Born in 1961

If you were born in 1961, you arrived in an Australia that was still very much Menzies country — and Menzies had been running things since 1949 with the reassuring manner of a benevolent headmaster. But the sixties were seeping in at the edges. Surfing culture was transforming the beaches from family picnic spots into the domain of a new kind of Australian teenager — bronzed, independent, vaguely threatening to the older generation.

The television was now in virtually every home and Graham Kennedy in Melbourne and Don Lane in Sydney were making Australians laugh at themselves in a new, sharper way. The Vietnam War was beginning, and Australian advisers had been sent to South Vietnam, though the scale and the controversy were still ahead. The news on television looked different from the news on the wireless — more immediate, more visual, harder to ignore.

At the footie, the crowds were enormous: MCG Grand Finals, packed standing room, a sea of scarves and pie wrappers. You could buy a new Holden EK for about £1,100. The petrol station attendant came out and filled your tank, checked your oil, and cleaned your windscreen.

The corner dairy or milk bar was the social hub of the street. Everything was close and known, and the world, even the foreign world on the news, felt safely distant.