Born in 1970

If you were born in 1970, Australia was in the middle of a great social reckoning. The Vietnam Moratorium marches in May brought 200,000 Australians into the streets of every capital city — the largest political demonstration in Australian history to that point. Students and trade unionists and housewives and returned servicemen marched together, and the country looked at itself in the newspaper photographs and had to acknowledge that something had fundamentally shifted.

The conscription ballot continued, the war continued, the casualty lists continued. But life also continued: the football season ran its course, the cricket was on through summer, and the beaches were packed. AC/DC was still a few years away, but the local rock scene was stirring — Daddy Cool and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were filling the pubs.

The pub itself was changing: the six o'clock swill was over (it had ended in 1955 in New South Wales, 1966 in Victoria) and the public bar was becoming a place to spend an evening, not a race against closing time. The colour television arrived in 1975 in Australia, but the black and white set still ran every household. *Bellbird* and *Division 4* were essential viewing.

Australia was thinking harder about what it was, what it believed, what it owed to its own people — including, increasingly, its Indigenous people. It was uncomfortable and necessary.