Chapter 3: Making A Home in Australia

SS Strathaird arrives in Fremantle, WA, 1960

Our first chance to walk on Australian soil came when we arrived at Fremantle on 6th July 1960, but not for my brother. He had suffered food poisoning after having eaten something that didn't agree with him at Colombo - perhaps it was the spicy salmon sandwiches - and he was confined to the ship's hospital until our arrival in Melbourne. To add insult to injury, he had also contracted chicken pox. Back then, Fremantle was your typical working port, with rows of rather drab sheds lining the wharves on both sides of the Swan River where it enters the Indian Ocean. It was quite different to today, there was no Passenger Terminal - it was still in the planning stages - no Maritime Museum and even the Port Authority's administration building was still four years away. The buzzing café and restaurant strip that has brought new life to the town wasn't developed until the 1980s after Australia won the America's Cup and the Americans came and won it back on the waters of Cockburn Sound off Fremantle in 1986/87. Our first day in Australia was spent visiting a Mr Taylor from the same church attended by my parents in Leeds who had moved to Perth to live with his daughter and family after his wife had died and he had retired. It was his daughter who picked us up and drove up the coast to her home in Ada Street, Waterman Bay, which at that time was a relatively isolated beachside community and not part of suburban Perth as it is today. Waterman Bay in suburban Perth, Western Australia.

While the parents chatted, the family children took me for a walk down to the beach where I would swim regularly upon my return to Perth two years later. As it was only a 12 hours stopover, it wasn't long before we were back on board and steaming down the coast towards the Southern Ocean and the roughest stretch of water we would encounter on the whole trip, the Great Australian Bight. Though my family and I made it to Melbourne with little seasickness, the last leg of the voyage from Fremantle to Melbourne tested our endurance to the limit and proved too much for many passengers who had made it thus far without being ill. The passage through the Bight was so rough, most meals had to be served in our cabins during the middle two days of the five-day journey. I was forbidden to go up on deck because of the way the ship was pitching around. Bored by being baled up in our cabin, I went up to the ship's library to do some reading but got distracted watching people staggering around trying to stay on their feet or throwing up. I found both sights highly amusing and was kept entertained watching everyone falling about for most of the day. When we finally were allowed to return to the dining room we found out why all the tables in it had been bolted to the floor. A cabinet had apparently broken loose during the wild conditions and careered into a huge table from which sweets and cakes were served. The impact had dislodged the table's marble top and it had smashed in pieces on the floor.

Station Pier today

Station Pier, Melbourne

It was to Station Pier at Beacon Cove on the northern shores of Port Phillip Bay that the majority of migrant ships tied up when visiting Melbourne. In the early days Melbourne's port was little more than a pier jutting out into the bay. The pier around which the suburb of Port Melbourne grew carried the tracks of Australia's first steam railway from 1854, the year in which it and the railway were officially opened on 12th September. Completed just three years after the establishment of the colony of Victoria, the railway, which ran from Flinders Street to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), was operated by the privately-owned Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company. After all these years, a large section of the railway that gave the pier its name still remains, although these days the tracks are used by trams and no longer extend onto the pier itself or into the city centre at the Melbourne end. The Sandridge Railway Bridge, which carried the line across the Yarra River to Flinders Street Station, still stands, but is no longer in use.

Originally called Railway Pier, Station Pier has played a pivotal role in Victorians' lives, particularly the gold seekers and settlers throughout the 1800s who passed over it. As such, it is one of the most historic jetties in Australia. In 1861, the original pier had to be extended to a length of more than 661 metres as it was ill-equipped to accommodate the increasingly large and more powerful steamships visiting Australia's shores. During August 1899 the first contingent of troops headed to the Boer War in South Africa from Station Pier. In October 1914, sixteen ships left Port Melbourne carrying troops, horses and supplies as part of Australia's contingency for the Great War effort. Station Pier was also the place of return for the hospital ships. The 1940's saw many troops embark and head to the Middle East, Britain and Singapore for World War II from Station Pier. Extensively rebuilt and modified over the years, the jetty was the major terminal for overseas passenger liners visiting Melbourne during the 20th century. A second railway pier was built at Port Melbourne to the west of Station Pier in 1914, and named Princes Pier in 1920. It carried the overflow when Station Pier was unable to cope with the influx of migrant ships. Station pier had its biggest facelift in the early 1920s when its body was replaced and extended and the legs of ironbark and turpentine upon which it stands today were put in place. The pier's new superstructures allowed passengers to alight at upper deck level from their ships into one of two terminal buildings. The forward thinking design which kept passengers away from the movement of goods and vehicles at ground level was quite advanced for its day. It was through these terminals that most migrants arrived.

During Australia's two major waves of immigration, between 1851 and 1890 and between 1947 and 1970, there were many days when all of Station Pier's four berths were in use. This activity is intrinsically linked to Melbourne's rich multicultural society with an average of 61,000 overseas passengers arriving on an annual basis between 1949 and 1966. For many post-war migrants Station Pier symbolises where their new life began. A red brick cubicle with the words "uomini" and "antres" spelt out in tile, with a translation - "mens", is evidence of the influx of non English-speaking migrants through the port. The Inner East berth is now the Melbourne terminus of a daily ferry crossing Bass Strait to Devonport. The two outer berths, with a total length of 713 metres, are used less frequently and service the 20 or so cruise liners that visit Melbourne each cruising season.

The entrance gateway to Station Pier

Arrival in MelbourneIt was with great anticipation on the afternoon of Sunday 10th July 1960 that we experienced a relatively easy passage through the notoriously rough heads of Port Phillip Bay and steamed towards Melbourne. It was around 8pm with our excitement still building that a pair of tugs gently guided Strathaird into the Outer West berth on Melbourne's Station Pier. Situated in the Outer East Berth, which is now dedicated to the Spirit of Tasmania ferry, and preparing to leave for Sydney, was the Greek passenger liner, SS Patris. Formerly known as Bloemfontein Castle, the nine-year old vessel was Chandris Line's first passenger liner, and was on her third voyage to Australia after having been purchased by Chandris and refitted in Scotland less than a year earlier. She had left Piraeus on her maiden voyage to Australia via Suez, arriving in Australia in January 1960. The Dutch cargo vessel, Straat Cook, which brought a handful of Dutch migrants to Australia, had also arrived the day before us, but had berthed in Melbourne's Docklands wharves. Sitmar Line's migrant ship, Castel Felice, which brought her first contingent of migrants from Europe to Australia in April 1958, would arrive three days later with more migrants, this time from Southampton, England. In that week, around 5,000 migrants arrived in Australia, around a third of whom disembarked at Station Pier, Melbourne.

Our bags had been packed early that morning and the greater part of the day had been spent on deck following the coastline of Western Victoria. Henry Wiggins, the pastor of the Oakleigh Assembly of God church that had sponsored our family, had arranged to come in and pick us up after the church's Sunday evening service. At around 9 pm, there was a knock on our cabin door and it was Pastor Wiggins. He told us that we were one of three families on board who he had to collect and, being so late in the evening, requested that he take the other two families that night and return in the morning to pick us up. We checked with the Purser's Office, and since Strathaird was not due to sail until the following evening, this was quickly arranged.

Early the next morning I went up on deck to take my first look at Melbourne. I didn't see much; just a lot of houses stretching off into the distance. I recall it looked quite flat and wondered where the city was, not realising I could not see its skyline as it was on the other side of the pier. Having already passed through Australian Customs before embarking at Fremantle, we were free to walk straight off the ship after signing ourselves off with the purser and wait for our lift on Station Pier. We did not have to wait very long, however there was enough time for us to check out a food bar in the terminal lounge. We saw a sign advertising Four & Twenty Pies and, eager to taste a bit of genuine Australian food, my parents and brother sampled a pie each and I had a sausage roll. I marvelled at the vast range of sweets (lollies in Australia) available that was far greater than any I had ever seen. There were plenty of unknown names like Hoadleys, Allans and MacRobertsons among the familiar Nestles, Cadbury, Pascall and Fry brands. Coca-Cola was a familiar brand name for pop (soft drinks in Australia) but Tarax, Marchants and Schweppes were all new.

As I gazed across shelf after shelf of new and exciting morsels that I couldn't wait to try, I was called away as our lift had arrived to take us to our new home in Oakleigh. Pastor Wiggins had parked his car, a two-tone blue FE Holden, on the pier itself, which was as chaotic as today's shopping centre car parks on Christmas Eve. We nearly got hit twice as we weaved our way through the incoming and reversing cars and headed out under the Federation style two-storey Station Pier entrance building. We travelled past the beachside suburbs of St Kilda and Brighton, then inland down Centre Road to Oakleigh. I asked why there was no surf on the beach and was told, "Not all Australian beaches have surf, you know," which left me none the wiser. I found out a few months later that there is no surf at St Kilda because it is on Port Phillip Bay and not the ocean.

The World in July 1960The following are some of the world events which took place in the week surrounding our arrival. They are recounted here to allow ready to better equate our time of arrival with significant events of that era. 1st July 1960: Italian Somaliland joined British Somaliland to form the new Republic of Somalia. Britain and Italy had occupied different parts of the territory until World War II. In 1950 the United Nations voted to grant independence to Somalia. The country was ruled by a civilian government until 1969 when President Siad Barre came to power in a military coup.

2nd July 1960: Neale Fraser beat Rod Laver in an all-Australian men's singles final in Tennis at Wimbledon. Maria Bueno beat Sue Reynolds in the women's final. Neale Fraser was born in Melbourne on 3rd October, 1933. By 1960 he was ranked as the world's No.1 in the sport. Although he won Wimbledon in 1960 and the U.S. title in 1959 and 1960, Fraser found team play doubles and Davis Cup nearest his heart. He was a member of the Davis Cup squad from 1955, captaining the team from 1970 to 1993. Rod Laver is the only player in the history of tennis to win the Grand Slam twice, having done so in 1962 and 1969. The Grand Slam is the rare feat of winning the four major "grand slam" titles in one year - the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open.

3rd July 1960: Jack Brabham won the French Grand Prix. Born 2nd April 1926 in Sydney, Australia, Braham was a mechanic before beginning his career as a Formula One driver in 1955 when he joined the Cooper team. He went on to win the World Driver Championship in 1959 and 1960 with Coopers and again in 1966 with his own Brabham car. He retired at the end of the 1970 season with 126 GPs and 14 GP wins.

6th July 1960: Civil War began in Congo when the Congo Army mutinied against the government. United Nations Peacekeeping forces were called in, arriving on 15th July 1960. In 1939 World War II began, and in 1940 Belgium was occupied by the Germans. Belgian Congo, however, was loyal to the democratic Belgian government-in-exile in London. In the years following the War, the United Nations pressed for democratic reforms. A new generation of Africans, many of whom with a western education, became politically organized. 1955, Belgium announced a 30 year plan for the the transition to democracy and independence, eyed for 1985. Local elections were held in 1957, however things soon got out of hand, and on 30th June 1960, independence was proclaimed. Immediately, Katanga seceded and the country erupted in violence. There were attacks on Belgian nationals living in the Congo, and Belgium sent troops to the country to protect its citizens and also its mining interests. Most Belgian civil servants left the country, thus crippling the government. By the end of 1960 the Congo had been divided into four quasi-independent parts. At the end of June, 1964, the last UN troops were withdrawn from the country but political turmoil was to continue.

7th July 1960: A win in the Sydney Opera House lottery led to the kidnap as 8-year-old Sydney boy, Graeme Thorne, in the suburb of Bondi. The boy's parents had recently won £100,000. The kidnapper rang the Thorne's home and demanded £25,000 by five o’clock. On 8th July, the day after the abduction, Graeme’s school bag was found. It had been emptied of all of the boy’s belongings and dumped beside a statue along Wakehurst Parkway, Frenchs’ Forest. Police hoped they would find fingerprints or other evidence from the kidnapper on the bag. So far it was their only hope. Within a few days the rest of Graeme’s school bag’s contents were found scattered along the same road. The kidnapping turned to tragedy on 16th August. Graeme's body was found on a vacant block of land at Grandview Grove, Seaforth. He had been hidden under the overgrown vegetation that covered the land. Eight- year-old Graeme had been gagged and bound, the scarf was still around his neck and twine tightly cut into his ankles. His body was also wrapped in a blanket and he was still fully clothed in his school uniform. Clever investigative work led Police to Hungarian born Stephen Bradley, who had migrated to Australia ten years before the abduction of Graeme. Bradley was arrested in Colombo on his way to Europe with his family on 10th October 10, 1960 police were waiting for them. Once back in Sydney, Bradley wrote and signed a confession that sealed his fate at trial in March 1961. Bradley was found guilty of Graeme Thorne’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 6th October1968, Bradley suffered a heart attack and died.

8th July 1960: A Soviet court found US pilot Captain Francis "Gary" Powers guilty of spying and sentenced him to ten years in a Russian military prison. Powers had pleaded guilty to spying for the CIA after his plane was shot down on 1 May at an altitude of about 20,760 m south of Sverdlovsk, 1,368 km east of Moscow.. The incident occurred in the middle of the cold war between East and West and caused an international crisis. American authorities initially tried to convince the Russians the U-2 had been a weather plane, however the Russians then produced Powers alive and well, claiming he had admitted spying for the CIA. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from US President Eisenhower and when none was forthcoming plans for a superpower summit in Paris collapsed. After intense negotiation, Captain Powers was released from prison in the Soviet Union on 10th February 1962 in exchange for a Russian spy jailed in the US. He walked into West Berlin across a bridge separating the city's east and western sectors as Russian spy Colonel Rudolph Abel crossed in the opposite direction. Colonel Abel had served five years of a 30-year term for running a spy ring in the US. However, the KGB has always denied any knowledge of Colonel Abel and even now Russia maintains Mr Khrushchev freed the US pilot simply as a "goodwill gesture". Powers ended up working as a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles television station. He was killed in a helicopter crash in 1977. In 2000, he received three posthumous awards from the US Air Force, including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

11th July 1960: Richie Sambora, guitarist of the rock band Bon Jovi was born. With Bon Jovi, he has released ten albums, all of which have been either gold or platinum successes. Sambora released his first solo album, Stranger In This Town, in 1991, during a break from recording with Bon Jovi. It featured a lot of blues-based guitar tracks, including the title track and the minor hit "Ballad Of Youth". His second solo album, Undiscovered Soul, was released in 1998 and featured more of his blues-based guitar work, including such highlights as "Made In America" and the title track.

13th July 1960: The US Democratic Party nominated John F Kennedy for Presidency of the United States of America at its Los Angeles convention. Following his nomination, he won the election over Vice President Richard M Nixon and became the country's 35th president and first Roman Catholic president. He commenced his term of office on 20th January 1961. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on 29th May 1917, Kennedy graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the navy the next year. After recovering from a war-aggravated spinal injury, Kennedy entered politics in 1946 and was elected to the US Congress. In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he had written earlier, Profiles in Courage. While riding in an automobile procession in Dallas on 22nd November, 1963, he was assassinated, age 46. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed two days later in the Dallas city jail by Jack Ruby, owner of a strip-tease club. Kennedy became the fourth president to be assassinated and the eighth to die in office.

21st July 1960: British yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester completed a record solo Atlantic trip. He was to later sail his ketch yacht, "Gypsy Moth IV", from Plymouth, England in 1966 and return there in 1967, nine months and one day later, having circumnavigated the globe. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his achievement with a sword which had originally belonged to his namesake Sir Francis Drake (the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe).

29 Oxford Street, Oakleigh

Jingles All The WayOur stay at 29 Oxford Street, Oakleigh was always intended to be only until my father had started work and we were able to either rent a place of our own or buy one. We pulled up outside the little cream weatherboard cottage and were greeted by Elsie Grant, a lovely Christian lady in her late twenties who introduced us to her 2-year old daughter, Mary, then showed us to our rooms. We spent the afternoon in light conversation, just getting to know her and she us. Around 5pm her husband Dennis came home and we enjoyed our first meal in Australia together.

The next morning after Dennis had gone to work we had breakfast before going for a walk. It was nice to sit around a family table and enjoy a bowl of cereals again, the familiar name Kellogg's on the equally familiar box of Corn Flakes helped make us feel at home. Among the boxes on the table were Rice Bubbles (we knew them as Rice Crispies) and two new cereals that would become family favourites, Weeties and Weet-Bix. I found out later that they were sold in England as Weet-a-Bix, but as I never went shopping to see them and Mum never bought them, I had never heard of them. I chose Weeties because I'd heard Willie Weeties singing the Weeties song on the radio a few minutes before: "I like eating Weeties, you'll like Weeties too, Weeties at break time, the tasty treat for you".

That was my first exposure to radio advertising. In England at that time, there was no such thing as commercial radio. The government had total control of the electronic media via the BBC and therefore, though I had listened to the radio often, I had never heard a radio advertisement for anything but another radio programme. During my first week in Melbourne I spent many an hour twiddling the dial looking for as many new radio commercials as I could find. I loved the jingles, though today when I recall them they all seem rather trite, corny and very amateurish. I'd love to bounce around the kitchen singing the Kia-Ora Thirst Aid song for a popular cordial drink:

" Kia-Ora, Kia-Ora, Thirst Aid, Kia-Ora, Kia-Ora, Thirst Aid, Six different flavours for you to enjoy, One packet makes two big jugs full of joy, It's beaut and you'll want to drink jug after jug, Glug, glug, glug." Another one of my favourites was for Tarax soft drinks. A word in it that I was unfamiliar with – beaut – was a constant source of fascination: "Tarax makes the top ten flavours every one is beaut, Taste the ten new flavours, taste the real fresh fruit, Tarax makes the top ten flavours try them and you'll see, Tarax top ten flavours the best for you and me." Tarax also sponsored one of Australian television's first children's tv shows, the Tarax Show.



While the ad for Healing televisions was by no means a favourite, it did its job well as I recall asking Dad on many occasions when we were going to get a television. Their jingle was short but to the point: "It's the biggest advance in TV, The Healing Wide Horizon 23." Then there was the Flytox fly spray advertisement that had the line “Flytox kills all inspect pests” in it but that I otherwise can't remember, and the one for Mortein: "Mortein spray and the flies pass away, Dead-o, dead-o, Mortein spray and the flies pass away." That was followed a few years later by the very clever Mortein ads featuring Louie the Fly, its song is still used in a slightly modified form some 40 years later. Talking of fly sprays, when we arrived in Australia, they were not sold in aerosol cans but in screw top bottles. The liquid was poured into a pump spray that looked like a bicycle pump with a round can on the end of it. You would pump it and the spray would to in the direction you pointed it.

Another favourite from the sixties that still gets an airing is the Vegemite song. Let's not forget the Aeroplane Jelly song and a local ditty promoting Sydney's Motor Auctions that my father used to sing but with modified words. Back in 1960 when I was discovering the wonderful world of radio advertising, television in Australia was just four years old and only one in four Melbourne homes had a television set. Dennis' mother had one and, once a week, we'd walk over to her house on the other side of Oakleigh and if we were good, we'd be allowed to watch the news or the Graham Kennedy show. Their TV was the biggest you could get at that time - 23 inches (59cm) - and going around to see it was the highlight of the week. The television also introduced us to Australian Rules Football. Dennis was a mad Collingwood supporter and games were watched religiously by him whenever they were on. Everything was in black and white back then but that didn't bother us. As the saying goes, you never miss what you've never had. For the rest of the time, we made do like the rest of the country listening to the radio. Back then there was no talkback radio and the playing of pre-recorded music was a relatively new thing introduced after the end of the war. Many stations still followed the traditional format of pre-recorded or live programmes in the form of plays. Similar in style and content to today's television soap operas like "Neighbours" and "Home & Away" were radio serials like "Blue Hills", "No Holiday For Halliday" and a host of other similar dramas. Families would gather around the giant radio set in the corner and listen, in the way some contemporary families sit around the TV today. Comedies were always popular in our house. The locally produced comedy "Yes What" about a school room full of cheeky schoolboys and their hard-nosed teacher always had us rolling around the floor in fits of laughter and the serialised version of the classic Aussie characters, "Dad & Dave", was a big hit too. British radio comedy was at its zenith in the 1960s and we loved them all - "The Goons" featuring Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe; "Round The Horne" with Kenneth Horne; "Hancock" and the later "Hancock's Half Hour" featuring Tony Hancock; "Take It From Here" with Jimmy Edwards to name but a few.

Former church hall, Oakleigh Assembly of God Church

Exploring OakleighOur first walk along Atherton Road into the main shopping area of Oakleigh has always remained clear in my memory as it gave me my first real look at what living in Australia was going to be like. The first thing I noticed was that the crowns of the roads seemed much higher than I had recalled them being in England. The roads dropped away towards the gutters so much that a bus taking on passengers beside the curb in Hanover Street looked almost as though it might topple over. I have since been back to Oakleigh and the roads appear much flatter these days. I at first thought that perhaps my memory was playing tricks on me or that what I was remembering was the view a midget 9-year old boy would have of a bus as it towered over him. I suspect however, that some time between then and now, the road surfaces have been modified as my brother has a similar recollection as I have, and he was in his teens. I recall that bus being a cream coloured Bedford operated by Grenda's Bus Service, a company whose services we used a lot after we moved to Springvale North. Around the corner from the bus stop were the first of a row of shops that continued all the way into the main shopping area. While the insides of the shops were very similar to those I was used to, the exteriors were quite different. As is common right across Australia, all the shops had big, wide verandahs reaching all the way across the footpath to the curb. Few shops in England provided this shelter and where they did, it was with much smaller canvas awnings that were little more than a window shade. My mother remarked on how thoughtful it was for shops to provide shelter from the rain, but during the summer months she also realised they were there to give protection from the hot sun too. I took a recent walk along this section of Atherton Road and found that practically every building in a photo we took on our first full day in Australia was still there, the only difference being the colour of the paint had changed, as had the occupants and signs in the window.

Across the road from the shops was Warrawee Park in which stood what here in Australia is the almost obligatory memorial to the local townsfolk who lost their lives during one of the world wars. It took the form of a gun mounted on a carriage. Like any 9-year old boy, I couldn't resist climbing all over it, not yet realising its significance or showing the respect I would later give when I heard the story of Gallipoli and understood the reason for the gun in the park. Today, the gun has gone, replaced by a stone monument. We walked through the park and came across the remains of an old cemetery that these days has been tidied up and turned into a memorial gardens. The old gravestones of the earlier pioneers of the Oakleigh district are still there for another generation to ponder the hardships faced by these people who settled here when it was bush. "You'll be here one day," Mary said. "No, I won't, I'm not going to die. Jesus will come before then," I retorted, having been taught in Sunday School that these were the "Last Days" and I might not make it to adulthood. She laughed heartily, grabbed my hand and said, "come on. Let's have a look at your new school." At that stage we were expecting to buy a house nearby, which is why she referred to the primary school beyond the cemetery as my new school. I actually never went to school there, but for some reason I always thought of it as my first school in Australia.

It was a double storey brick building not dissimilar to my school in Otley so I began to think I would feel right at home there until I saw the children in the playground and realised how different they looked compared to me. It was the middle of winter so all the boys were wearing long trousers. Never in my life had I worn long trousers, only shorts, having been told that "boys wear shorts, men wear longs". When I did finally go to school and see the boys' summer uniform I was horrified. My shorts from England had an elastic waist that I pulled up to around my chest. Even pulled up that far, the bottoms of the legs of my shorts still covered my knees. They were similar to today’s cargo pants except that they weren’t worn four sizes too big for me as are today’s cargo pants. What these boys were wearing were the shortest shorts I'd even seen - the waistband sat on their hips but the end of their trouser legs still didn't even go half way to their knees. "I'll freeze to death," I told my mother when I first tried them on. "No you won't," she said with a laugh. "You're in Australia now, remember? It never gets cold in Australia." Famous last words! We were in Melbourne and she hadn't yet learnt that in Melbourne you can often experience all four seasons in the one day! Back on Atherton Road I saw my first car yard, a Holden dealership that is just an empty block these days. On the corner of Oxford Street I saw my first Ampol service station and remember clearly reading the words "Australian Owned" emblazened across it. Like the Holden dealership, the site is an empty block today. Across the road is the building used the by Assembly Of God Church as their meeting hall back in 1960. They moved to new premises in the 1970s and it has served a variety of uses since then.

Lot 71 Roberts Avenue, Springvale North

The Move to Our Own HomeBeing quite crowded at the Grant household, it didn't take long for my parents to start looking for a house of our own. The cost of houses in the Oakleigh area was a little higher than my parents were led to believe they would be, so a cheaper new house in a suburb further away from the built up areas around Oakleigh seemed the best way to go. As my father's place of employment was on MacNaughton Road, Clayton, he felt something nearby that was within walking distance would be satisfactory. The place they settled on was a soon-to-be-completed 3-bedroom weatherboard home off Dandenong Road at Lot 71 Roberts Avenue, Springvale North in a small pocket of homes surrounded on three sides by industrial properties. It is located behind what was known as The Ship house, a double storey home built in the 'Moderne' or Functional architectural style to resemble a ship that still sits above the road but these days operates as a function centre. Being a well-known landmark, we just had to tell visitors we were living behind the Ship House and they'd have no trouble finding us. Looking back on the primitive conditions we had to endure, it is clear why so many migrants at that time became homesick and pined for the creature comforts of home. My parents felt a bit like the Israelites of Biblical times who were persuaded to leave Egypt on the strength of a promise of a land flowing with milk and honey but instead walked out of Egypt and into a wilderness. It made the Israelites look back and feel they were better off back in Egypt as slaves than having their freedom but wandering through the hot, dry desert. In a similar way my parents recalled the bleak, treeless streets of terrace houses of smog-laden Leeds that they had left behind and felt they had to be better than the primitive conditions they had walked into.

When they first looked at the house before buying it, my parents expressed concern to the agent that the street's surface was unsealed and looked more like a bush track than a road. They were assured that the council had plans to seal and kerb the road within a few months, and on the strength of that promise we moved in. We lived there for 18 months and the road was never fixed, in fact it was to remain unsealed and in a constantly deteriorating condition for another five years until the estate had been sewered. That's right; there was no form of sewerage or drainage in the street either. Bath, shower, washing up and laundry water emptied into an open drain at the back of the yard which flowed down the hill through one yard after another before emptying into a sink hole at the bottom of the hill at the end of the street. When it rained, the sinkhole overflowed into the last garden at the bottom of the hill. The muddy surface of the road washed into everyone's front garden too and the excess water ran down the street, gouging huge potholes in its surface. The run off collected in a hollow at the bottom of the street that became a boggy quagmire. It remained that way for a few days until all the water had evaporated, whereupon the clay turned into sharp, jagged ruts created by the tyre tracks of passing vehicles. After rain, the bog covered the whole road, so if you had a car you had to drive through it and risk getting bogged (many cars did). If you used public transport like we did, you had to walk through it, so we all had to buy Wellington boots and carried a pair of shoes to change into when we got to the other side.

When we moved in, the toilet didn't work because connection of the houses in our street to Melbourne's sewerage system was still some years away. In the meantime, our toilet was what could best be described as a 10 gallon drum with a toilet seat placed over it, sitting in a wooden shed in the back corner of our yard. Every second night, a truck came along and the drum was exchanged for an empty one. It was hardly what we expected to find in 1960s suburban Melbourne and totally unacceptable to my parents who quickly invested in a septic tank. The temporary upheaval in the backyard when the hole was dug for it was a small price to pay for the ability to use the indoor toilet. And then there was the welcoming committee. We soon discovered we lived next door to a greyhound breeder who walked his dogs around a spare block of land on the opposite side of the street. He'd obviously been doing it for some time as they had beaten out a path around its perimeter. Every night at feeding time the dogs created an incredible racket right outside my bedroom window as they fought over the daily meal issued to them; but we were never sure what irritated us the most – the yelping of the dogs or the shouts of their owner telling them to keep quiet.

My brother (right) and I in the front yard of lot 71 Roberts Avenue, October 1960

Springvale North Primary SchoolSomehow we managed to survive it all, and it was time for me to find a school. My brother, who was 13 years old, was already attending Oakleigh High School but my parents thought it wise to wait until we had found a home of our own before I started going to school. Their plan had been to find a home within walking distance of a primary school so that I did not have to use public transport. That school was to be Springvale North Primary School, located about a kilometre south of our home on Dandenong Road beyond Springvale Road. To get there I would walk through an empty block at the end of our street that was overgrown with head-high grass, which backed onto the car park of the Springvale Hotel. I then crossed Springvale Road and followed Dandenong Road alongside a pocket of bush, past the Springvale Caravan Park and on to the school next door at the top of a rise. The Caravan Park is all that remains today. The bushland is now occupied by a row of fast food outlets and the school has gone. Some years ago, when Jeff Kennett was Premier of Victoria, a number of schools throughout Victoria were closed and their land sold off for commercial development, Springvale North Primary School being one of them. I was quite disappointed when I went back there with my family to show them where I had gone to school to find the site now occupied by home units. All that remains is the pine tree from which magpies used to dive bomb the students, but more of that later.

The school was one of the first to be built in the southeastern sector of Melbourne. The name Springvale arose from a permanent water source for stock and travellers between Melbourne and Dandenong that was in the vicinity of the intersection of Dandenong and Centre/Police Roads. It was near the springs in the 1850s that the Spring Vale hotel was built alongside the newly surveyed route between Oakleigh and Dandenong. The hotel's proprietor chose that name because of the natural springs and his association with a place near the Bog of Allen in his native Ireland. It was expected that a village would spring up around the hotel but this did not eventuate until the primary school was opened at the top of the hill in 1867, and even then it never grew to its full potential at this location. In 1886, land was subdivided and sold alongside a stopping place where Spring Vale Road and the Gippsland railway line (opened 1879) intersected. This land was nearly two kilometres south of the hotel and school on Princes Highway and it was here that the main Springvale township developed. My first recollection of Springvale North Primary School is of standing in the hot sun at my first assembly. Being in the middle of September, it probably wasn't hot, but having come from the winter of northern England, it would have felt hot to me. All the children stood in neat rows and everyone was in uniform but me. I recall the head mistress standing on the verandah in front of the playground and bellowing, "Hans Onya art" as we stood to attention. I hadn't a clue who Hans Onya was or what sort of art he painted, but everyone around me immediately put their hands to their chest and Mumbled something, so I followed them as best I could. What they were Mumbling was in fact the school motto, which I later memorised and repeated every Monday morning at assembly with my hand over by heart: "I love God and My Country, I honour the flag, I serve the Queen, and cheerfully obey my parents, teachers and the law". I often used to add the word "sometimes" at the end, but did it softly enough so as not to be heard by anyone.

My first few months at the school were very much a baptism of fire that left me wishing I wasn't a Pom. Before I had left my school in England, my teacher had brought me out in front of the class and explained to them that I would soon be leaving them for sunnier climes down-under. During my last week at Otley Westgate Junior School, the class was treated to a highly inaccurate and overtly romantic picture of what Australia was like, from kangaroos hopping down its streets to koala bears living in the trees of everyone's backyards, replacing cats and dogs as pets. Being a bunch of wide-eyed nine year-olds born and raised in Wharfdale, Yorkshire, England, we knew little of the world that lay beyond the moors surrounding our hometown of Otley. We were all fascinated by her stories and I couldn't wait for the day when I'd have my very own koala or ride an emu to school.

On my last day, I had been brought out to the front of the class and, somewhat like a soldier receiving his orders before going off to war, was given a charge to defend the honour of Mother England as I ventured forth into the far flung corners of her Empire. My teacher reminded me that I was British, and therefore I had a reputation to live up to. I had a responsibility towards these colonials among whom I was about to go and live, to show them what it means to be British. I was to always remember that they were mere colonials who lacked the education, wisdom and standing in the world community that was inherently mine as a Briton. Nevertheless, I was not to look down at them as inferior because they had not chosen to be born colonials, just as I had not chosen to be born British. Rather, I was to teach them that by following my example they too could enjoy and attain the same greatness as those, like me, who were lucky enough to have been born and bred into it. I entered Springvale North Primary with this charge ringing in my ears. I was a boy with a mission and couldn't wait to tell my new classmates not to despair, that help from Mother England had arrived.

Class photo, 1960. I'm 6th from the end on the back row, right hand side

Close Encounters of the Pommie Kind

After that assembly, I was ushered into a class of about twenty children who occupied a tiny prefabricated classroom that, for a reason I was never unable to determine, had been erected right in the middle of the school car park. The teacher introduced herself to me, then seated the children in a circle, placing me on her right. She then asked each to state their name and their country of origin, starting with a rather chubby redheaded girl on her left. I was surprised to hear there was a Con from Greece, a Varadi from Yugoslavia, and a Liesel from Holland ... "What are they doing in Australia?" I thought. "Isn't this supposed to a British colony?" Eventually a few of the children introduced themselves as Australians but I surprised that not one of them had said they were British, nor had any said they were Aborigines either.

When it came to my turn, the teacher looked down at me and said, "And this is Stephen". She gave me what I took to be a knowing smile, and added, "So, what message do you bring us from the old country?" I wasn't quite sure what old country she was talking about, but I knew that was my cue so I stood up, and recalling the noble words of my teacher in Otley that I had committed to memory, let these kids have it with both barrels. "Children of Australia," I proclaimed in a think Yorkshire accent, "I am Stephen. I am from Mother England, whose capital city, London, is the capital of the world. I 'avn't lived there, but I've been there. I am here to help you, support you and teach you that by following my example you too can enjoy and attain the same greatness as me who was lucky enough to have been born in England." I wasn't quite sure if the commission I was now proclaiming applied to all these non- British children who I had viewed as imposters at first they had introduced themselves. But then I realised that my teacher in Otley must have known about them since she knew all about Australia, so I figured that the message must be for them too. But to be on the safe side, I felt it wisdom to add, "and that applies to all you foreigners, too."

I sat down, expecting applause but receiving stunned silence. All eyes were on me and I couldn't figure out why. After an awkward few seconds, the teacher stood up, turned to me and said, "So that's what you pommies think of us Aussies?" Her response caught me by surprise. "But Miss, I'm not a Pommie, I'm British," I said, which sent the whole class into a fit of hysterics. She gave a half smile, then replied, "So that's what you British think of us Aussies?" "Oh no, Miss", I retorted, "I don't think you are a foreigner. I meant those others like Varlerie or whatever that boy over there is called," pointing to the boy from Yugoslavia. "So we have a clever clogs," she said as she motioned the children up onto their feet and back to their desks. "Why would she say that?" I thought, "I don’t wear clogs and I'm not Dutch, I'm British." By the end of the first day, I thought that it had gone really well but the next morning I discovered that I had not made a particularly good impression. I went to school bright as a button expecting to be treated like royalty but I got the cold shoulder from everyone but Varadi. He took me aside during morning recess and filled me in on a few facts of life, like that everyone in the class thought I was a little Smart Alec and I'd be well advised in future to keep my mouth shut. I told him what my teacher in England had said to me before I had left England, how I believed it was my responsibility to lift the standard and show Australian children a better way. He warned me that these kids neither wanted or needed a better way and that I'd be in serious trouble if I persisted with my high and mighty attitude.

Varadi explained that he knew how difficult it would be for me to adjust to a new school in a new country. He told me how hard it had been for him when he first came to the school two years previous. He had come to Australia with his family and knew practically no English at all. He used to go home distressed night after night because the other children treated him as though he was stupid because he couldn't communicate with them. They'd say something to him and when he couldn't answer, they would form a circle around him and laugh at him. When he tried to break free, they wouldn't let him out of the circle.

He told me how the lunch that his mother packed for him contained quite different things to the sandwiches brought by everyone else. At lunchtimes, the boys used to take his lunch from him and tease him about everything in it, saying "What's this smelly thing," or "What's this made of? Sheep's guts?" If he was lucky, they'd give it back to him rather than throw it on the floor and then make him eat it. Things got so bad he asked his mother not to make him lunch any more and ended up taking a few pieces of fruit for lunch. How times have changed. These days, it is those same European delicacies that were so despised back then that now typify the lifestyle and culture of the cosmopolitan city that Melbourne is today.

When lunchtime came around, the boys in my class grabbed the paper bag containing my lunch and tried to do the same thing with me as they had done with Varadi. They ripped the bag open, expecting to find some garlic-drenched morsel of continental smallgoods, but instead found a cheese sandwich. "Where's your wog lunch?" they demanded. I had no idea what they were talking about, having never heard the term 'wog' before. Thinking a Wog must be something they had found in Varadi's lunch, I told them that I was just like them and didn't eat Wogs. "You're not like us," shouted the most vocal of them, "you’re a Pommie, and anyway, we don't eat Wogs; we hate them, just like we hate Poms". "Leave me alone," I pleaded. "I don't make fun of your lunch so don't make fun of mine." One of them repeated what I had just said, mimicking my Yorkshire accent. It came out like, "Live me a lawn, Ah dort mek funa yor lunch so dort mek funa mine."

Being somewhat of a beggar for punishment, I told the boy he ought to learn how to speak English properly. "You live in a British colony, you should talk like a Briton, not like some common old ... whatever you are." I couldn't quite think what they were like but it certainly wasn't British. One of the boys knocked the sandwich out of my hand and took a swing at me. He hit me in the stomach and I fell to the ground more from losing my balance that the blow itself. The other boys jumped to their feet, formed a circle around me and kicked leaves and dirt at me, shouting, "Go home Pommie, go home Pommie". I tried to get up but was pushed back down by a fat boy with bulging eyes who yelled, "We're not British, we're Aussies and don't you forget it, you stinking Pom". Again, I tried to get up and another boy pushed me back down, shouting, "Yeah, when did you last have a shower, smelly Pommie?" As I'd never lived in a house with a shower and having a bath was the only way I had ever washed myself, I had no idea what he was talking about and presumed it must have something to do with the weather. "It rained last Sunday and I didn't get wet ... and I don't smell either," I replied, not quite sure what rainfall had to do with being smelly. Just then, a teacher came around the corner, saw what was happening and came over. Everyone disappeared, leaving me on my back covered in sand and leaves with the remnants of a cheese sandwich on the ground beside me.

After telling the teacher what had happened, I was taken down to the office and the head mistress filled me in on a few things. She told me that, because I came from a different country, I was different to Australian children both in the way I dressed, the way I spoke and the way I did things. She explained that children don't like being told by other children that they are inferior, and if I wanted to get along with them, it was better that I made an effort to become like them rather than trying to make them become more like me. "You're not in England now, you're in Australia," she said. "They don't have to become English. You have to become Australian." That seemed like a giant backward step to me, though in hindsight I know she was absolutely right. At the time, all I could see was that I was from England, the head country of the biggest empire in the world and the head country of Australia. We ruled over them, it was our colony so they really ought to do as they are told and show me a little respect. "They can't even talk properly," I thought to myself. "They are not very polite or kind like the boys and girls at my old school in Otley were," but I realised that if I was to survive this experience I had little choice but to follow the advice being given.

I walked home with Varadi that afternoon and, trying very hard not to offend me, he said that he really couldn't see how I was automatically better than everybody else just because I was born in England. He said that his Dad had told him that there was good and bad in every country and that it was up to each of us to be the best that we could be. I couldn't argue with that so I went home and slept on it. The taunts at school continued throughout the whole of the third and last term of the year. Varadi and I became good friends and I found that the more time I spent with him the less hassles I had from the others. Sometimes the school bully and his mates would look me out and pick a fight with me, especially if I wandered down onto the oval away from the school buildings. I quickly learnt it was safer to stay in the vicinity of the classrooms because the teacher on playground duty had this incredible ability to show up every time someone started picking on me or tried to relieve me of my lunch. A couple of times I was ambushed on my way home from school by boys who had hidden in the bushland near the school and waited for me to go past. I found that they didn't bother me if I walked by in the middle of the main pack of children walking home from school, so I abandoned my former practice of making a dash for home as soon as the bell went.

What's In A Name? Race related namesNames which categorised one's racial background or ethnic origin were commonplace during the 1960s though today, in this age of political correctness, their use is generally frowned on and considered racist and in some places has even been made illegal. Most of these terms had their origins outside of Australia and, in the main, were not derogatory when used in their original context. When I arrived in Australia, everyone who was a migrant was called something. I was from England so I was called a Pommie. I never took it as derogatory or racist at the time, though in hindsight I am sure that is often how it was intended. I just accepted it as the local name for what I was, and to this day I still do and choose to view it somewhat as a term of affection, like a nickname. I still refer to myself as a Pom and am proud of it and if others choose to see it or other similar names as offensive, then it is their choice to be offended by it. It is interesting to see many in the Greek community of late have taken a similar attitude towards the term "wog", embracing it as part of their heritage rather than seeing it is a slur on their ethnic origin.

Wogs: The word "wog" has its origins in the colonial period of the British Empire. It was originally used as a label for the natives of India, northern Africa and the Middle East. During the post World War II migrationary period it was a derogatory slang term in Australian English, referring specifically to people from Greece, though its use in parts of Australia was extended to include migrants from Italy and the Balkans and other parts of Europe or the Levant.

The origins of the term are unclear. Many dictionaries guess that it comes from the term golliwog, a black-faced doll with tangled hair, but it is more likely that the black-faced doll is in fact a representation of a 'wog'. Other theories hold that it is an acronym. Several possibilities are offered, the most believable of which is "Working On Government Service", a label displayed on the clothing of non-British workers that was commonly seen during the construction of the Suez Canal. Non British people who worked for the British Government throughout its empire received the same benefits and status as British born people. It was common practice for the acronym "WOGS" to be stenciled on the shirts of laborers assigned to government projects to identify them as such. During the first decades of the 20th century, the Australian Government recruited many non-British people to work on Government construction projects at a time when skilled labour in Australia was in short supply. These people, who were mainly of Greek extraction, are said to have worn clothing with the "WOGS" acronym embroidered on them, which may explain why the term in later years came to refer specifically to Greeks. Another suggestion is that the word had its origins in the 19th century Australian goldfields where there were many Chinese prospectors. It is said that Government officials referred to them as either Worthy Oriental Gentleman, Wily Oriental Gentleman or Wonderful Oriental Gentleman and the term was shortened by the white prospectors and used to refer to anyone of non British origin.

In maritime circles Wog is a shortened version of the word pollywog, used by sailors during the crossing the line ceremony, to describe people who have not yet crossed the equator. This use is entirely non-derogatory and is not limited to British English. It could be that persons from the other side of the equator were first referred to as pollywogs, or its shortened form, wogs. In India, the term is said to derive from the practice of British Imperialists commonly referred to an Indian as a "WOG" since they were commonly used as security. The word was an acronym for "Warden on Guard", which was the most common form of employment of the locals by the resident British authorities. Some contemporary Australians comedians from Italian or Greek cultures in Australia have attempted to reclaim the use of the word on the basis of an unspoken rule in the 1960s that wogs could use wog but the rest of us couldn't. The Western Australian government has decreed that the words wog, pom and ding are not to be regarded as offensive terms under the state's proposed racial vilification rules. Why the term "wog" is also used to describe a bout of influenza is not known.

Ding: The term, used to label an Italian migrant, many have begun life as an abbreviation of "dingbat" back in the 1920s. That word had its origins in the 18th century and means to beat (or ding) with a bat. It was used to describe unidentified tramps whose travels were referred to as "hitting the road". In 19th century Australia and New Zealand, the term "ding" came into common use to describe eccentricity or anyone who was different to the norm. It may be derived from an old Yorkshire term used to insult others who do not subscribe to their fashions and characteristics, from which the word 'ding-a-ling" is derived. Why it came to refer specifically to migrants of Italian descent is not known. The word is also used to describe a dent left in the panel of a car after a collision, though it appears to have no connection with the slang term for an Italian migrant.

Pommy: The origin of the word, like wog, is surrounded by urban myth. One explanation is that the word Pommy came from an old chant of "pommy-grant immi-grant" that greeted the newly arrived English to Australia's shores. Another, which may well support that explanation, is that it is an acronym for "Prisoner of His Majesty", a term which had its origins in 19th century British courts. When a person was convicted by the courts, they were declared to be a "Prisoner of His Majesty" by the magistrate when their sentence was handed down. Just as the word 'WOG' was stenciled on the shirts of non-British laborers, so the acronym 'POHM' may have been stenciled on the shirts of convicts. It is therefore understandable why the term came to refer to migrants from England as the majority of migrants in Australia's first 60 years as a British colony came as convicts and would have been POHMs. Another explanation is that the word originated in Melbourne and is the acronym of "Port of Melbourne", the port where British immigrants landed when entering Victoria. The letters "POM" are said to have been stamped on the passports and papers of migrants to Melbourne. Pommie was used primarily to refer to English people. Paddy, which was used to describe Irish people, originates from St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The Irish have also been known as Potato Heads, as potatoes are a major part of the Irish diet. Scots were often called Jock, which is the Scottish variation of John. It is the country's most common Christian name. Welsh people were dubbed Taffy for a similar reason.

Jippo: An expression used in the 1960s to describe migrants of Arab or Middle Eastern origin. It is a shortened version of the word "Egyptian" which back then was the general term used to describe all peoples of Middle Eastern origin. This term has not been in use for many years.

Dago: Interestingly, this term for Italians did not originally refer to Italians. Dago comes from the Spanish given name Diego, which is as common a Christian name in Spain as Hans is in The Netherlands, Con is in Greece and John is in Britain. The use of the name is nautical in origin and originally referred to Spanish or Portuguese sailors on English or American ships as far back as the 18th century. This is because those countries came under authority of the Roman Catholic or Latin Church, which had its headquarters in Rome. The term "Latin America" is also derived from this same source, identifying that part of America that was established under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. After being thus broadened to include anyone from southern Europe, it was narrowed again and restricted to those of Latin origin in the 1830s. It was in 1870s New York where it was first used to describe Italian immigrants.

Italians have also been referred to as Wops but to a lesser degree in Australia. The term, used specifically in a derogatory way to describe high class Italians, stands for "With Out Papers." It had its origins during the big Italian emigration to the U.S, when many went to America illegally (with out papers). Among them were members of organised crime families, who became very rich in America.

Kraut: Used to describe Germans, and a term which took on a derogatory meaning when it was used by Allied forces to describe the enemy during the two World Wars. It is short for sauerkraut, a popular German food. Another term used to describe Germans, particularly by older Australians, was Hun. When the Europeans united to crush the Chinese boxer rebellion, Kaiser Wilhelm II said something like "let the Germans strike fear into the hearts, so he'll be feared like the hun!" The name stuck.

Frog: A word used to describe French migrants. There are a number of possible explanations for the use of the word in that context. French people are said to laugh like frogs as, when they laugh, their adam's apples is supposed to bulge out of their necks like frogs. More likely is that it refers to the French delicacy of frog-legs. Another possible derivation is the Fleur-de-Lys displayed on the French king's banner in the Middle Ages, which, to the English enemy, looked like squatting frogs.

Jesus Killer: uring World War II, when the Jews were most hated, this slur was used as a reason to hate Jews. I heard it used very occasionally to describe Jews when I first came to Australia, but I have not heard it since.
Kiwi: The Kiwi is the native bird of New Zealand. The term is rarely used with connotations and is embraced by New Zealanders.

Nip; Short for Nippon meaning "Japan" in Japanese.

Chink: A derogatory term generally used for Asians in general. It is a reference to their eyes, the dictionary definition for a chink being a narrow opening or slit. It might also have been derived from the word “Chinese”.

Commy: Originated during the cold war, the word is short for Communist and referred to anyone from behind the Iron Curtain. The term "Red" was also used.

Australian namesJust as there were names given to migrants in 1960s Australia, there were plenty of names in use, many of them derogatory, to describe various types of Australians too. These are the main ones I heard being used during my first year in Australia. Many are no longer used, either having been replaced by others, or have been outlawed from general usage through the current trend towards political correctness.

Bodgie and widgies: During the war years Australia became a major destination for US troops on recreation leave. This, and the movies of the time which depicted America's restless youth, inspired young Australians to emulate their modes of dress and dance, setting the stage for the emergence of our first teenagers - the bodgies and widgies.

Bodgies were the 1950s/early 1960s Aussie equivalent of Britain's teddy boys and America’s bikersThe name derives from the slang term "bodgy", which means "imitation" or "bogus" but later came to mean "faulty" or "ill made". In effect, our teenagers were seen as bodgie or imitation versions of American teenagers. The word Bodgie came to describe Australia's delinquent youth who adopted the same look and style of dress personified by James Dean's "Rebel Without A Cause" and Happy Days' Fonzie: tight jeans; longish, wavy slicked-back Brylcreemed hair, leather jacket and ‘winklepicker’ pointy-toed shoes. No satisfactory explanation for the word widgie has ever been reached except that it the female version of bodgie.

For the first time, Australians heard the American word 'teenager', and, in the same breath, my parents' generation heard the name Elvis Presley in the 1950s. Elvis and Bill Haley coincided with the first days of mass communication. Radio and television helped them cross international barriers of language and culture. Along with them came the outrageous fashion and behaviour that shocked their parents. Bodgies and wedgies hung around in milk bars, they drank spiders (soft drink with a scoop of ice cream) and went to the beach and the movies. Following the release of the Bill Haley movie “Rock Around The Clock” in 1957, they became increasingly connected to juvenile delinquency which was believed to have been fueled by rock’n’roll music. A counter-culture which grew in the early 1960s were the beatniks with their philosophy, literature and jazz.

Pickaninny: Used in Australia as a term of endearment to describe Aboriginal children. The term originated from the days of slavery in America's south. The slave owners would be invited to "pick a slave" from the lineup of slaves. In some parts of the south, breasts were referred to as ninnys, so to "pick a ninny" was to pick a young female black slave to perform domestic chores.

Boong: A derogatory term for an Aboriginal from the bush. It is said to have originated from the sound of an Aboriginal person hitting the bull bar on the front of a moving vehicle but this offensive, highly racist explanation is incorrect. The word is derived from an American term, boon, or its synonym bogan, which originally referred to Native American Indians. The term eventually came to refer to any uneducated hick or back-woods person who is unfamiliar with life in white suburbia. It is a synonym of bogan.

Bogan: The word originates from America's Old West and was a derogatory term used by white settlers to describe male Native Americans. The word was brought in the 19th century by Amercian whalers and it was first used by native New Zealanders to describe white trash (lower class whites) or rednecks. It then moved across the Tasman to the Sydney region and was used to describe racist, working class "westies" (people from Sydney's west). The term redneck originally referred to rural, racially prejudice whites of America's south, mostly farmers, who have reddish necks (or a "farmer's tan"). Its usage has become a lot looser and now refers to any uneducated racist. Boong is a synonym which came to refer to urban Aboriginals.

Crow Eater: A person from South Australia where crows are plentiful.

Gum Sucker: A person from Victoria. In the early days, koalas were very common throughout Victoria and the term arose because koalas chew on gum leaves to extract their moisture.

Sand Groper: A person from Western Australia. The term was coined because the soil across most of WA's capital city of Perth is very sandy.

Banana Bender: A person from Queensland, which is the state in which bananas are traditionally grown.

Top Ender: A person from the Northen Territory.

Cockroach: A person from New South Wales. The term refers to the large numbers of the insect to be found in Sydney.

Taswegian: A person from Tasmania. It is a variation on the word Tasmanian.

Cat Lick: A reference to Catholics, more commonly Irish Catholics, who Irish accent makes the word sound like "Cat-lick".

Mowra LaceDuring that first term, I had great difficulty trying to understand the Aussie accent but then I guess they had trouble understanding me. Our family was quite surprised when we first heard the Pastor's son being called Piggy Wiggins. One day my father asked someone how he got a nickname like that and was told, "Oh, his name isn't Piggy Wiggins, it's Peter Wiggins". I also remember struggling with the Aussie accent when learning about the multiplication of fractions. My teacher kept saying to us, "you have to ask Mowra Lace" and I couldn't figure out who Mowra Lace was and when we found her, what it was we were supposed to ask her that would help us solve the equation. I asked my teacher what she meant, and she just looked at me in a puzzled sort of a way and repeated, "you have to ask Mowra Lace". I went home and told my parents my dilemma, but unfortunately I got things a little twisted and told them that my teacher had said we had to ask "Lacey Moe". My mother brought in my elder brother and asked him if he had come across this mysterious person before. He'd never heard of Lacey Moe either and so he asked me what I was doing that required me to ask this person a question. I explained to him that I was trying to solve an equation and he proceeded to tell me that, first of all, you have to ask, "Is it More or Less?"

"Mowra Lace," I shouted. "That's who it is I have to ask, Mowra Lace! So who is she?" "That's not who you ask, it's what you ask," he explained and walked me through it step by step. For the first time I began to realise that I wasn't quite as smart as I thought I was, since I was the only kid in the class who couldn't figure out what Mowra Lace meant.

By the end of the school term, there was no doubt in my mind that the other children in the class were every bit as smart as I was and that I had been led up the garden path by my teacher in Otley into thinking that they weren't. Apart from their strange accents, they seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the English language, and that went for the foreign children too. Varadi often invited me back to his house after school and I was quite surprised to find that he lived in a normal house with normal furniture just like we did. I'm not quite sure what I expected, perhaps a cave or a tent, I didn't quite know, but it certainly wasn't what I found. They sat on chairs like we did; they ate their food off plates on a table with a tablecloth on it like we did. His Mum couldn't speak much English - all she seemed to do whenever I was there was smile at me and feed me hot dogs made with weird, thick, red sausages - but she seemed quite civilised for an European. Liesel, a pretty Dutch girl with the golden plaits, was by far the brightest kid in my class, which never ceased to amaze me. She always got her sums right and she seemed to know everything there was to know about everything. That was hard for me to come to terms with because, after all, I was English and she was a foreigner, therefore I must be cleverer than her, right? Or so I had been told. I could have coped with the situation if she'd have been born an Australian, because at least she would have had English ancestors. But Liesel was Dutch and what do the Dutch know about anything except perhaps making wooden shoes; and who in their right mind would want to wear wooden shoes anyway? But what made it even more annoying was that she was the cutest girl in my class and probably the whole school too. Try as I might, I just couldn't bring myself to not like her. "This is not how it's supposed to be," I told myself.

I remember one time going up to her and asking her if she would be my girlfriend. She just gave me this huge grin, poked out her tongue and ran off, giggling. So much for childhood romance! While all this was happening at school, different things were unfolding elsewhere in my life. We were soon regular attendees at the Assemblies of God Church in Oakleigh, the church that had sponsored our migration to Australia. They met in a hall at the top of the street from the Grants who also fellowshipped there. The people there were simply wonderful to us and for me, their kindness made up for all the hostilities I had to face at school. We couldn't afford a car and my father had yet to get his driver's license. After church every Sunday morning a young man called Norman who drove a shiny black Standard Vanguard Phase 1 would give us a lift home. Unlike the average car, this late 1940s/early 1950s model was more like a fastback with a tailgate at the rear that opened up like a station wagon.

I'm not sure if they were or not, but I believed everyone at that church to be filthy rich as my father would say, since most of them drove cars. At our church in Leeds, which had a congregation of around 60, only two people came to church in a car and I was always in awe of them for owning a motor vehicle. One was a commercial traveller (travelling salesman) whose vehical was probably supplied by his employer and the other a shopkeeper who had a delivery van. I was never quite sure if we were indeed fellowshipping in a church full of wealthy people or whether it was just the norm for Australian families to have cars. It wouldn't be until we moved to Perth that my father would pluck up the courage to get a driver's license and buy a car.

When a public holiday came around, there was always a picnic or some other activity organised by the church and we'd be invited along. I recall one time enjoying a barbecue under the shade of the giant trees of Sherbrook Forest in the Dandenong Ranges. It was a first for me as I had heard about barbecues but I'd never been to one or tasted the kebabs and other goodies that the people cooked that day. Another time we picnicked on the beach at Rosebud on the Mornington Peninsula after having climbed Arthur's Seat. The day out was a real treat for my brother and I as we had only ever gone to the beach about four times in our lives before, and most of the beaches in England we has seen were covered in pebbles and not sand. We were quite taken aback when the people who gave us a lift opened the boot of the car and pulled out tables and chairs, beach umbrellas and Eskys as well as the usual picnic basket full of goodies. When they went to the beach, these people did it in style. My father was intrigued by the Esky, examining it for about five minutes, having never seen an insulated cool box like that before.

Yours truly, my brother and mother show off our beachwear on the sands of suburban Rosebud

The day on the beach at Rosebud was a real education for the Yarrow family in more ways than one as it also included a practical lesson in what not to wear when going to the beach in Australia. As we were going for a day out, we dressed in what everyone in England used to wear on a day out - a suit. My brother and I went to the beach in our Sunday best, which comprised of black shoes, white shirt, tie and suit, complete with matching knee-length trousers. In England, everyone wore a suit to the beach back then, except for little children who went for a paddle in the water. You didn't go to the beach to swim or sunbathe because it's generally too cold to swim or sunbathe there - you go for a day out, and you always wore a suit when you went for a day out. Some years earlier, outfits like those may have been commonplace on Australian beaches, but in 1960, shorts and T-shirts were the order of the day. Realising the situation, one of the women from the church came up to my mother and quietly told her that in Australia, children do not wear suits to the beach. For the next trip to the beach, we came more suitably attired.

Being a 10-year old, I was just starting to discover that girls existed though I had the sense to maintain my distance as the last thing I wanted was to catch girl germs. I used to pretend to myself that the youngest daughter of one of the Sunday School teachers liked me, even though she probably knew nothing about what was going on in my head. When I'd smile and say hello to her she'd wave back and wink at me. The one time she came over to talk to me I took off around the back of the church as fast as I could and waited in the shadows until she had gone.

Our first Aussie ChristmasOur first Christmas in Australia didn't feel at all like Christmas and left my mother and brother quite homesick. Whilst I had never experienced a white Christmas with snow on the ground, a hot Christmas was even more foreign. We got a Christmas tree and put up decorations but it just wasn't the same, particularly for my parents. I realise now that Christmas is a very special time for families and I guess they were missing theirs, though at the time I did not realise it. After early morning church on Christmas Day we decided that, since we had nothing better to do, we'd catch a train and spend the rest of the day at the Melbourne Zoo. We knew the temperature was pretty high by the large amount of water we were drinking, but it wasn't until we returned home to devour some roast turkey and Christmas pudding that we heard on the radio that the temperature had hit a century (100 degrees Fahrenheit). Everyone at church praised us for our braveness in spending such a hot day outdoors. On Boxing Day my brother and I erected a wading pool our parents had bought us for Christmas, filled it with water and had a great time ... until it was time to come out and the sunburn started to sting! Next time we went for a splash, we wore T shirts.

Australia in 1960Thinking back to those first few months in Australia and comparing them with those of my teenage sons today, I realise that, though there are many differences, there are also a surprising number of similarities between life for today's young people and that of the kids my age in 1960. Both lived under a Liberal Government at the Federal level, with the prime ministers of both decades - Sir Robert Menzies in the 1960s and John Howard in the 2000s - enjoying a lengthy term in office. World events cast a shadow over both decades - in the 1960s it was the cold war between East and West and the threat of the atomic bomb; in the 2000s it is the fear for one's safety and the threat of international terrorism. The young people of both decades share similar interests and have similar goals; they go to school and enjoy their sport. They still eat meat pies and chocolate and love listening to music. Their idea of fun is still going to the movies or to the beach with their mates. The Australian dream remains to get a good job, fall in love, get married, buy a house, raise a family and live happily ever after.

The greatest difference between the youth of the 1960s and the youth of today is their knowledge of who they are. Possessed with a "cultural cringe" that came about through not having yet found their true national identity, Australians of the 1960s saw themselves as British rather than Australian and referred to England as 'home' in spite of the fact that most had never been there. Australia clung to its "White Australia" Policy, a sure sign that it was still well and truly tied to the apron strings of Mother England. When the Queen said, "Jump", Bob Menzies would say, "How High?" I am sure it was no accident that in my school atlas, the countries of the British Empire were coloured bright red and next to Canada, Australia was the biggest red blob on the map of the world. These days, the mighty, power-wielding British Empire has dissolved into the much less innocuous Commonwealth of Nations. Today's youth feel under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to Britain. Having become greatly influenced by American culture, Australia's youth now see their country in its geographical context only - as part of Asia, and as a place where "White Australia"-style racism is shunned and multiculturalism is embraced.

In a similar way, the dreams and aspirations of the two generations remain the same but the perceptions and methods of achieving them has changed. To a young person in 1960, watching television was a novelty; today it is part of life and taken for granted. One in five young people in 1960 lived in a house without a telephone; today only one in a hundred young people don't have their own mobile telephone. To a young person in 1960, a great holiday involved going camping with their parents, today a great holiday involves flying overseas and visiting Disneyland. In 1960, a great meal was bangers and mash (mashed potatoes and sausages), today a great meal is McDonalds or pizza and Coke. In 1960, the most technical thing a young person owned was a transistor radio (if they were lucky), today it's a toss up between their PC, Playstation, mobile phone or digital camera. 95% of young people in 1960 were of British origin, only 65% can make that claim today. Back then, fish and chips was the only take-away available and it was seen as a treat; today's take-away options seem endless and to have fast food twice a week is normal for many.

Compared to today, life in the early 1960s was quieter, slower and safer. Not everyone owned a car so the roads were uncrowded and traffic jams were rare. Most young people cycled to school unless they lived too far away, and then they caught a school bus. Money was in short supply so the majority of families didn't have a television, sound system or a washing machine though most homes had refrigerators, a necessity in Australia's warm climate. No one had air conditioning and only the rich had telephones. Dad was the head of the house, but Mum was the boss and young people always did what they were told. They were not spoiled, and were taught manners. They honoured their word and respected not only their parents but everyone older than them. Such people were never called by their first names, but were always addressed as Mr or Mrs, or Uncle or Aunty. School was stricter, the teachers had more authority than today and weren’t afraid to use it. Their authority was respected and rarely questioned and a rap on the knuckles with a ruler or a taste of the cane was treated as part of one’s education. The more troublesome ones could expect a workout in the laneway out the back. Unfortunately, bullying at school was also commonplace.

The dress code was strictly adhered to. When a new product like lipstick came onto the market, if a student dared to wear it, they would be sent home. The same thing happened when boys copied the Beatle’s mop-top hairstyle. Everyone was always neatly dressed and most young people had only three or four outfits, consisting of best clothes, home wear & school uniform. Girls were very feminine and dressed that way. Clothes were passed on to younger family members as you grew out of them and were often borrowed from friends, particularly among girls When you went out somewhere special, boys wore a suit, tie and neatly polished shoes; girls often wore hats, gloves, starched petticoats & full skirts.

Young people tended to stay within their own local communities and got around either by walking or on roller skates. Spare time was often spent down at the local milk bar where it was not uncommon for two or three friends to share a milkshake as pocket money back then was minimal. It was there that the boys invited the girls to the local dance or to a movie. No one objected if boys wolf whistled the girls and the girls loved it! Parents were asked for permission to go out and if given, the time to be home was stated. If it wasn’t strictly adhered to, you would be grounded for a week. On Saturdays after helping Mum with the housework or shopping, the popular place to go was the movie theatre for the afternoon matinee. Unless your family was rich you never went out to dinner, except to celebrate a 16th or 21st birthday. On Saturday nights, young people put on their best clothes and nights and went to a dance at the local hall. Sunday was church and family day. In the morning, just about everyone went to Sunday School, followed by church afterwards unless you were from a ‘heathen’ family. After church, the roads were full of people visiting grandparents or aunts and uncles where the afternoon would be spend playing with their cousins. Very few people could afford holidays, and if you did manage to go away, it was most probably to a resort town somewhere up or down the coast from where you lived.

The biggest craze of 1960 was the hula-hoop. In 1957 Americans Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr saw Australian school children exercising with bamboo rings, twirling them around their waists with constant hip gyrations. They were inspired to create a new plastic version which named the Hula Hoop because the movements needed to keep the hoop moving reminded them of the Hawaiian hula dance. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans played with large hoops made of dried grapevines and a "hooping" craze hit England in the 14th century. But that was nothing like the frenzy that hit the world in the late 1950s! Twenty million hula hoops sold for $1.98 across the US in the first six months. It arrived in Australia in 1959 and reached the height of its popularity down-under, especially among girls, in 1960. Hula- hoop competitions were held in shopping centres across the country. In 1962, Knerr and Melin would revise another ancient toy, the Frisbie, which gained popularity across Australia during the latter half of the 1960s, but never quite reached the dizzy heights of popularity that the hula-hoop enjoyed.

Holden FC Station Wagon

Motoring in the 1960sMaterial shortages and the lack of spending money meant that most of the cars produced in the period immediately after the Second World War provided basic transportation only, with few frills. British cars were the most common, though Holden and later, Ford, would make great inroads into the market. By today's standards, the cars of 1960 were grossly underpowered. Small four cylinder cars that seated four people had engines with below 1 litre capacity, larger fours were around 1.5 litres and the majority of sixes were around 2 litres. Automatic transmission was only available on bigger "luxury" cars, as was air conditioning (for years we were told that that small cars could have automatic transmissions as their motors couldn't stand the strain). Heater/demisters, radios (cassettes and CDs had yet to be invented), and carpets were generally optional extras, as were bucket seats and reversing lights. Two tone exterior colour schemes were all the rage and whitewall tyres were erroneously treated like alloy wheels are today as something that makes the car perform better. By 1960, car manufacturers were using flashing indicator lights to replace the turn signals that popped out between the front and rear doors like a little orange hand. Some cars still had neither system and people driving those cars were required by law to give hand signals out of the window.

Holden: After World War II, General Motors Holden made utility bodies for Chevrolets, Vauxhalls and Bedfords while fully importing select models of Chevrolet and Vauxhall cars. In 1948, the company introduced what was billed as Australia's first car, the 48-215, or FX as the £733 vehicle was commonly known. It was replaced by the similarly styled FJ in 1953, It had remained in production until 1956 when it was replaced by the bigger, more powerful and stylish FE sedan and utility. Australia's first station wagon was added to the range in 1957. The FC (1958) and more powerful FB (1960) were simply updated versions of the same car. The last of that body series was the EK, which was the first Holden to offer Hydramatic" automatic transmission. General Motors sold the fully imported Vauxhall Velox and Victor alongside its Holden range into the 1960s.

Ford: Ford's range consisted of fully imported Customlines from the US and 4 cylinder Prefects and Consuls and 6 cylinder Zyphyrs from the UK up until the introduction of the Falcon. The initial decision to launch an Australian- built Ford was made in 1955, when it was decided that Ford Australia would build the Zephyr locally from the ground up, rather than simply assemble kits that arrived by ship from Dagenham in the United Kingdom. In 1958, Managing Director Charles Smith decided that the car was not right for the local market and was then shown a mock-up of the Falcon that was being designed for the Canadian and American markets and decided that it was the car for Australia. The Falcon made its debut with the XK in September 1960. The car and its successor, the XL, were based on a Canadian design, with some minor modifications for Australian conditions.

Chrysler: Up until the introduction of the locally manufactured Chrysler Valiant in 1962, Chrysler's range consisted of fully imported models from the Chrysler/Dodge stable. The original Australian made Valiant, complete with winglets and false external spare tyre, competed strongly against the Holden and Falcon. Selling at £1,299 compared to the Holden at £1,169 and Falcon at £1,204. BMC: The 4-cylinder Morris Major and Austin Lancer, selling for £1025 each, were built from 1958 at BMC's plant in the Sydney suburb of Zetland. The larger Austin Cambridge, Morris Oxford and Wolseley 24/80 were initially fully imported, but later assembled from imported parts at Zetland.

This factory was closed in 1974. Various MG and Riley models were fully imported from Britain. The BMC range was among the most popular cars being sold in Australia in 1960.

Rootes Group: offered fully imported Hillman Minx, Humber Snipe Series 1, Triumph Herald, Mayflower and sports cars. The Standard Vanguard Phase III sedan and station wagon were assembled in Australia using mainly imported parts.

Volkswagen: The only European car manufacturer to build cars in Australia in 1960. They assembled Beetles from imported parts at a factory in Clayton, Victoria from 1958 until the 1970s when Nissan took over the plant. When Nissan withdrew from local manufacture in the 1980s, the factory was taken over by Telstra as a warehouse.

Japanese Cars: In 1960 there were no Japanese cars sold in Australia. Toyota had sold a fleet of Land Cruisers for use in the building of the Snowy Mountains Scheme but it would not be until 1963 that its Tiara, which was assembled in Port Melbourne, would introduce the Australian public to its cars. Nissian began importing cars in 1963, its range consisting of the Datsun Bluebird and Nissan Cedric. Mazda introduced its R360 Coupe in the same year. The other Japanese car makers entered the market later in the decade.

Luxury cars: Whilst hardly luxurious by European standards, the Big 3 American manufacturers imported a variety of models and sold them as "luxury cars" because they were big. Jaguar and Rover had developed a strong following. These included the Ford Customline, Dodge Phoenix, Chrysler Royal, Chevrolet Impala, Rambler and Pontiac Parisienne; BMW weren't into the luxury car market at that time; Mercedes began a major push into the Australian marketplace with the launch of the 220 models of its Fintail series in 1960; limited numbers of Rolls Royce, Volvo and SAAB were imported to cater for enthusiasts of those marques. Citroen imported limited quanitities of its DS Pallas series but didn't bother with the 2CV.

Others: Of the Italian marques, FIAT was the largest importer. Limited numbers of Alfa Romeos and Lancias were imported mainly by dealers who raced them or sold them to enthusiasts. Renault sold its Dauphine.

TelevisionTelevision first came to Australia in 1956. Australia had selected the PAL system and all transmissions were in black and white until March 1975. TCN9 Sydney (16th September at 7.00pm), HSV7 Melbourne (4th November), ABN2 Sydney (5th November), ABV2 Melbourne (18th November) and GTV9 Melbourne (2nd December) commenced transmission in 1956. At the end of that year, 5% of Melbourne households (10,000) and 1% of Sydney households owned a TV set. There were over 600,000 TV sets in Australian homes by 1960, which represents approximately 20% of households. QTQ9 Brisbane, NWS9 Adelaide, TVW7 Perth, BTQ7 Brisbane, ABQ2 Brisbane, ADS7 Adelaide all commenced transmission in 1959. ABS2 Adelaide, ABW2 Perth, ABT2 Hobart, TVT6 Hobart commenced transmission in 1960. In 1960 when my family and I arrived in Melbourne, there were three channels broadcasting: ABV2 (Channel 2), HSV7 (Channel 7) and GTV9 (Channel 9). On a typical weekday, Channel 2 commenced broadcasting each day at 3pm with a science broadcast for schools, and closed at around 11pm at the end of the news with the playing of the National Anthem (God Save The Queen). Channel 7 commenced broadcasting each day at 2.15pm with a movie and finished around midnight at the end of the final day's programme, which was often another movie. Channel 9 commenced broadcasting each day at 2pm with the news and closed after the completion of The Epilogue at around 12.30am.

People's viewing habits followed a quite different pattern in 1960 to those of today. They did not turn the set on and leave it on, switching channels and going from one programme to another as is done in many homes today. When it came time for a programme people wanted to see, the set would be turned on, the programme would be watched, then turned off until the next programme they wanted to see was aired. It is impossible to say which programmes were the most popular in 1960 as there were no ratings surveys undertaken back then to determine this. Most of the TV shows were American productions, among them being Westerns: Chevenne, Gunsmoke, Maverick, Lone Ranger, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, Laramie, Bonanza

Action/dramas: Sea hunt, Hawaiian Eye, 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, Lassie, Ben Casey, The Untouchables, Naked City, Peter Gunn Family situation comedies: The Honeymooners. Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, The Leave It To Beaver, The Real McCoys, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Dennis The Menace, The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons Childrens: Andy Pandy, Watch With Mother Popular British 1960s British shows like The Saint, Z-Cars, Dr Who and The Prisoner were still a number of years away, as were classic American shows like The Flintstones, Star Trek, Mission Impossible, The Fugitive, Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, Mr Ed, Get Smart, Petticoat Junction, Hogan's Heroes, Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy and My Favourite Martian. These would all be produced in TV's boom years in the mid 1960s and reach Australia before the end of the decade.

Bert Newton with Graham Kennedy on "In Melbourne Tonight"

In terms of local content, the live telecast of the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956 not only set the local content ball rolling but had played a major role in the timing of the launch of television in Australia. After the Games, local content consisted initially of news broadcasts only. On 6th May 1957, GTV9 launched Graham Kennedy’s In Melbourne Tonight, a live variety program for Melbourne viewers only, that lasted 13 years and set the pattern for a host of subsequent variety programmes that would follow. It was first broadcast nationally as Graham Kennedy Channel Nine Show in 1960. Australia's first TV quiz show was Bob and Dolly Dyer’s Pick-A-Box. It had been a radio quiz since 1948 but was launched on ATN7/GTV9 in 1957 and ran continuously until 1971. In November 1958, TCN9 brought popular music to the television screen when it launched Brian Henderson’s Bandstand, a variety music programme that launched the careers of many Australians. In the following year, the ABC launched its variety music programme, Six O’Clock Rock, compared by Johnny O’Keefe. Australia’s first TV serial drama, Autumn Affair, began its 10-month run on ATN7/GTV9 in 1958. Australia's first current affairs programme. The ABC's TV News-Times was first aired in 1959 and would continue until July 1980. Around the same time, HSV7's weekly sports program World Of Sport began on Saturday mornings. By 1960, all these programmes were immensely popular and had there been ratings surveys conducted then, they would all have given the American imports a run for their money.

Popular MusicThree names dominated the popular music charts of 1960, and they were all Australians: Lonnie Lee, Johnny O'Keefe and Col Joye Lonnie Lee is one of Australia's Legends of Rock'n'Roll music and television. Born in Rowena in rural NSW, His career started in 1957 when he won a contest to fing Australia's own Elvis Presley. His first single, Ain't It So, released at the end of 1959, was the first of a string of hits that continued until well into the Beatles era. Lonnie's was the first Australian full colour album cover also the first Australian Stereo album, he was the first Australian to have a double sided No. 1 record and the first to have a No. 1 hit from an album. John O'Keefe, also dubbed The Wild one, hailed from Sydney's eastern suburbs. He shot to fame in the late 1950s and became the resident act of Australia's first TV rock programme, Six O'Clock Rock. Johnny had 29 top 40 hits which spanned from his first single - "The Wild One" - in March 1958 to his last - "Mockingbird" (a duet with Margaret McLaren) - in April 1974.

Col Joye One of the Jacobsen brothers (Colin), of the group Col Joye and the Joye Boys, which was formed in 1957. Col became a familiar face on TV's rock music show Bandstand and released 14 top 40 hits, the majority of them between 1959 and 1964. He is involved in artist management and production today.

In 1960, Perth boy Rolf Harris followed up his earlier hit, "Sun Arise", with his novelty song, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". New Zealand's leading rock artist, Johnny Devlin, enjoyed popularity in Australia in the early 1960s as did Sydney girl and Bandstand regular, Noeline Batley, and Johnny Ashcroft, Australia's original country and western recording artist.

Top 20 Australian hits of 1960 Little Boy Lost - Johnny Ashcroft
Starlight, Starbright - Lonnie Lee
Yes Indeed I Do - Lonnie Lee
She's My Baby - Johnny O'Keefe Don't You Know - Johnny O'Keefe
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport - Rolf Harris
I Found A New Love - Lonnie Lee
Ain't It So - Lonnie Lee
Barefoot Boy - Noeline Batley
Ready For You - Johnny O'Keefe Teenage Baby - Col Joye
Whiplash - Rob E.G.
Yes Sir, That's My Baby - Col Joy
Defenceless - Lonnie Lee Shout - Johnny O'Keefe
It's Too Late - Johnny O'Keefe Bad Man - Col Joye Gigolo - Johnny Devlin
Cut Me Kangaroo Loose - Joe Martin
Turn The Lights Out Johnny - Johnny Devlin

Top selling songs of 1960 by international artists

1. Theme from a Summer Place - Percy Faith
2. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - Edith Piaf
3. Georgia on My Mind - Ray Charles
4. El Paso - Marty Robbins
5. Are You Lonesome Tonight? - Elvis Presley
6. It's Now or Never - Elvis Presley
7. Only the Lonely - Roy Orbison
8. Crying - Roy Orbison
9. Running Bear - Johnny Preston
10. Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers
11. Apache - The Shadows
12. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini - Brian Hyland
13. My Ole Man's a Dustman - Lonnie Donegan
14. The Twist - Chubby Checker

Cricketer Richie Benaud

Sport in 1960Cricket: In test Series in India, played December 1959 to January 1960: Australia won 2, India won 1 (2 drawn). In the test series played in Australia against the West Indies, December 1960 to February 1961, Australia won 2, West Indies won 1 with one test drawn and another, played in Bribane being the famous tied test. Ritchie Benaud was Australia's Captain. NSW won the Sheffied Shield for the 1959/1960 season, topping the table with 50 points. Victoria were runners-up with 48 points, followed by Western Australia (34 points), Queensland (24 points) and South Australia (8 points). Tasmania were not part of the competition at that time. Bob Simpson had the highest batting average of any player in the competition with 300.66. He played 5 matches and in 6 innings, scrored 902 runs, his highest score being 236 not out. Ritchie Benaud (NSW) had the best bowling average, bowling 547 balls with 148 runs scored. He bowled 16 maidens, took 12 wickets at an average of 12.33. Johnny Martin (NSW) took the most wickets (45) from 2403 balls, at an average of 23.64. The highest personal score was 264 not out by Ray Flockton (NSW) in a South Wales v South Australia match, scored on 9th January 1960. In that innings, NSW scored 534 runs, the highest team score of the season. South Australia scored the lowest (56) against Western Australia on 27th February 1960.

Cricket wasn’t broadcast on television, but as it is still today, the ABC gave full match coverage on the radio. Broadcasts from overseas came by telex to the radio station, which quickly translated it into descriptive text which was read by a commentator. To add realism, it was read as though they were watching it live and the pencil was tapped on the desktop to replicate the sound of the ball hitting bat. Within a year of our arrival in Australia, this practice was abandoned when direct broadcasts were introduced.

VFL: Grand Final result, 1960: Melbourne (8:14) d Collingwood (2:2). The Brownlow Medal was won by John Schultz (Footscray). Rugby League: Great Britain won the Rugby League World Cup in 1960. For the fifth time in 12 consecutive years, St George won the Grand Final. Result: St George 31 beat Eastern Suburbs 6.

Melbourne Cup: Won by High Jinx (WA Smith, TH Knowles), 2-Howsie, 3- Ilumquh. Tennis: Davis Cup Australia (4) d. Italy (1). Margaret Court was Australian singles champion in 1960 for the first of 10 times (1960-66, 69-71). "Rocket" Rod Laver won the doubles, being one of four times as winner (1959, 60, 61 & 69). Neale Fraser beat Rod Laver in an all-Australian men's singles final in Tennis at Wimbledon. Other Australian tennis players of note in 1960 were Roy Emerson, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall.

Olympic Games: Australia sent a team to the Olympic Games, held in Rome. Australia won 8 gold, 8 silver and 6 bronze medals. Bettry Cuthbert was injured in 1960 and missed the Rome Olympics. GOLD: Herb Elliott - Athletics 1500m 3.35.6 World Record Australian Team - Equestrian 3-day Event 128.18pts (L Morgan, N Lavis, W Roycroft) Laurence Morgan - Equestrian 3-day Event minus 7.15pts John Devitt - Swimming 100m Free 55.2 Murray Rose - Swimming 400m Free 4.18.3 John Konrads - Swimming 1500m Free 17.19.6 David Theile - Swimming 100m Back 1.01.9 Dawn Fraser - Swimming 100m Free 1.01.2 SILVER: Noel Freeman - Athletics 20km Walk 1.34.16.2 Brenda Jones - Athletics 800m 2.04.58 Neale Lavis - Equestrian 3-day Event minus 16.60pts Neville Hayes - Swimming 200m Fly 2.14.6 Murray Rose - Swimming 1500m Free 17.21.7 Aust Men's Team - Swimming 4x100m Medley 4.12.0 (D Theile, T Gathercole, N Hayes, G Shipton) Aust Women's Team - Swimming 4x100 Relay 4.11.3 (D Fraser, I Konrads, L Crapp, A Colquhoun) Aust Women's Team - Swimming 4x100 Medley 4.55.7 (M Wilson, R Lassig, J Andrew, D Fraser) BRONZE: Dave Power - Athletics 10,000m 27.37.64 Ollie Taylor - Boxing Bantamweight Division-equal 3rd Anthony Madigan - Boxing Light-Heavyweight Division-equal 3rd John Konrads - Swimming 400m Free 4.21.8 Aust Men's Team - Swimming 4x200 Relay 8.13.8 (D Dickson, J Devitt, M Rose, J Konrads) Janice Andrew - Swimming 100m Fly 1.12.2 Other Sports: Jack Brabham won the World Championship for the second of three times (1959, 60 & 66). Squash player Heather McKay, was beaten only twice in her 20 year career, once in a NSW State championship in 1959 and once in the final of the Scottish Championship in 1960. Golfer Ken Nagle won the British Open. Herb Elliott, winner of the 1500m Olympic gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics, was regarded as the world's greatest middle-distance runner when he retired in 1961 after almost nine years without having lost a race.

Aussie Rules Football My return to school after the summer holidays brought with it a greater degree of acceptance by my school class members. Before Christmas I had been thinking about what the head mistress had said and how I could make myself more a part of the class, rather than being the "stupid Pommie" who never joined in anything. I figured it was time to adopt the old adage - "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em". From now on it was no more "Mr Pom", but "Aussie Rules". One thing all the boys joined in at lunchtime was kicking a football around the school oval. Half the boys would be at one end, the others would assemble at the other end and the ball would be kicked back and forth. Whoever got the ball got to kick it to the other end. The best players used to leap up and mark (catch) the ball; the rest of us used to let it hit the ground then we'd all chase after it like a pack of dogs. If the ball went towards the centre of the pack, it would be marked. If it went off the side, it was left to the rabble to fight over it.

I figured that if I spent the holidays learning how to kick a ball properly I'd at least be able to join in rather than sit on the sidelines as I now did. For that reason I asked for and was given an Aussie Rules football for Christmas that I practiced kicking day in and day out through the holidays with some children who lived near me. When the new school year began I boldly joined the pack of good players on the school oval when lunchtime came around. I quickly found I was way out of my league up against the best in the school, so I slipped back to the rear of the pack. The first time the ball came in my direction, I leapt up high and took a mark. The kids around me looked at me in amazement, asking, "where did you learn to do that?" I said nothing, but just kicked the ball as hard as I could. It went straight and high right over the heads of the main pack at the other end. Five more times I caught the ball and five times I kicked it straight as a dye just as I had before.

The second event that allowed me to gain a little more respect occurred during that time of the year when magpies become territorial and dive bomb anyone who goes near their nests. There was a big pine tree in the school's quadrangle that had such a nest, and everyone but me knew to walk around the edge of the quadrangle and not across the middle to avoid being attacked. I'm pretty sure I was being baited when one of the boys called me one day from one corner of the quadrangle to the other, saying he had something to show me. I walked straight across the middle and noticed that there were quite a few of the boys from my class lined up watching me. As I reached the centre of the quadrangle, I heard a noise above me. Not being sure what it was, I ducked me head down quickly. It failed to make contact but when I saw that it was a magpie, it had quickly turned around and begun another attack. I flicked my hand up above my head with the intention of just scaring it away, but somehow I caught the bird with my fingers. I pulled my arm down quickly, more in fright at having made contact with the bird than anything, but to my amazement it was still attached to my fingers. It slammed into the asphalt of the playground and died instantly.

I walked over to the boy who had called me over and asked him what he wanted to show me, knowing that if I didn't I would burst into tears and run away, given how shaken I was feeling. The boy swallowed the bluff hook, line and sinker. He just stood there looking at me, then down at the dead bird, and asked how I did it. "I'm an Aussie now," I replied, still dumbfounded by what had happened and wondering how I'd managed not only to survive the attack but vanquish my foe in such a convincing manner. No one dared to lay a finger on me after that. Little did they know that it was a fluke and that I was every bit as scared as they would have been had they been in my shoes. But I wasn't going to say or do anything to erode their newly found respect for me. Not that I wanted their respect; by now all I wanted them to do was stop picking on me, and all I wanted to do was become an Aussie.

Learning AussieismsBefore I left England, I had been led to believe that British people and Australians spoke the same language. To a large extent they do, of course, but there are a lot of Australian words and terms that are second nature to me now that I had never heard prior to my arrival in Australia. These strange words and expressions soon left me realising that I needed a lesson or two in the Australian vernacular before I could call myself an Aussie. Our first social encounter had been a barbecue and it was here that my education in the Aussie way of speaking began. Even the name of the function to which we has been invited was an unfamiliar Aussie term. We had never been to a barbecue, but we knew what it was and we would have known what we were going to, had it been called by that name, but the invitation said "barbie". There was a lady called Barbara who lived a few doors away from us in Otley and her husband used to call her Barbie, so maybe this was the name of the host, we reasoned. As the invitation told us to, we brought a plate, not realising until we saw everybody else's that it was supposed to have something on it! My father was offered a tinny, and he asked, "a tinny what?" Everyone laughed and the host explained that Australian beer came in cans and they were referred to as tinnies. It was my turn to show my ignorance when I was offered a snag and replied, "No thanks, I'll just have a sausage".

When I looked around for something to put my sausage on, my father told me to use my loaf, a Yorkshire expression for "use your head", as in "work it out for yourself". Unaware of its meaning, the hostess told me we didn't have to bring our own bread as rolls were supplied at Australian barbecues. After lunch had gone down, we were invited to go for a swim and I was asked if I had brought my togs. The weird look on my face told the host I didn't know what he was talking about, so he said that in Australia, swimming costumes are called togs. I told him I didn't know what swimming costumes were either, so he held up a pair of what I called trunks. Two years later we moved to Perth and when I began talking about putting on my togs, the people there looked at me as though I was speaking a foreign language. I substituted the word trunks but that didn't register either. "Oh, you mean bathers," they said, after I waved my pair at them. When I moved to Sydney, my reference to trunks, bathers and togs all got blank looks. Over there they call them swimmers, which I find quite amusing because that's what I call the people who wear them. I'm not game to go swimming in Adelaide or Brisbane - it's anyone's guess what they call them there. When I put my clothes back on I was told by someone that he liked my clobber (clothes), particularly my ripper shirt. As I looked for the tear in it, my father overhead the conversation, took me aside and asked me who I had hit and whose shirt was ripped. At lunchtime at school I picked up more tips about the Aussie way of speaking. I discovered that when I brought sandwiches, I was actually bringing a cut lunch, though no one seemed to know what an uncut lunch consisted of. When I was fanning away the blowies they were really blowflies and the action I performed to do this was called the Aussie salute. Not only that, what I was eating was not dinner but lunch, and what I called tea was what Aussies called dinner.

I later discovered that in some parts of the outback, lunch is called crib. Tea was what you drank, unless you were Chinese, and then you called it high tea. My old cheese was in fact my mother and not the slice of vintage Cheddar in my sandwich. Being a few sandwiches short of a picnic didn't mean I'd left half my lunch at home but that I wasn’t all there upstairs. I no longer ate food by putting it in my trap but by feeding it down my cake hole. In time I discovered that, when you ask for a round of sandwiches in Perth, you get two slices of bread with a filling between them, but when you ask for a round of sandwiches elsewhere in Australia, all you get is a blank look. If you ask for polony on your sandwich in WA and Victoria, fritz in SA and devon in NSW and Qld, your’re asking for the same thing. Back then, if you had trouble keeping your meal down, you wouldn't be feeling poorly, you'd be feeling cactus. In Perth you would then throw up, in Victoria you would chunder and in NSW you would give a technicolour yawn. If you loved your meal, in NSW you'd call it grouse, elsewhere it would be ripper. I also discovered that when you don't do your homework you are a bludger, that being cranky has nothing to do with starting a vintage car, that you don't have to be wearing pink and grey feathers to be a galah and that hard yacka has nothing to do with talking fast. I found that in Australia, going to the bog has more to do with wading ankle deep through mud than visiting the toilet, and that if I asked for the John, they'd think I was looking for my brother rather than wanting to use the dunny. I learnt the wisdom of telling my fellow students that thongs have no laces because they are easy to slip on and off and not because Australians haven't worked out how to tie shoelaces yet. Otherwise they call me a drongo, which didn't mean I was a bird but a rather hopeless person, somewhat like the 1920s racehorse from which the name is derived that never won a single race in its career.

Whingeing PomsI was fast coming to the realisation that being British wasn't the be-all and end-all that my teacher in Otley had made it out to be. I could see that I wasn't any better than these children and in the case of Liesel, I saw that she was in fact much smarter and far better looking that I was. Furthermore, she had just as good a handle on the English language as I had, in spite of the fact that when she arrived at the school as a migrant child, she couldn't speak a word of English. In addition to these revelations at school, things that were happening on the home front were also changing my view of English people. During our first year in Australia, a few other English migrant families came to Australia and joined the church. Naturally, we gravitated towards them and they towards us and we began spending a lot of time together. With one family in particular I was disturbed by the way they viewed everything in Australia as being inferior to things 'back home". The fish and chips tasted bland, the milk was too watery, the bread was tasteless, the weather was too hot, the buses were noisy - everything was wrong. It was "back home ..." this and "back home ... " that. I soon found myself understanding why we English migrants were called Whingeing Poms by the Aussies and had developed such a bad reputation. One day, while visiting one of these migrant families, the mother went on and on about Australia so much, I couldn't stand it any longer, and blurted out to her children, "We'll if it's so terrible here, why doesn't she go back home where you belong?" Horrified by my outburst, they ran indoors and told their mother what I said, which went down like a lead balloon. It wasn't until I left Melbourne and moved to Perth and had difficulty at first settling in there that I began to understand the emotional pain of homesickness and how it can greatly distort one's view of an unfamiliar place. At school, we began studying Australian history, which I found to be quite eye opening. I heard about the First Fleet of convicts who had been banished to the other side of the world, some for trivialities like stealing a piece of bread because they were poor and couldn't afford to buy food. Others had stolen a blanket so their children wouldn't freeze to death in the middle of winter.

I didn't condone their actions, but I didn't believe the punishment fitted the crime either. I read how a young girl barely in her teens called Mary Reiby had borrowed a horse as a prank and had been transported for seven years for it, even though she took the horse back. I heard about floggings and the slave trade; I heard about the way the Aborigines of Tasmania had been hunted down and it made me ashamed to think that I belonged to the same race of people who condoned and perpetuated these terrible things. The feeling of shame about my heritage became so strong that it took me many years to even think about going back to my homeland, not to mention actually doing it, which is something that still has yet to happen. About a year after coming to Springvale North Primary School, a newly arrived migrant from England named Susan joined our class. I remember thinking how out of place she looked with her pale, almost insipid complexion and her fur coat that was big and heavy and looked totally inappropriate for a child in Australia to be wearing. I listened to her broad Cockney accent and thought, "talk properly, you stupid girl" as I struggled to understand what she was saying. No sooner had I thought those words than I realised this must have been how I came across when I had first arrived and told the class how wretched their lives were until now, but not to fear because Stephen is here. I warned the new English girl, Susan, about what to say and what not to say, and she seemed to be grateful for the advice. I soon realised, however, that she hadn't been indoctrinated in the ideology of British superiority and I think this contributed greatly towards her gaining acceptance by the rest of the class far quicker than I had. As for me, I was ashamed of who I was, where I had come from and what I believed it had turned me into and decided that there was no better time than now to shed my Yorkshire accent and start talking "properly". Feeling more betrayed than anything, it took a number of years to bring balance into my attitude toward Britain, everything it was and is and represents. What helped greatly were the words of wisdom from Varadi's father that I have never forgotten; that there is good and bad in every country and that it is up to each of us to be the best that we can be.

TAA Lockheed Electra Mk II ... the aircraft in which I made my first flight

Trip to Launceston, TasmaniaThe highlight of 1961 was the opportunity to take a trip to Launceston in Tasmania for a two-week holiday. A family associated with the Oakleigh church that lived in Launceston, wrote to the church offering the use of their home for ten days after Christmas 1961 as they were minding a property elsewhere over that period. The church offered it to our family and we gladly accepted. Our trip to Launceston was the first time we had travelled in an aircraft. Dad booked the tickets with Trans Australian airlines (TAA), which at the time was promoting itself as "The Friendly Way". We left early in the morning from Essendon Airport aboard a Lockheed L-188 Electra Mk II, an aircraft that had been introduced into the TAA fleet in 1959 and was being promoted as one of the world's leading short to medium range aircraft. Introduced commercially in January 1959, the L-188 was a low wing, four turbo-prop powered aircraft with accommodation for a flight crew of three and single class seating for up to 104 passengers. We completed the 425km journey in just over an hour and made the flight blissfully unaware of the aircraft’s poor flying record. During the L-188's first two years of service, a number of the aircraft had crashed, two of which had broken up in flight. As an interim measure following the crashes, speed restrictions were imposed on Electras. Investigations uncovered a design defect in the engine mountings where the wing would shake and eventually break up. Lockheed undertook a significant modification programme and the speed restrictions were eventually lifted in 1961 after all aircraft's wings, including those of the aeroplane we flew in, had undergone structural strengthening. After that the Electra proved reliable and popular in service, but the damage had been done and production wound up in 1961 after only 170 had been built. A quarter of them are still flying today.

Launceston was the first place in Australia outside of the Melbourne Metropolitan area that we had visited. After Melbourne's flat landscape, the pretty town on the Tamar River seemed almost mountainous, particularly West Launceston where we stayed. A highlight of the trip was a day's coach tour to Burnie via Devonport, Ulverstone and Deloraine. On another trip we visited the Bell Bay aluminium refinery, Beauty Point, Scotsdale and Bridport on the northeast coast. Back in Launceston we enjoyed a long walk up the Cataract Gorge.

Australia in 1961In January, Melbourne retail giant Myer took over the department store Farmer & Co of Sydney. On 25th February, the last tram ran in Sydney, from Sydney to La Perouse. They were replaced by buses. At the end of March, Stephen Bradley was found guilty of the kidnap and murder of Graeme Thorne in Sydney. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. A week earlier, Monash University in Melbourne was opened. In May, the Australian parliament voted to deny Aborigines the right to vote, and an RAF Vulcan became the first plane to fly from Britain to Australia non-stop. On 17th July, migrants at the Bonegilla Hostel in Victoria staged a violent demonstration and attempted to burn the camp down. The incident was one of the first to be reported by ABC TV’s new current affairs programme, Four Corners. On 30th November, 15 people died as a Viscount aircraft crashed on take-off at Mascot Airport, Sydney and ploughed into Botany Bay. That night, Frank Sinatra played at the Sydney Stadium. A week earlier, Australian cricketer, Merv Hughes, was born. On 15th December in the Federal election of that year, Robert Menzies was returned as Australian Prime Minister with a majority of one.

The World in 1961 On 20th January, John F Kennedy was sworn in as the United States’ youngest President. Three months later, a force of Cuban exiles backed by the CIA attempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Fidel Castro crushed a US- backed attempt to overthrow Cuban Government that was a major embarrassment to the Kennedy administration and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. A week after Kennedy’s inauguration, 'the Pill', the oral contraceptive for women, went on sale in Britain for the first time. In March, Elvis Presley performed his last live show for eight years at Block Arena, Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, before commencing his stint of National Service. In April, singer Bob Dylan made his first public performance at Gerde's Folk City, New York, as the Soviet Union were putting the first man in space. Singer Enya was born a week later. On 25th June, Iraq laid the first of many claims to the former British protectorate of Kuwait, prompting Britain to send troops to Kuwait to repel the invaders. A week later, Author Ernest Hemingway committed suicide. In August, Britain applied to join the European Common Market and East Germany closed the border between East and West Berlin by erecting the Berlin Wall. The anti-war movement of the 1960s picked up momentum in September with a huge "Ban The Bomb" march in London which ended in violent clashes with police, leading to nearly 1,000 arrests. In spite of this, both the US and the Soviet Union detonated test bombs in that month. In December, the US made its entry into the civil war in Vietnam, its first two military companies arriving in South Vietnam, in order to help fend off the North Vietnamese Communist threat. The 4,000 men were ordered to fire only if fired upon. Two days after Christmas, the world’s first successful aircraft hijacking took place when a Cuban hijacker diverted a US airliner to Havana.

In the world of popular music, the biggest songs of the year included Stranger on the Shore (Acker Bilk); Take Five (Dave Brubeck); Hit the Road, Jack (Ray Charles); Big Bad John (Jimmy Dean); The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Tokens); Walkin' Back to Happiness (Helen Shapiro); Travellin' Man (Ricky Nelson); Walk Right Back (Everly Brothers); The Young Ones (Cliff Richard); Wooden Heart (Elvis Presley); Runaway (Del Shannon); I'm Counting on You (Johnny O'Keefe); Right Now (Johnny O'Keefe); Mt Boomerang Won’t Come Back (Charlie Drake); Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Elvis Presley); Rubber Ball (Bobby Vee); The Scottish Soldier (Andy Stewart); I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door (Eddie Hodges); Crying (Roy Orbison); Runaway (Del Shannon)

The most popular movies of the year were: The Absent-minded Professor (Fred MacMurray, Nancy Olson); Can Can (Frank Sinatra, Shirley Maclaine, Maurice Chevalier); Dr No (Sean Connery, Ursula Andress) - the first James Bond movie; El Cid (Charlton Heston, Sophia Loren); The Guns of Navaronne (Gregory Peck, David Niven); One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Wolfgang Reitherman); The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills, Maureen O'Hara); A Taste of Honey (Dora Bryan, Rita Tushingham); West Side Story (Robert Wise, Natalie Wood)

Sport: VFL Grand Final (Melbourne): Hawthorn (13:15) d Fotscray (7:9). Rugby League Grand Final (Sydney): St George 22 beat Western Suburbs 0
Cricket: Australia toured England from May to August 1961. Australia won 2, England won 1 (2 drawn). Sheffield Shield Cricket, 1960-61 Season Season winners: New South Wales. Highest batting average for the season: Alan Davidson (NSW), 170. Most runs scored in the season: Bill Lawry (Vic), 813 runs/ Most wicket taken in the season: Des Hoare (WA). 169.4 overs, 21 maidens 668 runs, 30 wickets, Average: 22.26 average. Best: 6-76 Tennis: Davis Cup - Australia (5) d. Italy (0). Margaret Court was Australian womens singles champion. Roy Emerson was the Australian mens singles champion.