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Author Archive | Bob Byrne

the "Channel 10 Christmas Appeal". Stars from around the network would fly into Adelaide for the weekend live broadcast from SAS10 studios in Gilberton.

The TV Telethons. Donations and Fun.

Cast your memory back to a time when we had local television that cared about the community and every year would hold a charity fund raiser which included local TV and radio personalities, musicians, singers, performers and members of the public. There was the Channel 10 Christmas Appeal, Channel 7 Good Friday Appeal and Channel […]

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Photo from Glen H  Flickr Photostream. Marion Shopping Centre in 1974 with the escalators to the Quaterdeck and John Martin's Department Store

Marion Shopping Centre. The Early Years.

Westfield Marion was one of Adelaide’s first suburban shopping centres, built in 1968 on a large expanse of land bordered by Sturt, Diagonal and Morphett Roads, Marion was not the huge, very modern, state-of-the-art shopping centre that we know today. In fact back in the early years it was a relatively small complex that I […]

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The Granite Island Chairlift, installed in 1964 and removed in 1996. Photo courtesy of Alex Prichard on Flickr

Adelaide Now’s Book Review

Adelaide Now publishes more photos and memories from “Adelaide Remember When”, the book Adelaide Now, the online edition of the Advertiser has shown some more of the photos and stories from my newly published book Adelaide Remember When. The book contains more than 300 photos of Adelaide, some never before published, from the 1950s to […]

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Photo from The Tram Museum Adelaide. A tram coming through the underpass on Goodwood Road at Millswood in 1956. Trams were Adelaide’s main form of public transport for some 30 years from 1925 until 1958 when on the 22nd of November that year the last tram left Victoria Square bound for Cheltenham.

You Must Remember This…..

ADELAIDE REMEMBER WHEN….The Book “Memories are better than diamonds and nobody can steal them from you”. So wrote Rodman Philbrick in “The Last Book in the Universe”. This is a book full of diamonds, a collection of the most popular memoirs and photographs from the nostalgia lovers of the ‘Adelaide Remember When’ Facebook website, ranging […]

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Photo from unknown source.  Long before the street was turned into a pedestrian mall.

When a Photo Is Worth a Thousand Words.

Remember Adelaide in the 1950s and the 1960s? The population of the city back then grew from about 500,000 in the mid-50s to almost 800,000 in 1970, an increase of 60% in just 15 years. The photo below created great discussion on the ARW Facebook page when I posted it more than 12 months ago. […]

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There were picture theatres in every suburb. This is the Ozone on Kensington Road at Marryatville, later known as the Chelsea and now the Regal

Saturday Arvo at the Pictures

An important tradition of growing up in Adelaide from the 50s was the Saturday afternoon pictures at the local picture theatre, town hall or flea pit. There were always two full length pictures, an episode of the serial, a cartoon and a Pete Smith Special to watch while eating your Jaffas, Fantales or a Dandy […]

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Photo from ABC TV. Why Is It So? known for its "cool experiments, interesting science, and the professor's fantastic hair”

Why Is It So?

“How do you do, ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls. I am Julius Sumner Miller, and physics is my business”. Remember the TV show “Why Is It So?” which was broadcast from 1963 to about the mid 80’s? It became an instant hit known for its “cool experiments, interesting science, and the professor’s fantastic […]

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