’m not meant to know yet!’.”

About Ita Buttrose Ita Buttrose was born on 17 January 1942. She spent her early years living in the United States before moving to Sydney.

She left school at 15 to attend a secretarial school before becoming a copy girl at the Australian Women’s Weekly and since then has lived a life of trailblazing achievement, launching the new women’s magazine, Cleo, before becoming editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly, followed by editor-in-chief of both magazines, publisher of ACP’s Women’s Division and editor-in-chief of News Ltd newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

She is a prolific author and her recent autobiography, A Passionate Life, is a best-seller. Her eighth book is Get In Shape, a motivational book on health and fitness.

Buttrose has been twice voted Australia’s most admired female publisher, was awarded an OBE and the Order of Australia medals, had her own radio program, and served as chair of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS, NACAIDS.

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Celia Tait Series Producer Celia is joint managing director of production company Artemis International, which produces documentary and factual programs for international broadcasters. Celia has worked as a writer, producer, director and executive producer in the UK and Australia. Her directing debut, Babies by Mail, won a gold medal at the Houston Film Festival in 1989 and since then she has continued to win national and international awards for her work. Recent productions include the Walkley-nominated Saving Andrew Mallard, Desperately Seeking Sheila and Who Do You Think You Are?. She is currently working on another series, Desperately Seeking Doctors.

Brian Beaton Executive Producer for Artemis International Brian is joint managing director, executive producer and producer at Artemis International. He has produced award-winning documentaries for the national and international markets for the past 13 years. In addition to producing a wide range of documentaries, Brian was the Australian Film Television and Radio School representative in Western Australia from 1987 to 1997. He chaired the Australian International Documentary Conference in 2001 and was voted the SPAA Documentary producer of the year for 2002.

Margie Bryant Executive Producer for Serendipity Productions Margie Bryant won a Churchill Scholarship in 1995 to explore public broadcasting in Europe and the UK and since the early 1990s has worked in a number of creative roles for the ABC and SBS Television. In 1995 Margie established Serendipity Productions, a boutique production company initially specialising in arts and biography. In Serendipity’s first year, she won acclaim for two documentaries, The Young One and Musica Viva, A Portable Treasure. Serendipity’s recent international co-productions include Singer, A Dangerous Mind for the BBC and ABC, and Calling the Shots, a co-production with a German company for National Geographic International and WDR.

Penny Robins Executive Producer for Film Australia Penny has been an executive producer with Film Australia since 2003 and has extensive experience in documentary and factual program-making. At Film Australia she has been executive producer of a varied production slate, which has included science, history and contemporary programming. Productions she has worked on have won numerous awards. Her credits as executive producer include the cross-platform longitudinal Life series, Troubled Minds – the Lithium Revolution, Divorce Stories, the four-part series Policing the Pacific, Mr Patterns and National Treasures, with political cartoonist Warren Brown.

Ned Lander Commissioning Editor for SBS Independent Ned is the General Manager of SBS Independent. He has also served as Deputy General Manager and Senior Commissioning Editor. During his six years at SBS he has overseen hundreds of hours of quality Australian television, including drama series East West 101 and The Circuit and documentary series Who Do You Think You Are and The Colony. An independent filmmaker for twenty years, Ned has produced and directed award winning drama and documentary productions.

[About the Producers]Robin Eastwood Line Producer Robin has been working in the film and television industry since 1987. She is a fluent Japanese language speaker providing bilingual line producer/production management services for Japanese production companies filming in Australia. Robin has line produced over 200 shoots for documentary, variety programs, drama, commercials and features for Japanese production companies. Selected credits include: Basking in the Sunset (for NHK), The Paul McCartney World Concert Tour documentary, Dear Blue (Japanese IMAX Film), Shadows in the Sun, The Human Race (for ABC, National Geographic & ZDF), Child Soldiers (for ABC, OPB, RTHK & Carlton International), Painting Country (for NHK & SBS) and the recent Ganja Queen – a ‘behind the scenes’ documentary on the Schapelle Corby drug trial.

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Catherine Marciniak (Jack Thompson episode, Writer/Director) A leading independent documentary maker and cinematographer, Catherine Marciniak has a reputation for telling stories that explore what makes us who we are. Telling the story of Jack Thompson for Who Do You Think You Are? was a perfect fit. Catherine is now working as series writer/director and cinematographer on Film Australia’s landmark cross-platform project the Life series, which follows 11 young Australians from their first year of life and blends reality television with the scientific findings of the largest longitudinal study ever conducted on Australian children. Her credits include Steel City, Grey Voyagers, Hospital – an Unhealthy Business, Stories from a Children’s Hospital, Aussie Animal Rescue and The Gamblers. She also worked as a series producer on Compass.

Kay Pavlou (Kate Ceberano episode, Writer/Director) Kay Pavlou is a director of drama and documentary, film and television. As writer/director, Kay’s multi-award winning first feature, Mary, was released in 1994. Her television credits include the Australian drama series McLeod’s Daughters and Love is a Four Letter Word. Kay’s short film, The Killing of Angelo Tsakos, won international awards. Kay’s credits include Desperately Seeking Sheila, Under One Roof and Suspicious Minds. In 2006, Kay directed a documentary in the Gobi Desert with 1000 soldiers from the Chinese Army called Monumental Vision.

Judy Rymer (Geoffrey Robertson episode, Writer/Director) Judy Rymer has directed and produced drama and documentary films for 25 years, mostly focused on social and political history and science. Her credits include Timebomb, a critique of the New Zealand welfare system; the award winning Victory Over Death; Fifteen Minutes of Fire for ABC Australia; and Cinema of Unease for Britain’s Channel 4. Rymer wrote and directed The History of the Bathing Costume for Discovery America and Channel Nine; Poles Apart for SBS; and Message from Moree for ABC TV. Her most recent film is Being Chen Kaige for Discovery Asia.

Jane Manning (Catherine Freeman episode, Writer/Director) Before directing the Catherine Freeman episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, Jane Manning directed four episodes of the SBS documentary series Two of Us. Her half-hour drama film Delivery Day, commissioned by SBS Independent, won many Australian and international awards, including the Golden Leopard at Locarno Film Festival 2002, Best Australian Film and Most Popular Film at Flickerfest 2002, and first place at Palm Springs Film Festival 2001. Her first film, One That Got Away, won the award for Best Direction at Flickerfest 1998. Jane has worked extensively as a researcher in film and television.

Franco di Chiera (Dennis Cometti & Ita Buttrose episodes, Writer/Director) Franco di Chiera has directed and produced some of Australia’s most successful television programs including the documentaries A Change of Face; The Artist, The Peasant; The Joys of the Women and No Milk, No Honey and the drama series Under the Skin and Three Forever. He was SBS executive on the Indigenous package of shorts From Sand To Celluloid and Rolf de Heer’s feature film The Quiet Room in 1996. As Film Australia executive producer he oversaw award-winning documentaries such as Sadness, Thomson of Arnhem Land, Welcome to the Waks Family, East Timor - Birth of a Nation and Wildness.

Alan Carter (Post Production Director/Writer) For more than 20 years, Alan Carter has been making innovative documentary programming for local and international markets, including Risking It All, Desperately Keeping Sheila, Desperately Seeking Sheila, The Dinosaur Dealers and Hard Choices. From 1997 to 2000, Alan also worked as executive producer for the ABC on independently-produced documentaries in Western Australia.

Andrew Saw (Post Production Director/Writer) In a 30-year career as a writer, director and producer Andrew Saw has made award-winning documentaries, arts television, drama series, historical series, factual police series, light entertainment, political satire, travel TV, factual-magazine series, breakfast television and news and current affairs. He says Who Do You Think You Are? is one of the most fascinating and stimulating projects of his career.

[About the Writers/Directors]

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References and Links

Who Do You Think You Are? SBS website www.sbs.com.au

Film Australia www.filmaust.com.au

Artemis International www.artemisfilms.com

Who Do You Think You Are? published by Pan MacMillan, 2008

(Book to accompany the television series)

Genealogy, Family Trees and Family History records online www.ancestry.com.au

Australian War Memorial www.awm.gov.au

National Archives of Australia www.naa.gov.au

National Library of Australia; Australian family history website links www.nla.gov.au/oz/genelist.html

Births, Deaths and Marriages records contact list www.coraweb.com.au/bdmaut.htm

Kindred Trails Worldwide Genealogy and Family History Resources www.kindredtrails.com/australia.html

Australian Genealogy Searches www.australian-ancestry.com

Family Search www.familysearch.org

Australian Jewish Genealogical Society www.ajgs.org.au

Convicts to Australia: A guide to researching your convict ancestors http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/index.html

First Fleet Online http://cedir.uow.edu.au/programs/FirstFleet

Military Historical Society of Australia www.mhsa.org.au

Australian Family History Compendium www.cohsoft.com.au/afhc

[References and Links]

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