We’re thrilled to feature the piece below titled Dancing To A New Beat, extracted from Those Were the Days, Australia in the Sixties, by Ron and Elizabeth Morrison.
“Protest might have defined the decade, and part and parcel of the challenge to the status quo came from new music certainly, but also new fashion, the fight against censorship and a quest for more enlightened, tolerant attitudes to human behaviour. In other words, sex.
But first, how about the language? By the sixties, Australia had its own strong expression of English; its own ‘patois’— to borrow from the French—its argot, dialect. We spoke it and now we began to celebrate and enjoy it. First up came Professor Alfabeck Lauder. (Get it? Alphabetical Order.) At the same time as Donald Horne was attacking mediocrity, if a little priggishly, Alfabeck burst forth and produced the classic little Aussie book of the era: Les Stalk Strine (Let us speak Australian). Recall Emma Chissit (How much is it)? As for ‘cinema’, that’s what the paperboys called as they thrust the Sydney evening newspapers towards you: Sun and the Mirror. Barry Humphries had not yet become Dame Edna but he had invented Edna and her bridesmaid, Madge, and others like sad Sandy Stone. Les Patterson, later Sir Les, was an all too real figure in Australian politics and a patron of the yarts.
Times were good economically; in fact, life could often be a ‘bottler, bewdy, ripper, rip snorter’. On radio, DJ Ward ‘Pally’ Austin was introducing new phrases, such as ‘Too much for the human unit’ and ‘A rickapoodie and a fandooglie’. Pally was rebuked, though, after he ad-libbed a commercial for the then popular small motorbike, the Honda 50cc: ‘Girls, want something hot and throbbing between your legs? Get aboard a Honda.
After the disappearance of Harold Holt, the new prime minister was John Gorton, ‘Jolly John’, a man fond of the bottle, a noted womaniser and given to a plainspeak he helped make his country even more renowned for. ‘There is the story of Gorton’s trip by VIP plane to Melbourne. After a hard day in parliament, he’d chosen to unwind with a few drinks — some cocktails, wine, a port or two — before arriving at the airport and going onboard. After a little nap, the engine noise thrumming in his ears made him so queasy he threw up in the aisle.
When a stewardess arrived to help, Gorton turned on the charm. ‘Well, my dear,’ he grinned, ‘I suppose you’re surprised that an old RAAF man like me can still get airsick?’ The stewardess replied cheerfully, ‘I am actually, Prime Minister, because the plane hasn’t taken off yet.’ Plainspeak was everywhere, though a lot of it was still genteel. The ABC, already making great strides in presenting quality journalism, nevertheless had presenters who spoke mostly with a plummy, Pommified accent. It was silly, even then, and Auntie was often ridiculed as the ‘ee bee cay’. That changed, as did so much, as the cultural tsunami of the sixties swept on into the early seventies, hence the ‘decade’ of 1963 to 1974.
Already Australians were enjoying the fun of They’re A Weird Mob by Nino Culotta (John O’Grady actually) about the difficulties New Australians were having learning the local lingo. Many will recall the slight embarrassment and more likely amusement when New Australians would say, quite innocently: ‘You’re not a bad bloody bugger, mate’; believing it was just the normal patois. Well, it was.
Bless the Aussie vernacular of that time. For those who did not like change, protestors were ‘hippy, commo poofters’. Yet as the most effervescent young journalist of the time, Mungo McCallum, pointed out, the peacenik groups were less likely to be ‘commo’ fronts than Christian ones. The sixties were stirring times for all the faiths and many Christians embraced them in turn, often to the discomfort of various church authorities. Recall the Reverend Alan Walker, later Sir, who was so prominent in the anti-war movement. So, if the language was happily and overwhelmingly Strine, with a bit of Anglo-plum here and there, and a bit of bloody bugger, and a lot Americanisms, what of the broader culture?”
Extracted from Those Were the Days, Australia in the Sixties by Ron and Elizabeth Morrison, available from www.exislepublishing.com.au and wherever good books are sold. RRP$39.99.
