Almost in tears they had it so good back then. Dad went to work, mum ran the house and they had everything they needed, were happy and spent lots of bonding family time together. Heaps of work for everyone to live a nice basic happy life.
i do think sometimes that the baby boomers dont really understand how life works these days. When i was a child in the 90s you were looked down upon to still live with your parents in your 20s and maybe even 30s. Or have trouble finding a job within a reasonable distance once you graduated or finished school. That's all pretty much the norm nowadays.
Dilly Funny that, 1964 was Menzies time - a liberal as with most Aus governments until Hawke in 1983 (Whitlam wasnt long enough). Maybe you bankrupting politically correct Labor rats had more to do with destroying Australian families. I see conservative values all over this video (Liberal Values) not progressive/socialist Labor values.
In 1964, I was 14yrs old and I remember all in the film quite well, particularly towards the end of the film there is a lady who was an actress and media personality Barbette Stevens. It seemed she was directing a play rehearsal. I enjoyed the 15 minute film very much.
I can remember back then! Dad worked so hard to make sure we had food on the table. Mum & Dad went to play tennis for a break, bringing up us 3 kids. Oriel my older sister had the hairdryer? It looked so funny on her head & she used those silly big rollers in her hair. George,Anne, and Roma Street I knew so well. Dad would take us shopping in there every Saturday morning, to give Mum a break! The trams I disliked ever since I saw Lady & her daughter get hit by a tram. If brings back memories of when times were good for me. Mum & Dad worked so hard! I love them both & miss them so much!
Wow. Really amazing sitting hear on a Sunday morning and discovering my dad Rick Farbach playing with his band at cloud land. Almost had an 'out-of-body experience. Typically, we found this on an iPad.
Absolutely amazing, such memories of my Brissy that I grew up in. One quick flash of the YMCA sign reminded me how every Saturday morning I would hop on the bus at Indooroopilly all by myself at the age of 7 and 8 and travel to the City Hall and then walk the couple of blocks to the YMCA in Edward Street for Sat morning YMCA for boys, exercises, fellowship, etc...we even had a sex education presentation there on Saturday when I was about 9! If a parent let their child travel like that these days they would be reported to CPS I am sure. There was an indoor gym, indoor running track around the top of the gym, indoor pool and a really strange locker room smell. You could stay there in accommodation as well.
Pineapples were obviously a very big part of life in Brisbane! Seriously though, our family arrived in Brisbane in 1963 and this is how I remember the old place, wonderful. Thanks for putting it up!
Thanks alot for letting me see this city. So much from then is still here every day and will be forever but alot isn't either. It makes me sad and happy.
At 16m41s into the film is a street scene of Logan Road, Mt Gravatt Central and I can see the BCC supermarket where my Mum bought the groceries in big brown paper bags. This same area is where I caught numerous buses to primary and high school, and where the tramline had its last stop. My Dad worked driving the trams and later as a bus driver for the Brisbane City Council which stored their buses at the Light Street Depot in the Fortitude Valley. The original basement Milano restaurant in Queen Street had the best baked New York cheesecake in town, and Cloudland at Bowen Hills had midnight to dawn dances where you caught the 7am bus back home! Memories!!!
Hi Holdenboy1960. Yes you have to remember that these films were made as Government propaganda so you are only getting the story and images they wanted to portray about Australia. Later on in the 1970s when the Film Unit started to have more control over what they produced, and and with changing governments, there are broader social issues and aspects of society shown. We will be posting these so please keep watching. Thanks again for the comments.
I disagree. It was not made as a propaganda film, it was made as an information film. It portrays Brisbane life and was screened in townships hundreds of miles from the city so Queenslanders had some idea of what city life was like. Propaganda films are made (the ABC is expert at this) to influence the public politically.
remember when we turned our back on our river, didn't it look industrial and run down. Lifestyle was more innocent and much less stressful, but the city looks better now.
Lived in Brisbane as a boy in the late 40's, early 50's, then we moved to Melbourne, how I wish I'd stayed in Brisbane, weather wise you can't beat it, and if only life were still as simple and happy as it was back then. So much for 'progress'!
We lived in Brisbane in 2002-2004 at Indooroopilly area. Loved the cool and sunny winter, and the blossoming Jacarandas in spring..though the summer temps can sometimes be almost unbearable (for us), although we come from region of tropical climate.
Interesting to see the Johnstone gallery featured towards the end of the film. Brian and Marjorie Johnstone’s Bowen Hills gallery was one of the largest commercial galleries in Australia at the time. The Johnstones made a point of featuring the works of established and emerging Australian artists such as Russell Drysdale, Arthur Boyd, Margaret Olley, Ray Crooke, and Sidney Nolan amongst others. The gallery ran from 1952 until 1972, first in the basement of Brisbane Arcade, then under the Johnstone’s Cintra Road house. Sadly, both the house and former gallery have been demolished. Marjorie Johnstone, an actor of some note, also helped found the Twelth Night Theatre on the corner of Cintra Road and Montpelier Street, which was built on the site of her former family home, “Wyandra”.
Brisbane still had trams early 1960s & I also owned a Holden EK in 1964, automatic too, preferred kombis though, had a couple of split windscreen ones, also had a Herald Triumph, took the hardtop off for convertible.
Great look into our past. Thanks for putting it up on You Tube guys. Lived in Brisbane as a kid during this time so I remember lots of this stuff as it was.
Ah. ! TC's Sound Lounge in Elizabeth Street was where I 'grew up'. hahahaha Loved the open air trams that ran all the way to Enoggera. My dad was in the army there and we lived in housing commission after waiting out at Holland Park to get a house. I am 73 now and loved watching all those scenes I remember so fondly. (y)
Holy shit it is 23 Tenby Street Mt Gravatt! If you look at Google street view it hasn't changed much. Even the brick work on the left and right of the driveway is the same, as well as the pattern of the house numbers.
Love this video clip - an everyday suburban home in Brisbane, 1964. Some bright spark (and I mean that seriously) on RU-vid has already tracked the house address to 23 Tenby St, Mt Gravatt - just down the road from where I once lived, albeit 38 years later.
The Golden Circle Cannery was a HUGE employer. Most people I knew growing up worked there at one time or another. Even just part time for good wages when they had big orders.
They really were the good old days for those old enough to remember. My 3rd child was born in 1964.If I really had to choose an era though,it would be the 40/50's when I grew up. Best time of my life. Only about 1 murder a year,not one a day like now.
There seemed to be large attendances at events such as the races, dances, etc. I guess we now have so many forms of entertainment that some of those older ones are not so crowded.
Hi Steve this series, and a lot of the Film Australia Collection, was produced for migration purposes. These films would have been shown at embassies and migration centres, mainly in England, to give prospective migrants an idea of life in Australia. Albeit a rose tinted view for sure.
Oi mates, this is my hometown, get the fuck off my lawn and my bloody land for starters. If anybody is getting the shit off this continent its pretty damn obvious.
Very interesting. I recognised a lot of the big buildings and the bridge, but the city streets have changed so much. I was born in 1964 but I recall the trams. They were scary, especially the way they would stop and let you off right in the middle of a busy intersection.
would liked to have seen the view from the mountain (Coot-tha) and the summit kiosk, plus QU, Sth Bris, even Nudgee beach, as well as the barge to Straddy etc, from back in the day. The aerial shot of the Goldie was a knock out. Looked pristine .. no high rise. Wonder what Mooloolaba looked like back then? Otherwise I well recognise the river environs from 10 years later, when I first came to live in Bris. Back then I couldn't understand apparent lack of interest in the river as the city's key lifestyle feature! How attitudes have changed.
Thanks for telling us that little fact. I lived a few doors down and I was absolutely certain it was not Mrs Thomson, in fact I didn't recognise anyone of the Thomsons from number 23. I posted a comment to that effect quite a few months ago and you have confirmed my suspicions. Furthermore, Thompsons never owned a Hydramatic EK Holden, I think they drove a Vauxhall Velox. So thanks mate.
Surely it can’t be that bad in OZ these days , as a Brit it’s really hard to get in these days so your immigration can’t be that bad ? You should see what’s it’s like in the UK we let anyone in here !!!!
This is actually the first episode of the series. Made in 1964 it predates most of the other episodes by a couple of years. Also the episodes were filmed by different directors. Being the first episode may have meant a bit more experimentation.
Yep, we all used to leave our doors unlocked back then. Same with the cars, always left the keys in them. Brissy was just a big country town. Oh how I miss those days. This film is just so evocative.
It was a rather artistic video for its time, the use of the abstract phone calls at the start, the quirky music, the lack of narration throughout. I would have liked some interviews however.
It's the Queen's English if I'm not mistaken. I think most media was presented with a British accent until maybe just a couple decades ago. I could be wrong, but I think I remember hearing that from somewhere.
I had a port like that too. They were compressed cardboard with rounded plastic corners. The school desks looked familiar too. I wonder what school that was? We were migrants from Britain, although I was born here, so we were a lot poorer than these guys. Concrete house, second hand car, no uni or trips to the beach. But a great bloody country to grow up in. Still the best in the world!
Brisbane's 1964 population was 600,000; equivalent to the population of the Gold Coast today. Fast forward 50 years later and Brisbane's population is almost @ 2.5 million only to find how sustainable public transport was back then compared to now.
ty FILMAUSTRALIA i understand that , that's why i didn't want to be political about it just an open view of the vid in general . you posted a couple vid's of Newcastle witch showed more to the true living & works of the town & lifestyle back then , just got to read between the lines some time's is all . but on that note, Very good vid's & ty for posting them Cheers Shane .
All the talk here about how aboriginals weren't allowed in Brisbane back then are absolute rubbish. I worked for a multi-national company at the time this film was made, called FRANKIPILE . We operated a huge pile driving machine ...and guess what...the foreman and main men operating that machine were aboriginals. We put down the concrete piles for some of the tallest buildings built at that time all over Queensland, NSW and yes, right in the inner-city area. On Friday nights we would all go to the pub together up on Spring Hill.
Just wondering, after these films of 'Life In Australia' were filmed and produced. Were they aired on television or shown at picture theaters? or were they only viewed by politicians and kept away from the General Public to see?
Just look at it today. Brisbane's disgrace. Naturally the pollies are blaming the weather for its not being completed for the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day last year.
In response to "Felix Burke" (Whom I can not respond to his comment) "Gill earns the money his wife looks after the house keeping" Did you at all pause to think that the family being filmed was wealthy? Gill is a builder, building one of the oil refineries. They are wealthy enough to be able to afford a car, a home phone, a tv etc in the 1960's. A luxury some could only dream of owning.
+JiP01 I was thinking the same thing. This is no 'typical family'. When I grew up in this era, in Brisbane, a family like this would have associated with the hoity toity set. This family is a bit above upper middle class. Our family had some of the luxuries because my Mum also worked part time, and Dad got a staff discount at his work so we had an automatic washing machine, a home phone and a television, but I don't remember a day when all of our furniture was 'matched'.
Very true, my grandparents didn't have a car or tv til the sixties even then it was a second hand fc Holden miss my grandad, they lived in Ipswich pretty much the same
Hmm. We moved from Gympie to Ipswich in 1966. The house was nearly identical to the builder's house, maybe a bit smaller. Small chookyard up the back and a separate garage. We had a 1957 Simca Aronde since 1963, a TV since about the same time, but no phone. Dad was a railway clerk out near the workshops and not all that highly paid. Much of the furniture was second hand though. Mum never worked for pay. There was an elderly fridge and a singe tub Hoover washing machine. Mum won a twin tub machine and a set of saucepans in a magazine competition! The washing machine was a Gayway brand or something like that. Hoity-toity? Hardly.
Yes, @@JiP01, very distinctive architecture and art. It's where I give an annual talk to the Year Twos about that nearby icon, the Walter Taylor Bridge.
you know .....for all the positive slant of this ....we all had most of it ..maybe our day to day crockery didn't match and we didn't wear shoes to school if we could get away with it ....and mum didn't wear fashion housedresses ..but dad had a mower, smoked in the house, drove an old Holden or Austin and the boys did take their dates to the flicks or the beach (maybe not in a sports car)....but my sisters went to TCs and cloudland ...so it made me nostalgic
Where are all the Aboriginal people? The truth is if Aboriginal people dared step foot in Brisbane city in those days they were immediately arrested by the police and driven out of the city.. they had a boundary area around the city and blacks where told to keep out.. Most of the people who lived in Brisbane in those days were extremely racist.. I know this because my grandfather was an Aboriginal man who lived his whole life in Queensland and his stories of his experiences growing up as third class citizen in his own home land would make your blood boil..
+Jem Well as it happens another eagle eyed viewer found the actual house for sale in 2011. What's more it still had some of the same furniture and kitchen layout as in this film 23 Tenby St Mt Grarvatt - here's the real estate link check it out: www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-house-qld-mount+gravatt-107195518
Who takes down the public's comments? A couple of years ago I submitted a post giving the background stories of those living in Tenby Street. I received some favourable comments and a few thanks but alas, they've vanished. Just interested, that's all, perhaps someone didn't want to be identified. I knew all of them.
Hi Tim, if your comment was, as you described, just providing details of the film then it would not have been removed by the NFSA. If comments breach our guidelines then they are removed. If any responses to to your original comment breached the guidelines then they would be removed but that would not affect your original comment. There are 353 comments on this film so hopefully yours is there somewhere. If not then unfortunately we don't know what might have happened. RU-vid is a platform that is owned and operated by an independent US business and we are only users of the platform and as such do not have control of, or a say in, what changes may take place on the platform. Occasionally there are unexplained "gaps" in some data, like comments, likes, etc and perhaps that might explain what happened to your comment. Hopefully you continue to watch our channel and enjoy the films that are presented here.
Thanks very much for your reply. Perhaps my original submission is, as you wrote, somewhere within the system. I can't imagine that I breached any guidelines and furthermore, I received a few complimentary comments thanking me for the post and the accurate information therein. Of course I'm now officially a "fossil" and the owners of those houses in 1964 along Tenby St would no longer be alive. I wrote the post to give you and the good people of Brisbane a snippet of history. Your reassurances to me are really appreciated. Tim.
It's a rare day when the first comment you see is a non-binary nostalgia trip. For some reason people either can't or don't want to celebrate the past without taking a big _trite_ dump on the present.
I'm waiting for them to fix King George Square. A fried egg with a slice of bacon on the side is on the menu in summer. The radiated heat in this era of global warming is incredible.
