Born in 1963

If you were born in 1963, Kennedy's assassination in November reached Australia through the television and the wireless and the next day's newspapers and stopped people on the footpath. Australians had a particular affection for Kennedy — young, vital, somehow embodying the optimistic new world — and the grief was genuine. But the year was mostly one of stable, slightly drowsy Australian prosperity.

Menzies celebrated his fourteenth year in office and showed no signs of slowing down. The Snowy Mountains Scheme was in full swing, its tunnels and dams remaking the high country, its workforce a microcosm of post-war immigration. The surf culture was beginning to produce its own Australian cinema — the documentary *Surfing Hollow Days* was doing the rounds — and the beach was firmly established as the central mythology of Australian life.

*Bandstand* on television was the teenager's Saturday morning church, Brian Henderson presiding over the lip-syncing and the new singles with cheerful authority. Col Joye and the Joy Boys, Johnny Chester — Australian pop was holding its own. The footy was fiercely contested, the pies were hot, the trams were packed, and the backyard cricket was taken very seriously indeed.

A loaf of bread cost two shillings. The future was going to be fine.