Born in 1951

If you were born in 1951, Australia was finding its stride as a prosperous young nation with a slight British accent and a growing sense of its own identity. Menzies was settling into his long prime ministership, and the referendum to ban the Communist Party narrowly failed — the vote was close, the arguments fierce, and the fact that Australians declined to give the government quite that much power said something interesting about the national character. The wool boom was still extraordinary — "riding on the sheep's back" wasn't just a saying, it was economic fact.

New suburbs were materialising on the edges of Melbourne and Sydney, all fibro and quarter-acre blocks and Hills Hoists. The picture theatre was the great Saturday night entertainment, with Westerns and musicals and the occasional home-grown Australian film that everyone went to out of patriotic duty. Kids saved their pocket money for the school tuck shop and lollies from the milk bar — a penny's worth of aniseed balls went a very long way.

Summer meant the beach: the bucket and spade, the thick zinc cream, the Paddle Pop from the ice cream cart, the particular joy of a good dumper in the surf. The cricket season brought Lindwall and Miller to the crease, and the whole country listened on the wireless. Life was solid, warm, neighbourly, and going somewhere good.