My memories of the 60s and 70s started at the age of fifteen but I can go back to the early 50s. There was no TV then so family entertainment came via a valve radio, a piano, a pianola and a wind up gramaphone. Us kids loved the radio serials like Biggles and Smokey Dawson but if we were still awake a few hours later we had to put up with our parents listening to Blue Hills and When a Girl Married.
I remember a couple of radio songs about dogs back then. We had "How much is that doggie in the window" in the early 50s. That was followed a few years later by "Hound Dog". That song, plus a few more from the boy from Tupelo and his mates, left us in a frenzy and the adults looking like stunned mullets.
The roads were saturated with English sports cars and monster chrome plated lounge rooms with huge tail fins from America. I drove a few of them in the 60s and thought they were ok providing you did not want to stop them quickly or go around a corner.
The sixties brought the Sydney Showground Speedway on Saturday nights in summer and Westmead Showground on Sunday afternoons in winter. I was one of a group of about twelve boys and girls that rarely missed a meeting. We loved the smell of the bike exhaust fumes and all of us boys were sorry they did not make women's perfume that smelt like that. We would have bought it by the gallon for our girl friends.
The cars were always a battle between the Holdens and the American Offenhausers wiith around 25 to 30 thousand people screaming their heads off.
This DVD shows a little of it. I was in the stand directly above the firey crash that night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDKD6HugS8w I also saw the incredable match race between Cunneen and Sherman from the US.
There was no alcohol or drugs in our group and Sunday was another day to get out and enjoy, not a day to recover from Saturday night.
Unfortunately the 60s brought the end of real Rock n Roll.
