Those Were the Days by Ron Morrison

Author:Ron Morrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: 9781775591191
Publisher: Exisle Publishing Pty Ltd
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Every bloke’s dream but definitely not PC now. In the sixties, Queensland’s Surfers Paradise was famous for its bikini-clad meter maids who fed coins into expiring parking meters. So popular was the idea that some companies employed bikini-clad women to clean windows and premises in the Gold Coast area.

Let’s go surfing. Looking along Surfers Paradise beach towards Burleigh Heads. In the sixties this Queensland town became surfie central.

Australia may have been a sporting nation since 1901 but not when it came to winter and the football season. Aussie Rules then, as now, dominated, but Rugby League was a strong second, largely confined to New South Wales and Queensland. There was also Rugby Union, the game the toffs played at private schools, although there was a state school competition. Then there was a fourth football following for soccer, popular among new Australians and with clubs mostly organised along ethnic lines. Passions ran high when South Sydney Croatia played Yugal (the Serbs).

A few of the top stars of Aussie Rules (‘aerial ping pong’ to its northern detractors) would be known outside the Rules states and likewise a few who played League (‘cross country wrestling’ to its southern detractors) would be nationally known. In the Rules states they even referred, in their ignorance, to League as ‘rugby’. But most Australians were aware of the sixties giants: Ron Barassi’s legendary status in Australian Rules football; Reg Gasnier’s 36 Rugby League Tests and three World Cup games between 1959 and 1967; and, in 1965, Australia’s first ever series win over South Africa in Rugby Union.

In golf, Peter Thomson won five British Open titles from 1954 to 1965. Over a 40-year playing career, he won Open titles in ten different countries. Motor racing got its growing legion of fans, firstly for the 500-mile (805-kilometre) event at Victoria’s Phillip Island circuit in 1960, and then for the longer 1000-mile (1610-kilometre) race at Mount Panorama near Bathurst, NSW, in 1963. Carmakers were only too aware of the rewards that success at the Bathurst 1000 could bring and designed cars specifically for the race. Ford Cortinas and Holden Monaros dominated during the 1960s.

Whatever the sixties brought, the decade did not change Australia’s love of horse racing, especially betting on it. The nation still stopped for the Melbourne Cup when Hi Jinx won the 1960 race, ridden by jockey Billy Smith. The decade finished with jockey Jim Johnson repeating his previous year’s success on Rain Lover. The sixties also witnessed trainer Bart Cummings’ winning trifecta of three consecutive Melbourne Cups: 1965 (Light Fingers), 1966 (Galilee) and 1967 (Red Handed).

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