The dramatic ways the world has changed in my lifetime

On my planet, divorce was a scandal. Ditto illegitimacy. Abortion was a crime. As were homosexuality and SP gambling. Drugs? Pretty much limited to aspros.

Phillip Adams

A local corner shop in Sydney in 1934. Picture: State Library of NSW.

2 min read

4 hours ago

The Weekend Australian Magazine

I come from a different planet. A few weeks short of my 86th birthday, let me look back at the world in which I was born and see the differences – some slight, some dramatic – between the two.

The planets looked identical from afar. The same blue dot, looking like an opal set in the black vastness of space. Not that we knew so much about that vastness 86 years ago. No spaceships had been launched, and no powerful telescopes were in orbit. Ideas like black holes and the Big Bang weren’t widely known about.

Talking of big bangs – no nuclear bombs. Still six years away.

The population of my planet in 1939 was about 2.3 billion. Quite comfortable, very little overcrowding. The population of my country? A cosy 7 million. All white. Others – black, brown and yellow-skinned people – were not admitted, in both senses of that word. Indigenous blacks weren’t counted. Literally, we didn’t count them in the Census. They weren’t citizens and didn’t get the vote.

Life expectancy for us shiny bright whites in 1939 was somewhere in the mid-to-late sixties. Medical treatment was somewhat primitive. There were a limited range of surgical procedures, mainly the removal of tonsils and the appendix.

Amusements? Movies. (Made by others. Families tended to go once a week: two fillums, a newsreel, a cartoon, Val Morgan slides after the interval. God Save the King at the end.) Community signing in town halls. Some pianolas. In the home, wind-up record players spinning 78s. No telly, but a handful of wireless sets. Few private phones – but smelly phone booths on some corners activated by pennies.

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the 1948 film Words & Music.

Private cars? Few and far between, and mostly made in Mother England with names like Morris, Vauxhall and Austin. We got around on bikes – Malvern Star or Healing. Bread, milk, ice and wood were delivered by horse-drawn carts. Trams had conductors. Everything was bought with cash – pounds, shillings and pence.

Private cars were few and far between in the 1930s. Picture: State Library of SA

We mostly left school – parental choice of Proddy or Mick – at 15. Few went to uni.

Known as Bobbies, police had no guns. No mucking about; murderers were hanged. People with mental problems were locked up in asylums, better known as loony bins.

On my planet, divorce was a scandal. Ditto illegitimacy. Abortion was a crime. As were homosexuality and SP gambling. Drugs? Pretty much limited to aspros.

Shops were grocers, greengrocers, lolly shops, butchers and barbers. Bread was white (and you had to slice it yourself) while cheese was Kraft. Women stayed at home and washed clothes in coppers. Wet clothes were put through a wringer and hung on a clothesline with wooden pegs. Dunnies were external, with torn-up copies of The Age instead of loo paper.

Good news. There was no climate change discussed. Political parties? Liberal and Labor, with a few Commos. There were Trade Unions and a basic wage.

When I was born in July 1939, my planet was still at peace. We hadn’t seen concentration camps since the Brits had invented them in the Boer War. There was no United Nations, either.

As I said, I come from a different planet.