1964

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Details: Parent Category: History Category: Recollections | Published: 24 April 2014 | Hits: 54020

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By comparison with 1963, 1964 was a non-event for the World, unless you count the introduction of birthday-ballot for the conscription of 20 year old boys in Australia to allow us to commit troops to the escalating Vietnam conflict. My birthdate did not come up so I missed out on a free trip to Vietnam, as did my brother, a couple of years later; unlike a number of our ex-classmates from high school. Many years later, in 2010, I would pay to go to Vietnam to see what I'd missed. Read more...

1963 was my last year of technical, if not legal, childhood. At that time we were not legally adults until our 21st birthday.

1964 was my first year at University with all its new experiences and revelations. One excitement, that we superior beings at University looked down upon, but still became involved in, was the arrival of a band called The Beatles. They caused a virtual riot among hormonal teenage girls, some of whom, we had to admit, were rather attractive. Damn English mop-heads turning up and turning the heads of our women!

My schoolboy fantasies remained intact until the last day of the year, when on that balmy New Year's Eve, on a blanket, on Sydney's Newport beach, they were made real by a young woman named Elizabeth, unrelated to Her Majesty, who shared many of Christine Keeler's alluring attributes. She taught me a lot, including that The Drifters hit song that year: Under The Boardwalk should carry a sand alert: 'On a blanket with my baby' is not always 'the place to be'.

Thereafter, I preferred The Stones' contemporary version of Little Red Rooster.

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Travel

Romania

In October 2016 we flew from southern England to Romania.

Romania is a big country by European standards and not one to see by public transport if time is limited. So to travel beyond Bucharest we hired a car and drove northwest to Brașov and on to Sighisiora, before looping southwest to Sibiu (European capital of culture 2007) and southeast through the Transylvanian Alps to Curtea de Arges on our way back to Bucharest.

Driving in Romania was interesting. There are some quite good motorways once out of the suburbs of Bucharest, where traffic lights are interminable trams rumble noisily, trolley-busses stop and start and progress can be slow. In the countryside road surfaces are variable and the roads mostly narrow. This does not slow the locals who seem to ignore speed limits making it necessary to keep up to avoid holding up traffic.

Fiction, Recollections & News

My Mother's Family

All my ancestors are now dead. I'm an orphan. So for this history I've had to rely on my recollections a small pile of documents left by my mother. These include short biographies of several of her relatives. Following the female line; these recollections briefly span the two world wars; to the present.

Opinions and Philosophy

Australia and Empire

The recent Australia Day verses Invasion Day dispute made me recall yet again the late, sometimes lamented, British Empire.

Because, after all, the Empire was the genesis of Australia Day.

For a brief history of that institution I can recommend Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Scottish historian Niall Campbell Ferguson.

My choice of this book was serendipitous, unless I was subconsciously aware that Australia Day was approaching. I was cutting through our local bookshop on my way to catch a bus and wanted something to read. I noticed this thick tomb, a new addition to the $10 Penguin Books (actually $13).

On the bus I began to read and very soon I was hooked when I discovered references to places I'd been and written of myself. Several of these 'potted histories' can be found in my various travel writings on this website (follow the links): India and the Raj; Malaya; Burma (Myanmar); Hong Kong; China; Taiwan; Egypt and the Middle East; Israel; and Europe (a number).

Over the next ten days I made time to read the remainder of the book, finishing it on the morning of Australia Day, January the 26th, with a sense that Ferguson's Empire had been more about the sub-continent than the Empire I remembered.