1960s a decade of change and rebellion … for some

While the 1960s might have been a decade of change and rebellion by 20-something Baby Boomers, for their younger siblings, and especially in regional Australia, it was a very different experience, writes Bernard Salt.

The 1960s are much celebrated for their social change, including the rise of the women’s movement and the recognition of Australia’s Indigenous community in the census.

Also influential at this time was the (unsurprisingly) popular idea of “free love” stemming from the Haight-Ashbury hippie district of San Francisco and enabled by the development of the contraceptive pill.

The Beatles captured the mood at this time with their style shift from loveable mop-tops on The Ed Sullivan Show (1964) to edgy influencers pictured on the cover of their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) album.

The Beatles’ style shift captured the mood of the 60s.

The advent of youth culture and consumer spending power in this decade has been carried forth into modern life by the millennials (1983-2001) and their younger counterparts, the so-called Gen-Zeds (2002-21), known in some quarters as the Zoomers.

But for those of us who were too young to be hippies in the 1960s, this decade of profound change offered a very different experience. Here was a decade in which the last vestiges of the Great Depression still shaped everyday life.

The 1970s brought resources prosperity, American fast-food chains, and a series of transformations that would reshape the Australian way of life. But in the 1960s, socks were darned, fruit was preserved, jumpers were knitted, firewood was split and stacked, and rubbish was disposed of in a single galvanised iron bin. “Fast food” was fish and chips, and pizza was all but unknown to our far-flung outpost of the British Empire.

Handkerchiefs and fountain pens were yet to be usurped by tissues and biros. Ice cream came in a tin that was saved and used as a storage container. At our household we had a string tin to save, you guessed it, bits of string.

As a kid, I did not eat outside the family home unless it was a picnic at the botanical gardens of a nearby town. And this was an event of such significance that it required capturing via a Box Brownie black & white photograph lovingly inserted into a family photograph album, replete with notations as to subject, place and date.

The idea of alfresco dining was introduced to Australia by Mediterranean immigrants, but it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that Australians fully embraced this logical fusion of lifestyle and climate. And it was prompted, I think, by changes to (indoor) smoking regulations.

Plus, the back veranda wasn’t exactly the outdoor living space we have today. It was more of a porch: a modest holding place to pause while entering or leaving the house.

All this was to change over the following 20 years, as working women injected greater spending power into the family home and wider immigration exposed Australians to increasingly cosmopolitan (as opposed to Commonwealth) communities.

So, while the 1960s might have been a decade of change and rebellion by 20-something Baby Boomers, for their younger siblings, and especially in regional Australia, it was a very different experience. It provided a glimpse into an era that would soon disappear.

For many, the 1960s exist as a curio, a memento of manners and mores that quickly vanished. That’s how I see my 1960s childhood.