Born in 1944

If you were born in 1944, the tide of the war had turned and you could feel it — cautiously, superstitiously — in the slightly lighter atmosphere at the front bar of the pub, in the way the news broadcasts sounded less desperate. The Kokoda campaign was over and won, New Guinea was slowly being secured, and the boys in the islands were pushing north. But the casualty lists were still being read on the wireless, and the telegraph office remained a place people crossed the road to avoid.

At home, rationing meant creativity in the kitchen — a Sunday roast stretched to Monday rissoles and Tuesday soup — and the vegie patch was a matter of civic pride. Mum and the other women on the street ran everything: the bank accounts, the households, the community drives. The picture theatre was a weekly escape, and American films with their glossy sets and optimistic endings felt like dispatches from another world.

Kids played footy on the paddock after school, shirts as goalposts, arguing rules until dark. The wireless at night brought news from Normandy in June, and people sat very still and listened to every word. By year's end, there was a tentative sense that it might actually, eventually, be over — and the question of what Australia would look like afterwards was beginning to feel worth asking.