Born in 1955

If you were born in 1955, Australia was on the verge of television but not quite there yet, and the wireless still ran the country's imagination. The cricket was on every summer, and the football — whether you were a VFL household or an NSWRL one — organised your winter weekends. Rock and roll was beginning to filter through from America: Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" caused actual arguments in some households, with fathers turning off the wireless and mothers quietly humming it in the kitchen later.

The great suburbs kept growing — fibro houses with the vegie patch and the chook run and the smell of lantana and jasmine over the back fence. The beach was democratically available, and Australians used it with democratic enthusiasm — the Surf Life Saving Club carnival on a Sunday arvo, the long drives to the coast in the Holden with the windows wound down. Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall won the Davis Cup for Australia, and the whole country celebrated.

The corner milk bar sold Frosty Fruits and pine-lime Splice and stayed open on Sunday when everything else was shut. The footie record was sixpence and smelled of ink and was passed around the tram on the way to the ground. Melbourne was about to host the Olympic Games and was already preening in anticipation, arguing with Sydney about which city was better — a conversation that would never, quite, be settled.