Forty years ago two television programs sparked a national conversation about Australian history. Against the Wind (1978), a mini-series dramatising the lives of convict men and women, tied colonial history to a celebratory new nationalism. Meanwhile The Last Tasmanian (1978), a documentary, recounted in shocking detail the history of frontier violence in Van Diemen’s Land. Both screened simultaneously on different broadcasters to mass audiences in 1978. This paper will investigate these programs through their public reception and the controversies that followed their transmission. It will argue that their competing visions of the past challenged viewers to consider carefully their personal connection to Australia’s settlement narrative, shedding light on screen culture’s role in ascribing meaning to colonisation and nationhood in the late 1970s and beyond.