Born in 1979

If you were born in 1979, the summer before your birth or arrival was the summer of the Sydney to Hobart race, the beach, and a specific kind of Australian contentment that seems cleaner in retrospect. Cold Chisel's "Khe Sanh" — released this year — became one of those songs that encoded something genuine about Australian experience: the drift, the longing, the particular bittersweet restlessness of young men who didn't quite know what they were looking for. Midnight Oil were becoming politically and musically formidable.

Australian cinema was in a golden stretch: *Mad Max* arrived in 1979, Mel Gibson on a post-apocalyptic Australian road, and people recognised something true in it even as they recognised it as fantasy. The Fraser government was grinding through its economic management. Petrol prices were up again — the Iranian revolution had disrupted supply — and the debate about energy independence was being had.

The V8 ute in the driveway was drinking expensive petrol. But the long summer still meant the beach, the cricket on television with Richie Benaud's measured commentary, the cold beer at the pub on a Friday after knock-off, the smell of the eucalyptus in the heat. Life was expensive and specific and Australian.