I was born in Melbourne in 1937 and lived in Elsternwick until 1947 when the family moved to Hobart. My father was a doctor in the Commonwealth Repatriation Department. In the first half of the 1950s I passed through Melbourne periodically on my way to and from boarding school in Geelong. My parents moved back to Melbourne in 1956 and I started BA, DipEd at University of Melbourne on an Education Department studentship. I lived at Ormond College 1956-1958 and had my first teaching appointment to Camberwell High School in 1960.

In the 1950s the scale of Melbourne was still very much as it had been determined during the late 19^th century and the period between the wars. Building heights were less than ten storeys and strictly controlled but all this began to change with the ICI building built in 1959 as the precursor of the high rise city of today. The city skyline was still dominated by the spires of the 19^th century churches as well as other buildings with towers like the Town Hall and the T & G. Traffic seemed heavy at the time but that was probably just at peak times. The first parking meters appeared, a reminder of the growth of traffic in the city. The electric trams survived attempts to close them down and maintained the routes that had been developed in the days of cable trams in the late 19^th century as well as the newer electric routes mostly from the 1920s. The suburban railways laid out in the days of steam and electrified in the 1920s were important links between the CBD and the more distant suburbs. Public transport was still the norm for most workers. While an increasing number of people had cars, they still tended to be used for recreation at weekends or nights. Traffic was dangerous, revealed in the many accidental deaths on the roads and related to public transport. There was little regulation of alcohol consumption in relation to driving.

Suburban Melbourne was expanding but mostly along the train and tram lines with infill of areas that had long been reached by the Lilydale line like Box Hill, Blackburn and Ringwood. To the south, the Glen Waverley line spawned growth areas like Waverley, Mount Waverley and East Malvern. North Balwyn and Wattle Park were typical growth areas along the tram lines. Beyond Sandringham, there was much development of Black Rock and Beaumaris. Stations along the Frankston line also became nodes for growth of suburbs like Moorabbin, Bentleigh, McKinnon and Chelsea. Similarly along the Dandenong line with suburbs like Carnegie. The inner suburbs still remained and were seen as working-class areas. Gentrification largely came well after the 1950s. Richmond, Collingwood, South Melbourne, North Melbourne, Footscray and Fitzroy were all industrial areas, all with football teams in the VFL with grounds that could still be reached easily even by walking. While football was certainly supported by all classes, the other VFL clubs – Melbourne, Carlton, Essendon, St Kilda, Hawthorn and Geelong  were seen as not being working class.

Employment was obtained relatively easily in times of very full employment. The dominant community view was still that men needed to be in paid work but conditions of work were unfair to women in many occupations in terms of pay and prospects. Breadwinners were males despite the fact that women had been in paid work for generations, especially in roles seen as relating to female skills such as nursing, cleaning, and sewing. Professional women were seen as exceptions, their reputations hard won and not always recognized in areas like medicine, law and academia. There was very little impediment to changing jobs. People like me who were required under the terms of the studentship to teach for three years in the Education Department could easily leave and many did, working in a range of settings. I can think of several who worked in the finance industry; a couple who were entrepreneurial and invested in sports centres; some who worked for publishers ; as well as numbers who were attracted to opportunities for teaching elsewhere in the private schools but also in Canada. As a student it was easy to get a part-time job. In my case I earned extra money by working at the State Titles Office where there was a very liberal policy of employing university students for shortish periods, largely of the student’s choosing.

Alcohol and tobacco were the almost universal drugs of choice used by a considerable proportion of the adult community. Research on the links between tobacco and cancer was certainly reported but went largely unheeded by the mass of Melbournians. Public smoking was endemic – at meetings, at sports events, in eating places, on trams and trains. Public drinking places and alcohol outlets closed at 6 p.m. but there was considerable drinking in the notorious 6 o’clock swill as well as afterwards. There was no .05 limit or seat belts in cars until after the 1950s. Clubs like the RSL and a small number of licensed restaurants and hotels with dining facilities provided for some after-hours drinking. As a university student, I smoked for a short time and certainly drank more alcohol than was good for me, but other drugs were not in my direct experience. I heard about the supposed effects of ‘reefers’ but really had no knowledge or experience.

Looking back now the 1950s were years of comparatively suppressed sexual morality. It was pre-Pill and contraceptive devices were only available from chemists. Relationships between young people were more controlled and supervised by adults seeking to maintain ‘respectability’. New music and fashion were viewed with suspicion by the generation that had experienced the 1930s Depression and the wars. Homosexuality was forcefully repressed and publicly shunned. I was certainly aware of its existence and looking back, was probably antagonistic towards those who signalled their differences.

There were a few Aboriginal League footballers but their presence was much less than now. I recall very little contact with Aboriginal people. The community centred on Fitzroy was unknown to me. I remember one Aboriginal student at the University and was conscious of students working for Aboriginal scholarships in the 1950s. My only other contact was with several domestic helpers employed by Ormond College. I am not sure where they came from but suspect that they came out of Presbyterian mission activity. Aborigines generally were the ‘other’ and so were most of the Asian students attracted to the University sometimes through the Colombo Plan. Close contact with several living in Ormond College was enlightening but generally they were seen as ‘exotic’.

It was certainly a male’s world. In sport for instance, there was little international competition for women. In the Olympics, there was no women’s rowing, a limited range of athletics events, with no distances beyond 200 metres in swimming, no boxing or wrestling or team games that I remember. Women’s tennis was a very poor relation to men’s tennis but the majors all had women’s singles and doubles. Golf and cricket provided limited opportunities for elite women performers. The 1950s were a period of conflict between amateurism and professionalism. Codes were rigorously scrutinised and there was no way that athletes could compete in the Olympics and professional footraces. In Australia, the conflict was very public in tennis where Australian men were often dominant and in demand for for professional troupes. I clearly remember the Sun raising funds to present to Frank Sedgman’s wife at their marriage so as to at least delay his joining the professional tennis circuit. In 1955, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, then young guns, were made offers they could not refuse. In football, it was difficult for VFL players who received very moderate remuneration to return to amateur football. Generally, high level sports performers had full-time jobs. Cricketers might apply their skills in English leagues and get paid but playing Shield or international cricket in Australia returned very little monetary reward. As now, one of the outlets for a few was sports journalism. There was intense interest in athletics in the 1950s focused on the quest for the four minute mile. Huge crowds watched John Landy attempt this feat at meetings in Melbourne, and followed the efforts of overseas athletes to reach what had seemed an impossible goal. The emergence of Ron Clarke and the famous race at Olympic Park, where he was helped to his feet by Landy, are vivid memories for many from the decade..

The transformation of the MCG to be the Olympic stadium and the holding of the Olympic Games in Melbourne are treasured memories for many from this period. The usual disputes and worries about whether Melbourne would be ready waxed strongly. The presence of large groups of international athletes and visitors was claimed to make Melbourne an international city. Certainly there was plenty reported about the visitors – Hungarians fresh from the 1956 revolution who wanted to defect; athletes from the USSR including a large discus-throwing woman who transgressed the law in her case by stealing shoes I think; bitter rivalry in the water polo that produced much blood in the pool. As a university student I was conscious of the presence of Franz Stampfl, a highly rated athletics coach supervising training on the newly laid Beaurepaire cinders track. At Portsea, the unconventional training methods used by Percy Cerutty often made the news as well as the performances of his charges, including the emerging Herb Elliott. Early in 1956, there was Grand Prix racing at Albert Park, something revived much later with cars that looked nothing like the machines that thundered around the lake in 1956.

Melbourne’s claims to being an international city in the 1950s were undoubtedly exaggerated but there were probably some signs of change. The large European post-war migration to Australia brought a range of cultures that was starting to permeate the basically British society. While Greek and Italian migration was not new, it was now considerable as was Dutch, Eastern European as well as British. All these groups had their impact as they set out to establish themselves in new and unfamiliar territory. They supplied workers for factories; they set up their clubs, churches and sometimes schools; they influenced the Melbourne food scene; they brought a rival football code to challenge the supremacy of the VFL. They sometimes continued the bitter disputes of their homelands in Australia; they were generally accepted but nevertheless regarded as being ‘different’.

In the 1950s the strict ‘colour bar’ in immigration was strongly maintained in Australian society. Permanent migration of non-whites was virtually impossible. Those, including at the end of the 1950s a university-based group, who suggested small quotas for non-Europeans were considered as radicals. Looking back, my limited experience with mainly Chinese and a few Indian students made me receptive to the notion of limited rather than no migration. This view was certainly current among my generation of university students but all the fears especially about cheap labour and also miscegenation were still supported by mainstream Australia.

The home in the 1950s dominated the patterns of life for families. It was the place where you ate most meals. Going out for meals was often confined to relatives’ and friends’ homes and dining out was something that was rare and special for most Melbournians. Schools were significant places of social interaction. In the 1950s the growing demand for a skilled work-force promoted a demand for formal education beyond the compulsory school leaving age of 14. This necessitated the building of many suburban secondary and technical schools by the State. Many of the private schools and Catholic schools that had long provided much of the education beyond the compulsory years found it difficult to meet the demands, but State aid did not come until the 1960s. In Melbourne, the new schools included Burwood High School and many others, characteristically built of concrete brick and laid out on sites quickly acquired in the expanding metropolis. Many of these have now closed or been substantially reconstructed. They often started in temporary accommodation often in church halls and the like as well as attachment to existing primary schools. Initially, these schools did not offer Matriculation classes but many had reached that point by the start of the 1960s.

I am not a music aficionado but I am conscious of the advent of rock n’ roll in the 50s and its impact on dancing styles. I remember a succession of visiting celebrities like Johnny Ray but I did not go to any of their concerts usually held at the West Melbourne Stadium. Recorded music changed from 78 discs to 33 and 45 with new and improved players. My tastes in popular music probably gravitated towards big bands like Glenn Miller and Billy May and musical plays like the succession of Rogers and Hammerstein productions and those of Irving Berlin, and later Lerner and Loewe. I was not an avid radio listener but remember listening to the Hit Parade, various quiz shows, and some of the British comedy programs with Jimmy Edwards and Dick Bentley for example. My parents tended to follow the latter that were on the ABC of course. I do not have much memory of films that I saw in the 1950s but I suspect they included British comedies. I do vaguely remember the titillation of a Swedish film containing nudity shown at the Savoy; I think I must have seen a Brigitte Bardot film there in the 50s. I did not live in a house that had a TV set until well into the 1960s despite its coming in 1956.

In the 1950s churches remained an important meeting place for people and very often had attached sporting clubs and ran social events like Saturday dances. I participated in these but my connection with the Presbyterian Church, my family’s church for generations, became more tenuous. By the end of the 1950s my adherence was minimal and I ceased to participate or believe about that time. I was conscious of the commitment of students in bodies like the SCM and I had friends who were training to be minsters but I was never directly involved.

The international events of the 1950s did affect my views of the world. This was the era of the Menzies government, the Korean war, and the introduction of a National Service scheme that enlisted all 18 year old males to do basic military training at a long camp and then subsequent annual camps with CMF units. I was one of those 18 year olds and spent the summer of 1957 in the heat at Puckapunyal engaged mostly in drill and weapons training. Much of this was very familiar. I had been a school cadet for 4 years and had done extra leadership courses. There was little novelty in National Service but it provoked some capacity to minimise the impact of the disciplinary regime that was certainly very strict. Looking back it was a new experience for many of those in my hut. They were all university students but many had not lived away from home before or been subject to much of the irrational ordering that went with basic training. It was certainly a time when diverse individuals were cast together and expected to conform to the group. Looking back I don’t envy the jobs of some of the instructors dealing with people like me who had constrained levels of recalcitrance. In 1957 the scheme was fading from its original purpose and was phased out by the early 1960s. I never completed the required 3 CMF camps that had major elements of farce. I spent some time in the hygiene squad of the Melbourne University Regiment. That involved rapid collection and emptying of cans, a feat that could be accomplished by mid-morning. After that it was cards – I’ve never really played since.

The 1950s were years of national movements against colonialism – a changed world in which the spectre of world Communism sponsored by the USSR and China was seen as threatening establishments. I suspect I accepted some of the rhetoric associated with these events but became increasingly sceptical of the claims made about dangers in Australia from the Left wing. This was partly the result of critiques of Australian attitudes to the Suez crisis and discussions arising from studying Australian history that had some focus on the ALP as the party of progress; on attempts to ban the Communist Party in Australia and to nationalise the banks. My political involvement was minimal and while sceptical, I still voted Liberal when I first voted in the 1950s.

In writing this I have been conscious that my recollections have been strongly influenced by understandings that I have gained from later teaching and researching of the 1950s, as well as all sorts of events in the intervening period. Thus, much of what you read is probably more reflection on the past than recollection.