Rundle Mall was absolutely packed on the 5th of July 1984 as some 25,000 fans turned out to welcome British pop star sensation Boy George and his group Culture Club. There had been bitter disappointment earlier for the band’s local fans when it was announced that the group would not perform in Adelaide due to […]
“In the days before TV, South Australians were spellbound by radio”. I wrote that column in Boomer magazine in the Advertiser March 3rd last year. Stan James of Aldgate wrote a few weeks later with his own wonderful memories of those halcyon days. Here’s what Stan wrote; “Bob Byrne’s comprehensive cover of radio days before […]
We drove or walked passed them regularly when we were younger, the buildings that were part and parcel of our everyday life in Adelaide until the 60s and 70s. Then they were suddenly gone, demolished to make way for a new structure or development. One enterprising photographer decided to capture some of the old buildings […]
There was a time when almost every backyard in Australia had a chook house, an outdoor dunny, a vegetable garden and either a Hills Hoist or a clothes line propped up with a stick. Here’s a photo (below) from 1960 of a typical Australian suburban backyard which also includes a number of fruit trees. One […]
Cole’s Cafeteria, Balfour’s Tea Rooms, the Buttery at John Martins and Cox Foy’s Dining Room. Long before the fast food chains arrived in Adelaide, the main emporiums and department stores catered for their customers with a cafeteria style dining room offering the ‘fast food’ of the day. Ahhh! The memories! To a kid, on a […]
Going to school in the 50s, 60s and 70s was a completely different experience from that which our children and grandchildren might have today. In fact, from the very first day, for many, it was a traumatic event. Unlike now, there was not a lot of preschool activity such as play group, kinder gym or […]
Remember when you would be woken each morning to the clinking sound of glass bottles as the milky delivered fresh milk to your home? It was a daily ritual that lasted right through my childhood and up until the early 80s. Indeed many milkies even continued to use the old horse and cart for the […]
Remember when there were ‘Beach Girl Quests’ at Glenelg, Brighton and Semaphore beaches during summer? Below is a photo from the 1954 Beach Girl Quest at the bay which attracted a crowd of some 25,000 people! Entrants to the quest were judged on more than just beauty, according to the organisers, but also on poise, […]
This is the second of a series of ‘Adelaide’s Favourite Personalities’, part one was posted last month (December). In that first post I asked readers to nominate their own favourites, the people they felt most personified Adelaide during the baby boomer years. Here are some of the personalities nominated in no particular order; Anne Wills, […]
Remember when there were newspaper boys and girls on almost every corner of the city each afternoon, at tram and bus stops, at traffic lights and scattered around the main intersections in the suburbs? In those years, Adelaide was a Monday-to-Friday, 9am-to-5.30pm city, and as the shops and offices closed, there would be a mad […]
