Growing up in Adelaide in the 1950's

Book excerpt: ‘Growing up in the fifties was a time of isolation and innocence. We didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. We could only compare ourselves with those around us.’ So writes Max Lees in his reminiscence, ‘Freedom’, one of the 13 contributions to this delightful evocation of childhood edited by Susan Blackburn. An associate professor at Monash University and a specialist in Southeast Asian politics who grew up in suburban Adelaide, Blackburn asked friends and acquaintances to join her in trying to recreate the experience of childhood in that place in that time. Most of the memories in this book are of happy, sunlit childhoods, but there are shadows too. Polio was a constant fear and unwanted children were often neglected in orphanages. On the whole, though, the experiences of the contributors were positive and they look back on the fifties with enjoyment, inviting us into their childhood and teenage worlds.