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Teenagers jiving to rock'n'roll music in the 1950s

The Best Time to be a Teenager

Many baby boomers reached their teenage years from the mid-60s to the early ’70s, and what a glorious time it was to be a teenager! In 1964, Adelaide really came of age when over 300,000 people turned out to welcome The Beatles, and the local music scene was bubbling with enthusiasm and talent. Every weekend […]

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Photo from You Tube. Ross Higgins as Ted and Judi Farr as his poor long suffering wife Thelma.

“You’re Not Touching the Kingswood”!

Remember Kingswood Country, the Australian sitcom that screened from 1980 to 1984 on Channel 7? The show featured real Aussie humour and although it was seen by many as racist and sexist, it was in fact meant to mock those attitudes held by many Australians at the time. “Ted” Bullpitt was played by Ross Higgins, […]

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Are Youu Being Served. The TV show that remembered the era when customer service was part of every business

Customer Service, When the Customer Ruled.

Whatever happened to the personal customer service that was provided by the local shops and businesses in the 1950s and the 1960s? Most of it came to an end, of course, with the spread of the big supermarkets and shopping centres around Australia from the mid-1960s. Self-service with products stacked on shelves, shopping trolleys and […]

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Photo courtesy of Mark Foy; "Here is a picture of My Mum at the Mr Whippy Van outside of our house in Pratt Avenue Pooraka in the very late 50's or very early 60's - It must have been summer and near Christmas looking at the advertising on the van. This before Pooraka was developed and was largely farms and paddocks"

When Mr Whippy Played Greensleeves

On a hot Sunday evening in Adelaide, back in the 1960s and 70s, the street would suddenly fill with the music of “Greensleeves” and from every house, kids would rush out to buy an ice cold soft serve ice cream. Dipped, sprinkled or plain, it was the highlight of the weekend! The original Mr Whippy […]

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Photo from Google Images. Served in coloured anodised cups, milkshakes were really cold, and if you drank them too fast you'd get "brain freeze".

Off to the Local Deli for a Milkshake.

As a kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, do you remember going to the deli or corner shop with a mate after school, or as a teenager with a group of other teenagers, just for a milkshake? I’m not sure where the milkshake stands today in social culture but back then it was […]

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The Adelaide concert was made even more memorable by the fact that it was Bowie's first ever show in the Southern Hemisphere, the first open air gig of the tour and first large scale outdoor concert Bowie had ever played.

Adelaide Oval and the David Bowie Concert, 1978

With the Rolling Stones due to hit the stage tomorrow night for what is sure to be a massive concert at the Adelaide Oval, who can recall one of the other most memorable concerts ever held there, in 1978? David Bowie’s concert on November 11th that year was made more even memorable by the fact […]

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The decade of peace, love and rock'n'roll.

The 60s, The Decade That Rocked.

If ever a decade could be described as one of change, it was the 1960s. It was the era of the Cold and Vietnam wars, and Australia was changing economically and culturally. As the excitement of the rock’n’roll music of the ’50s began to dim, the world discovered the sounds of four lads from Liverpool, […]

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Don Dunstan waves from the Pier Hotel balcony to the big crowd waiting on Glenelg beach for the predicted tidal wave

Adelaide’s Tidal Wave. The One That Never Happened

Adelaide made world headlines briefly back in 1976 when Melbourne house painter and amateur clairvoyant John Nash, reported he’d had a vision in which Adelaide and its 800,000 inhabitants were obliterated by an earthquake and tidal wave. Mr Nash claimed that doomsday would be between 10.30 a.m. and noon on 19th January. He was so […]

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The panel vans would back into the parking bay at the drive-in and everybody knew that “when the wagons a-rockin’ don’t come knockin’”!

The Shaggin’ Wagon – Cars From Our Youth

The ‘Urban Dictionary’ defines the shaggin’ wagon as “A pimped out 60’s – 80’s van usually comes with a couch, waterbed, strobe lights, lava lamps. Used for the specific purpose of getting laid and/or high.” Shaggin’ wagons were basically panel vans, painted in bright colours, fully decked out with a carpeted cargo bay (some had […]

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Photo from National Library of Australia; nla.pic-an 24679811-v.•	The Lord Mayor of Adelaide, Mr. J.S. Philp, watches Frank Patten of the Beulah Park Ampol service station refuel his car during the Handicapped Children's Week Appeal, South Australia, December, 1955 [picture]

Service Station Attendants, A Bygone Era

Remember when you would pull up at the local petrol station and an attendant would rush out to fill the tank, check your oil and tyre pressure and wash the windscreen? Then he or she would take the cash inside and bring back the change. Back then you did not even have to step out […]

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