Everyday Melbourne in the 1960s

Big news in Batmania! I have an article about The Mystrys — a sensational but short-lived band previously profiled in this blog — in the forthcoming issue of legendary British magazine, Shindig! I’ll be ppublishing a couple more blog posts about the group to mark the occasion, based on interviews I did with a couple of the key players, but while they’re taking shape, I wanted to share this interesting photo-essay about ‘everyday life in Melbourne in the Swinging Sixties’ that I found on The Herald Sun website.

Naturally, the usual suspects are present — The Beatles, The Stones, Normie Rowe, Jean Shrimpton at the Melbourne Cup. But there’s also Graham Kennedy, a haunting shot of Ronald Ryan and two photos of the footballer that even folks who couldn’t give two flying whatevers about AFL can’t help liking... Ron Barassi. 

Don't knock the Ron: Barassi, Hawaiian style. Photo: Herald Sun

Whether he’s helping women in distress, pulling folks from flaming cars, bowling in Melbourne’s first ten-pin bowling alley, posing with Hawaiian beauties or (so I hear) kicking a footy, Ron Barassi is The Man.

New Australians

A couple of pics of European migrants arriving in Melbourne provide a stark contrast to the current immigration situation. As the exuberant scene below illustrates, approaching Aussie shores by boat 50 years ago was a joyous rather than fraught experience. And not a border control official in sight..

Migrants on the Flavia arriving at Station Pier in 1964. Photo: Herald Sun

Hitting the streets

Unsurprisingly, the street scenes included in the photo essay are wonderful, not least for the drool-worthy cars upping the aesthetic ante. Bourke, Flinders and Spencer Streets all look distinctly more glamorous than they do these days, but this one of Sydney Road is pick of the bunch. Did someone say Holden heaven?

Sydney Road (1964)  looking somewhat less chaotic than it does today. Photo: Herald Sun

Meanwhile, a selection of suburban shots evoke a palpable sense of nostalgia for simpler times. Check out this back-street billy cart race: can you imagine that happening in this era of helicopter parents and PlayStation? 

Full tilt! Billy cart kids in action, 1962. Photo: Herald Sun

Hello, ladies!

But pièce de resistance is this stylin’ line-up of likely lads taken from a spread in the newspaper’s fashion pages in 1967 (is that John Steed on the left?). While I’ve featured plenty of women’s fashion in this blog, local male fashion snaps from the decade are a rare treat. 

Five alive: men's fashion in Melbourne, 1967. Photo: Herald Sun

Factor in several photos of children, the Royal Show and the Queen, and one can't help thinking that the 1960s portrayed by The Herald Sun isn't so much swinging as downright sweet... 

All these pics and more can be seen here: Photo essay: Take a look back at everyday life in Melbourne in the Swinging Sixties

Time-tripping in the 1966 Lincoln Continental that belonged to Ford Australia’s head honcho

So apparently the GM of Ford Australia in the 1960s drove a 1966 Lincoln Continental – a right-hand drive model that was hand-built shipped over from the US especially for him. There doesn't appear to be any documented evidence to support this claim – but trust me, it’s the truth. How do I know? Well, because I was a passenger in this very car over the Christmas break!

And here it is. Holy Yank tanks, Batman, would you get an eyeful of that?

Stylin'.

Check out that rectangular beastliness: if that doesn’t look 70s, I don’t know what does. But no, this rumbling road-hog is definitely from 1966. Supposedly the 60s Lincolns were a deliberate departure from the fins and chrome-plated flamboyance of the 50s models.

Can’t you just imagine this thing cruising the mean streets of Geelong all those years ago? Personally I find it a bit odd that the top dog of Ford Australia didn’t support the national product by driving a Falcon XP, but hey, when you’re the boss, you can do what you damn well please. 

Imagine parallel parking this thing!

The Continental is currently owned by a Wollongong-based motoring enthusiast named Rob (let's just say it's one of his many two- and four-wheeled vehicles). Rob bought it off an old bloke called Kevin in Bathurst, who told him that Mr Ford Australia drove it until 1968 or 1969. Then he sold it to his mate, who subsequently sold it to Kev in 1981. But because the car's history started in 1960s Gee-troit, it more than qualifies for this blog.

Effortlessly outshining the ugly modern cars in the background

So what was it like to ride in? Smooooth, baby. We were driving through downtown Albury so there was no opportunity for hooning, but the sense of coiled power just waiting to be unleashed was palpable. Rob says the fastest he’s driven it was about 110 miles an hour:
"Whilst is it still amazingly smooth at that speed (approx 170kph), you are aware that you're moving a 5.6-metre and 2.5-ton object with only 1966 combination disk (front)/drum (rear) brakes to avoid Armageddon. I lack that bravery, I must say."

Inside, it’s super-flash, with all sorts of controls and fancy details. Some of them may be commonplace today but would've seemed positively space-age back in 1966.

Dash detail

Take a deep breath and repeat after me: ashtrays and cigarette lighters for every passenger (and the driver, of course), eight-way electric seat settings, cruise control, an eight-track player (Cosmo’s Factory by CCR was our motoring soundtrack) and separate AM/FM radio (with a foot switch to change the station!), air con and power windows (including power quarter vents). If you’d asked me whether power windows even existed in 60s Australia, I would’ve said hell no.

Inside door detail 

But wait, there's more! (Minimalism clearly was not a word in Lincoln's vocabulary).
Individual interior light switches for each passenger, vacuum-operated door locks on the driver's side to lock your passengers in, a foot-operated handbrake, hazard lights, variable-speed windscreen wipers, automatic boot release from inside the car... all topped off by a gas-guzzling, 462 cubic inch (7.6L) engine that Rob admits is "obscene and quasi-unspeakable by today's standards! Fuel consumption? Of no significance in 1966!"

No wonder the Lincoln Continental was the car preferred by US Presidents (although as Rob points out, "it didn't do JFK any favours -- a roof may have helped.")

Suicidal!

It was also a hit among US mobsters, thanks to probably its most noteworthy feature: rear-hinged ‘suicide’ doors. Yep, the back doors open backwards! Rob explains that suicide doors "allowed their dames to gracefully alight from the vehicle when draped in classy evening frocks (which was pretty much all the time). This, along with the car's vacuum locks and a trunk big enough to fit three bodies made it a firm gangster favourite."

Could that be why Ford Australia didn’t introduce them into any of their locally manufactured vehicles?

Then and now: Tram Town!

And now for something completely different: the memories — and amazing photos — of an ex-tram-driver. As someone who’s regularly heard bad-mouthing her local tram in no uncertain terms (96, I hate you!), this has been quite a revelation.

Peter Bruce started with the Melbourne and Metropolitan Tramways Board in 1966, and worked for them until 1977. A railway enthusiast since he was a toddler, his interest in trams started with the job. He also happened to be handy with a camera, which resulted in photos like this:

St Kilda Road, c. 1968. Photo: Peter Bruce

This photo is both familiar and strange. In the foreground, we see the number 8 tram to Toorak, still going strong today. (Peter tells me the number 4 behind it has since become the 67 service.) The iconic Flinders Street Station dome is hard to miss, and the spire of St Paul’s Cathedral dominates the horizon.

In the distance, the former Carlton and United Breweries site is just visible, with its rooftop logo and a ghostly ‘Victoria Bitter’ sign beneath it. ‘The Wales’ (Bank of NSW) is now Westpac (in a different building), while the Olympic Tyres sign twinkling coquettishly in the centre of the image also appears in the Angus O’Callaghan photo I featured in my first blog post. The Arts Centre had yet to be built (construction started in 1973), and the me Bank skyscraper is nowhere to be seen.

Peter explains another big difference between then and now: “City Road, which now passes underneath St Kilda Road, crossed on the level then. You can see distant traffic there in this shot.” And speaking of traffic, check out all the cool cars: a Mini, the front right corner of a Holden, a few Beetles, just to name a few.

Flash forward to 2014, and this is what you get:

Try as I might, I couldn't get both the Flinders St station dome and the Cathedral spire to show.

Peak hour squeeze

Hands up who finds the peak-hour tram-crush hard to endure? Rest assured, you’re not the first. Says Peter, trams “could be very crowded especially in the am and pm peaks and the connies [conductors] had to work hard to collect all the fares and keep the car (tram, but trammies always referred to them as cars) as close to time as possible. That required close co-operation between driver and conductor.” Beats Myki’s uncooperative attitude, I reckon.

Clarendon St & Albert Rd, c. 1968. Photo: Peter Bruce

The photo above shows the number 12 — “the equivalent of today’s 112 which runs from the corner of Fitzroy and Park Streets, St Kilda to St. Vincent’s Plaza.” This is what it looks like now:

To take this photo, I had to brave a tsunami of 4WDs and luxury sedans flooding out of Albert Park (what is it about so-called ‘sporty’ people and their SUVs?). While the gate, tree and house to the left remain, the pub and dry-cleaner to the right are no longer there.

Breakdown shakedown

Asked about whether trams broke down very often back in the 60s and 70s, Peter says, “The old trams didn’t break down very often and we’d always try to limp along so as not to delay the rest of the service.” (so what happened, Metlink?)

But he’s pretty diplomatic about how today’s trams stack up in comparison. “Trammies then were expected to use initiative to prevent avoidable delays; today they are not allowed to. Risk management is necessary but it has become an industry and thus has to continually justify its existence by finding more risks.”

Park Street at Kingsway, South Melbourne, c. 1968. Photo: Peter Bruce

There’s the number 4 again, at an intersection that’s completely unrecognisable today, Park Street and Kingsway. The 67 no longer takes that route, but then, I doubt you can get Voca dictation machines anymore either, if the photo below is any indication...

Believe it or not, this is the Park Street-Kingsway intersection today

Fairweather friends

One of my pet tram peeves is how they immediately go haywire when the weather changes. Peter recalls them being a bit hardier back in the day: “The weather, rain that is, had to be pretty heavy and sustained to badly affect the service, basically there had to be about 200mm flooding over the tracks.”

Number 11 at Park and Heather Streets, South Melbourne, c. 1968. Photo: Peter Bruce

“Number 11 was not a passenger-carrying tram. It was what was called a Scrubber Car and it existed to clean the head of the rail. The service at this intersection is the same today, route 1, South Melbourne Beach-East Coburg.”
 

  
As the photo above so hideously demonstrates, Park Street is no longer a swoonfest of EHs, Cortinas, original Mini wagons, EJs and other automotive gems. The milk bar advertising Craven Filter ciggies on the corner now appears to be vacant, if not downright derelict (that’s it with the graffitied wall), and a roundabout has since been built to moderate the traffic flow (interestingly, Peter recalls that “motor traffic in those days was much lighter but much less disciplined!”)

One thing that’s much the same is the towering council flat high-rise up the top of Park Street.

The television effect

Perhaps the most fascinating difference between then and now is the impact of television on peoples’ lifestyles (and their tram-going habits). Whereas the majority of PT passengers these days sit there glued to their mobile device, back then, people had to wait til they got home for their entertainment fix — the goggle box.

As Peter explains: “After about 8.00 or 8.30pm, the trams didn’t carry many people and that has to do with popular culture, TV. Most of the suburban picture theatres had closed down shortly after the advent of TV in 1956-57 and most people were glued to the box after they got home from work.”
 
Well, with shows like Go!! to be had, who could blame them?

A note about Peter’s photography:
“In 1968 I bought a Pentax Spotmatic which was a camera and lens system which enabled enthusiastic amateurs to buy a great camera at a reasonably affordable price. Most of the Japanese optical companies made very good cameras in this price range. I nearly always took black and white photos as I had my own darkroom.”

By the way, any trainspotters out there might like Peter's blog, I Was a Teenage Railfan, while tram-nuts will dig his online photo gallery here.

Related post: 
Then and now

The golden Holden

One of my colleagues has a saying: “to whine like an EH diff.” As in “She whined like an EH diff when I told her she couldn’t play Justin Bieber in my house” or “He whines like an EH diff every time I ask him to do the dishes”. To be honest, I know bugger-all about differentials in general, much less whether EH diffs are especially noisy, but the expression is kinda cute — and leads me neatly into this post’s subject.

You got it in one: the EH Holden.

Image: www.holden.org.au

I may be a proud Morris owner, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to the charms of a sexy old Holden. And with the impending closure of its Australian manufacturing operations, we need to take every opportunity we can to celebrate the Holden legacy. Ever since the first 48-125 (or FX) rolled off the production line at Fisherman’s Bend in 1948, it’s been part of the Australian motoring landscape.

Image: Aussie Automobilia

First released in August 1963, the EH went on to become Australia’s fastest-selling car ever, with more than 250,000 sold in just 18 months of production. Part of its appeal was its powerful ‘red engine’, a step up from the grey engine used in its predecessors. The red engine was super-reliable and high performing, which probably explains why there are still plenty of EHs on the roads today, 50-plus years later.

Image: www.holden.org.au

The EH was spacious, powerful enough to tow a caravan (a pursuit that was becoming more popular in the 1960s), and amazing value for money, providing more bang for its buck than any other comparable model on the market. ₤1051 a pop! Who's going to argue with that?

But let’s face it, a huge part of the EH’s appeal was — and remains — its sleek, stylin’ looks.

Image: NAA

From the Standard, Special, Premier and S4 Special (a very limited edition racing variation) sedans, to the Standard, Special and Premier station wagons, plus the panel van and ute versions, the EH is a bonafide eye-popper with its neat lines, long rear and squared rear guards.

An EH ute. Image: signag

 

GM Holden's Dandenong manufacturing plant, 1963. Image: Wolfgang Sievers

These days, driving through the streets of Melbourne, it's all-too easy to imagine there's some kind of sick SUV breeding program being carried out in secret, with the hideous offspring being covertly released onto our roads when we're not looking. 

Hard to believe that, 50 years ago, a scene such as the one below wasn't entirely inconceivable...

Image: www.holden.org.au

Related post: 
Then and now: Tram Town!