For many years the Adelaide commercial TV channels, 7, 9 and 10, each held a telethon to raise money for charities in Adelaide. Stories from The Advertiser six decades ago show how the community rallied to support the 5AD Good Friday Appeal for the then Adelaide Children’s Hospital. Brad Crouch, chief medical reporter for the Advertiser, […]
There was a time when people always dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ whenever they ‘went to town’. Here’s a photo (below) of the Adelaide Town Hall, taken in 1962, during the Festival of Arts and is from the State Library of South Australia’s collection on photostream. The thing that strikes me about this photo is […]
Remember how Monday was always wash day as we were growing up in the boomer years. My own recollections of the mammoth effort that went into the weekly family wash came back after Mrs M Chamings of Hope Valley sent me a clipping from The Advertiser of some years ago, of people’s memories about washing […]
Remember when the Redex Trials were all the rage in the mid 50’s and remained very popular until well into the 60’s? I vividly remember as a kid, all the publicity, with regular and dramatic reports on the wireless about the tough conditions the drivers had to endure, as they drove through the outback of […]
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 […]
