Australian Story reflects back on marathon runner and 'gumboot shuffler' Cliff Young.

Over five days in 1983, Cliff Young shuffled into Australian folklore when he won the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon. Few people rated the 61-year-old potato farmer's chances and race organisers feared he could die on the way, delivering them a public relations disaster. Instead, he smashed the record for a run of that distance and became an instant – if unlikely – national hero.

"He was a little fella who became larger than life," says fellow competitor John Connellan. "Everyone who was alive at that time remembers Cliff as much as they remember the man landing on the moon. Probably both as unlikely as each other."

Although he seemed to come from nowhere, Young's achievement was a lifetime in the making. Growing up in the Otway Ranges, he ran for hours at a time, often in gumboots. To the locals he was a curiosity but when he started to mix with other long-distance runners, he found his people.

"Cliff was a simple man and led a simple life but he was not a simpleton," journalist and friend Neil Kearney tells Australian Story.

With his distinctive shuffle and humble bearing, Cliff Young captured the public's imagination and was a fixture in the media as he continued to run competitively well into his 70s. Although his short-lived marriage in 1983 to Mary Howell, more than 40 years his junior, raised eyebrows, he remained a much-loved figure until his death in 2003.

In an engaging and nostalgic Australian Story, friends and fellow runners look back at an extraordinary feat of athleticism and a man whose name still inspires wonder and delight.

"This is just a real ordinary bloke," says his former trainer and manager Mike Tonkin. "But real ordinary blokes are capable of extraordinary things."

Murat Dizdar is the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, responsible for more than 2200 public schools and almost 800,000 students. And he's on a mission to stem the flow of students to private schools and claw back funding from the federal government.

For Dizdar, the son of Turkish migrants raised in council housing, this mission is personal.

"I stunk of working class," he tells Australian Story. "I stunk of what work looked like. And I don't mind when I reminisce about that odour because that odour was hard-earned. It taught me that to get your way there was no shortcut. I've always been in the in the corner of the battler, the working class and that's why I'm also so passionate about public education."

Dizdar thrived in the public system and received one of the highest HSC marks in the state. The expectation was that he would study law or medicine, and he chose law. But while working in a law firm as a student he realised he had to follow his true passion – teaching.

A notoriously hard worker, Dizdar worked his way to the top of the department, only resting for nine days after a serious heart attack.

"Absolutely read him the riot act after the heart attack," his wife Ceyda Dizdar says. "And I remember distinctly him saying to me, ‘I'm fine. I'm fine. Can you bring my laptop?'"

Australian Story was granted extraordinary access to Murat Dizdar as he undertook the fight of his life – to secure an extra $800 million per year in funding and start the process of winning back students to public education.

"Murat has got the right idea, in my opinion," former justice of the High Court Michael Kirby tells Australian Story. "For most of the time I was on the High Court, I was the only justice whose entire education had been at public schools. For a long time now, the federal government has been the donor of very, very large amounts of funding to private and religious schools and they've done that to the damage of public schools."

The episode also features interviews with NSW Education Minister Prue Car, former public school alumnus and Socceroo Craig Foster, and former colleague and now state minister Jihad Dibb.