I never thought I’d be nostalgic for the ‘60s, white bread, white skin, “speak English will ya. You’re in Australia now”. The sixties was the era of suburban deserts and city centres that died on week-ends and daily after 5.30. The sixties were the years I spent at school – primary and secondary. I loathed, hated and detested school and can only describe my school years as a twelve-year sentence, made bearable by a small scattering of inspiring teachers, and the ability to finally chose my subjects in form five and six.
I remember how excited I was on my first day at school. I was born in Rome. Our primary school uniform was either a white, dark blue or black smock with an accompanying floppy bow. The larger the bow, the higher the status. On my first day, I threw all my nibs away. As they were all split along the middle, I assumed they were all broken. It was a portent. The enthusiasm of day one had dissipated by the end of the day.
On my second day, and for the rest of the week, I had to be carried kicking and screaming to school. A neighbour nicknamed me the siren.
The big change happened when I was in grade three and my family, consisting of my mother, my sister and myself, migrated to Australia. This was 1960. For my cosmopolitan mother, Heidelberg 1960 came as a bit of a shock. It did not take her long however, to discover Carlton, and within a year we had moved there.
In the 60s, Carlton aka Little Italy was an aberration. By the 1970s multiculturalism had become the norm, supported by virtually all sides of politics. This acceptance that migrants could not be expected to abandon their roots began in the sixties.
Similarly, even though the sixties saw the escalation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war, it also saw an ever-growing opposition to it, encapsulated in the moratoria. Never will I forget the energy and the idealism of that first moratorium; the huge number of participants, the endless line of marchers starting at the top of Collins Street peacefully heading down to the Botanic Gardens. To add to the optimism were the office workers shouting encouragement from their open windows. Twinned with the revolt against the Vietnam war, was the increasing protests against conscription. How fair was it that 20- year-olds could be sent to possibly die in war when they had no vote?
The sixties, again from the perspective of a progressive leftie, saw the rise and rise of Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party. He promised the end of the war, the end of conscription, free education for all, and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. I had skin in this. In 1971, my boyfriend, a talented artist and cook; a person of utmost integrity, was forced to return to Hong Kong when he failed his final exam as an industrial chemist. For me, the end of the White Australia policy could not come soon enough.
I miss the energy of the sixties; the promise of a kinder, more tolerant Australia. In the twenty first century, where are idealistic and talented politicians in the Liblab party? Where are the Fred Chaneys and the Moss Casses? Or the Tom Mitchells, whom I hosted at a book signing when I had a new bookshop. He deprecatingly introduced himself as Elyne Mitchell’s husband. It was a wonderful afternoon. In 2024 would he stand, like Helen Haines, as an Independent?
We are a nation of migrants. We were forced to migrate because of poverty caused by an unequal society, often underpinned by corruption, by racism, and often by all three combined. Education, once the great equaliser, has now become the entrencher of privilege, University fees either crippling or unaffordable; there is more government money devoted to private schools rather than to public ones; house ownership and fair wages have become a thing of the past. At the same time, we have incompetent CEOs earning obscene wages while systematically destroying functional companies.
In 2024 the world looks bleak: climate change; insecure employment; dangerous leaders and the use of racism as a political card, not just in Australia, but globally. My political certainties of the sixties - Labor good, Coalition bad – no longer apply.
Hope is what I have largely, if not totally, lost.
Delfina Manor
August 2024
A subtitle for ‘Paean to the Sixties’? ‘A joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, to the sixties’ (Meriam-Webster Dictionary)
I remember how excited I was on my first day at school. I was born in Rome. Our primary school uniform was either a white, dark blue or black smock with an accompanying floppy bow. The larger the bow, the higher the status. On my first day, I threw all my nibs away. As they were all split along the middle, I assumed they were all broken. It was a portent. The enthusiasm of day one had dissipated by the end of the day.
On my second day, and for the rest of the week, I had to be carried kicking and screaming to school. A neighbour nicknamed me the siren.
The big change happened when I was in grade three and my family, consisting of my mother, my sister and myself, migrated to Australia. This was 1960. For my cosmopolitan mother, Heidelberg 1960 came as a bit of a shock. It did not take her long however, to discover Carlton, and within a year we had moved there.
In the 60s, Carlton aka Little Italy was an aberration. By the 1970s multiculturalism had become the norm, supported by virtually all sides of politics. This acceptance that migrants could not be expected to abandon their roots began in the sixties.
Similarly, even though the sixties saw the escalation of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war, it also saw an ever-growing opposition to it, encapsulated in the moratoria. Never will I forget the energy and the idealism of that first moratorium; the huge number of participants, the endless line of marchers starting at the top of Collins Street peacefully heading down to the Botanic Gardens. To add to the optimism were the office workers shouting encouragement from their open windows. Twinned with the revolt against the Vietnam war, was the increasing protests against conscription. How fair was it that 20- year-olds could be sent to possibly die in war when they had no vote?
The sixties, again from the perspective of a progressive leftie, saw the rise and rise of Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party. He promised the end of the war, the end of conscription, free education for all, and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy. I had skin in this. In 1971, my boyfriend, a talented artist and cook; a person of utmost integrity, was forced to return to Hong Kong when he failed his final exam as an industrial chemist. For me, the end of the White Australia policy could not come soon enough.
I miss the energy of the sixties; the promise of a kinder, more tolerant Australia. In the twenty first century, where are idealistic and talented politicians in the Liblab party? Where are the Fred Chaneys and the Moss Casses? Or the Tom Mitchells, whom I hosted at a book signing when I had a new bookshop. He deprecatingly introduced himself as Elyne Mitchell’s husband. It was a wonderful afternoon. In 2024 would he stand, like Helen Haines, as an Independent?
We are a nation of migrants. We were forced to migrate because of poverty caused by an unequal society, often underpinned by corruption, by racism, and often by all three combined. Education, once the great equaliser, has now become the entrencher of privilege, University fees either crippling or unaffordable; there is more government money devoted to private schools rather than to public ones; house ownership and fair wages have become a thing of the past. At the same time, we have incompetent CEOs earning obscene wages while systematically destroying functional companies.
In 2024 the world looks bleak: climate change; insecure employment; dangerous leaders and the use of racism as a political card, not just in Australia, but globally. My political certainties of the sixties - Labor good, Coalition bad – no longer apply.
Hope is what I have largely, if not totally, lost.
Delfina Manor
August 2024
A subtitle for ‘Paean to the Sixties’? ‘A joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, to the sixties’ (Meriam-Webster Dictionary)
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