Saturday 11 April 2009

1972

The photo above shows the author of this blog (right) and two friends in the back yard of a rented house in Petersham, an inner suburb of Sydney, in November 1972. We had, some hours before the photograph was taken, ingested some substances on small pieces of blotting paper. The previous day just happened to be the one in which it was announced that the Australian Labor Party had won the Federal election for the first time since 1949, the year of my birth. It’s hard to recapture the feeling of the early Labor years. The Liberal/Country Party Coalition Government had been led from 1949 to 1966 by (Sir) Robert Menzies who probably felt that the greatest honour conferred upon him was to be named, after his retirement, a Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. With Gough Whitlam’s Labor anything seemed possible (though the government was unseated in 1975 after various financial scandals). University fees were abolished. A new system of arts funding got off the ground. Young people were understood. Labor did eventually regain power in the 1980s under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, but it had by then become a fully-fledged instrument of right-wing economic theory. But for us that day in 1972 was a moment for celebration. In the evening we drove around town in a VW beetle, shouting joyously when we saw flags or bunting of any kind ‘this is socialism!’ We felt as though we had landed on a strange planet. The next day I went back to work, on the City of Sydney Public Library mobile, delivering books to the aged and incapacitated. My first visit was to the home of a man with a tracheotomy who spoke through a hole in his neck.

6 comments:

Vanessa Berry said...

What a great photo (and story behind it). I live in Petersham now, I wish my life there was more like this!

Louise said...

this is a great photo laurie, (and even though i was younger than you are in this shot) and i was living in melbourne, (carlton at that point)...i remember fondly,the election and pre election fever of 1972 (fond memories too of the lsd)

Laurie Duggan said...

I lived in Petersham in 1972, then again on and off from 1980 to 1986.
I was bemused by the story that 'Ern Malley' went to the Petersham Technical College. As for the illegal substances, I have no regrets, though I haven't touched the stuff since the early eighties.

Anonymous said...

Hi Laurie. It is a lovely photo. I've been wondering lately about Petersham/Teverner's Hill as Ern Malley's home and the current over representation of writers and artists there (eg. http://www.squatspace.com/petersham/) Surely there's a connection. Were you reading Ern Malley at the time?
Tim Wright

Laurie Duggan said...

Tim, I started reading Malley years before, when I was still at school in Melbourne. In my case the Petersham thing was fortuitous (and I don't think I made the connection for a while either). But once I did I started to notice other Malley-like things, such as the sign on one building of the Technical College that red: 'Languages, General Studies & Plumbing'.

Anonymous said...

That sounds like my ideal combination of subjects. This would be the building that's now Petersham TAFE on Crystal Street I guess? Now I'm mentally scanning the suburb for other traces of Malley.. Tim