Adelaide Remember When: author Bob Byrne writes a book about Adelaide in the 1950s to 1980s
A NEW book by The Advertiser’s resident historian, Bob Byrne, takes a remarkable look back at Adelaide in the 1950s to 1980s, with never-before-seen photos.
“Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you”. So wrote Rodman Philbrick in “The Last Book in the Universe”.
This is a book full of diamonds, a collection of the most popular memoirs and photographs from the nostalgia lovers of the Adelaide Remember When Facebook page, ranging from the 1950s to the 1980s, the era of the Baby Boomers.
It’s a fascinating glimpse of our city in a more innocent era, when life was simple and we seemed to have much more time. We were perhaps the last generation who could walk or ride our bikes to school. We climbed trees, skinned our knees and elbows and played in the street with all the other neighbourhood kids until the street lights went on.
How we built SA: Construction of the state
Everyday life in SA in the 1970s
Everyday life in SA in the 1950s
On a hot Adelaide summer night, long before air conditioners arrived, we slept outside on the lawn or at the beach, hoping to catch a cool breeze. We never lost the car keys because they were always left in the ignition. We could walk out the front door and leave it unlocked and we never bothered about padlocking the bike.
Everyday life in SA in the 1930s
Everybody’s mum was home after school and we got a clip around the ear if we’d been naughty.
We were the generation that gave the world rock’n’roll music, the Beatles, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the social revolution of the 1970s.
Many of the photos in this book have been sent to me from private albums and never published before. I also dug into the archives at The Advertiser and into the massive collections held by the State Library of South Australia.
You can meet the author, Bob Byrne, at the Advertiser Book Shop on Thursday, December 4, from 1pm to 3pm.
Here’s a small selection from the almost 300 photos contained in the book.
A TAA Fokker Friendship comes into land at what was Adelaide’s main airport until 1954. Parafield Airport was first developed in 1927 but by 1947, the demand on aviation had outgrown it and the current site of Adelaide Airport was selected at West Torrens (now West Beach). Looking up King’s Road, the rolling hillside in the background is now the suburb of Para Hills.
Advertiser photographer Pat Crowe captured this amazing photo of the Fokker Friendship, Abel Tasman, arriving at Parafield Airport in 1959.
The very same plane crashed in Queensland in June 1960 killing all on board (29 people) in Australia’s worst aviation disaster.
In the 1970s and 1980s the Largs Pier Hotel began to establish its reputation as an important meeting place for Aussie bands such as Jimmy Barnes with Cold Chisel, AC/DC, The Little River Band and The Angels. In fact many local bands played there during the early days of their careers. According to legend, Bon Scott, who later became the lead singer of AC/DC, met his wife at the Largs Pier Hotel after a gig in 1971.
If you were lucky enough to get to Victor Harbor for the school holidays, one of the highlights was a ride on the chairlift on Granite Island. Lindsay Honeyman, driver of the horsedrawn tram from Victor to the Island for 13 years recalled some of the attractions on Granite Island in a recent media release: There was the chairlift in the 1960s. There was also a strange cage that was hoisted up a 40-foot pylon and dropped — it was called a Space Steeple, a sort of early thrill ride.
One of Adelaide’s most-loved radio personalities in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was John Vincent. I worked with ‘Vinnie’ between 1970 and 1972 at 5AD and he was the most generous, kind, funny and genuine person you could ever meet. Growing up and living in Adelaide in that ’60s to ’80s era, you would have at some time heard him on air, seen him on TV, attended a dance where he was compere or bought one of his Ken Oath records or cassettes.
Adelaide Railway Station was once the centre of all train travel in South Australia and the man in blue knew everything about anything to do with travelling on a train. It was in 1978 that the South Australia’s railway system was divided between two owners. The Commonwealth Government-controlled Australian National Railways (AN) took over ownership and operation of all country lines outside the Adelaide metropolitan area, while the State Government-controlled State Transport Authority retained the suburban routes around Adelaide.
After Australia Day, Adelaide changed forever when the Beaumont children — Jane, Arnna and Grant — disappeared from Glenelg beach. A massive search was launched by police and volunteers, scouring the coast for kilometres both north and south of the Colley Reserve.
Many parents changed the way they supervised their children on a daily basis after the disappearances and the case led many to conclude that Adelaide had a dark and evil underbelly.