The Swinging Sixties

lindamaycurry
AtoZChallenge theme reveal 2025 #atozchallenge 

"I'll Never Find Another You"     The Seekers  •  1965
There's a new world somewhere
They call the Promised Land
And I'll be there someday
If you will hold my hand
I still need you there beside me
No matter what I do
For I know I'll never find another you

Three young men stand on the deck of the Fairsea waving to their families. They won’t see them for at least three years and will return as changed people. They will look back on this moment as the most significant of their lives and think that maybe nothing will ever be as intoxicating, thrilling or exhilarating as life in the “Old Dart”.

Our narrator, Will Price, was one of the three. They met at Wollongong Teachers’ College in 1961, qualified as Primary Teachers and had spent the last three years in their respective classrooms. Keith and Phil had been posted to tiny, remote, one teacher schools, meeting the daily struggles alone, with little or no help from the indifferent Department of Education. Will was placed in the western suburbs of Sydney with a “Headmistress from Hell”, who told him he would be better suited to life as a used car salesman.

It was Keith who inspired the others to dream of a better life. As the year 1966 came to an end the three friends had all but completed arrangements for their exodus. From left to right Phillip, Keith and Will are celebrating Keith’s 21st birthday.

We are fortunate that Will wrote frequently to his family. Those flimsy, pale blue aerogrammes were one of the only means of communication, along with postcards and slides (the cheapest form of photography). They reflect views and sayings which may not be considered politically correct in 2025 but are an accurate reflection of what it was like to be young and bursting with excitement in the “Swinging ’60s”. Out there, over the seas, was a big, wide world waiting to be discovered.

This is my 10th A to Z. Most of my blogs have been about family history or travel. I used to spend April frantically trying to complete my posts but now I spend a whole year intermittently working on them so they are ready to go on the day.

Before I close, my thoughts go to my friend Sue Martin who is no longer with us. She was an ardent supporter of my writing, giving me encouragement every year with her usual enthusiasm. She is greatly missed.

34 thoughts on “The Swinging Sixties”

      1. How many young men – and not so many women – set their eyes on The Old Dart during those times!!! When those young men were setting off on their adventures, I was at Wollongong Teachers College, soon to be sent to Central West NSW.

        You are so fortunate to have those letters, Linda! I asked Mum what happened to the letters she sent – and received – from her best friend Celia in England after we came to Australia in 1954. The same kind of light blue aerogrammes that you have. Mum told me she didn’t keep the ones she received, but that Celia kept those Mum sent her. Then, some years later, Celia went to the suitcase full of letters and read every letter, rekindling the life Mum had shared with her of her struggles to settle into a strange and frightening (to her) country. Then Celia burned the lot of them.

        I was devastated that several years of our early life in Australia had been so casually destroyed. What would they have revealed of Mum’s thoughts, her distress over the conditions she had to live in for the first few years of our life – conditions that I and most of my siblings revelled in? I will never know in this life.

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  3. Greetings, Linda! I’m really looking forward to reading Will’s accounts of his adventures in the late sixties. I hadn’t been thinking of participating this year, but you have inspired me to consider it. And I so admire you for preparing all your A-to-Z posts in advance! All my best, J

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  4. Hi Linda! I’m really looking forward to reading these letters with accounts of adventures in the late Sixties! And you’re inspiring time to consider participating in the Chalennge again, though I hadn’t been planning on it. (Thinking about all the old letters I have. . .) Cheers!

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  5. As lindamaycurry, above, mentioned, so many old letters etc. get thrown out. I collect vintage and antique postcards, and the messages on them are so wonderful to read (although I sometimes feel like I’m prying into someone else’s life! My A to Z is not postcards, but that makes me think of 2026.

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  7. Hi Linda.

    Wow, its been years since I read any of your Blogs, even forgot I had WordPress account Had to try remember my password from years ago, it’s changed a few times since.

    Nice bog post by the way. Got me remembering letters A friend of mine and I had shared years ago, he is Canadian and of course I’m in South Africa. I still have all his letters and what a pleasure to go back and read about what was transpiring more than forty years ago in this world. Just two friends sharing life on completely different continents (sort of like you living on the Australian continent while writing to friends in Europe)

    I don’t throw letters and cards away. Someday I’ll die and then my children will get this whole box of letters and cards to go through and Man, will it bring back memories, and in some cases tears.

    Thanks for the memories, I’d forgotten about them, and here they are all over again.

    Blessing to you Linda and all those you love and care about.

    Geoff.

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      1. yes. So disappointing mostly. Yesterday though a cousin of Greg’s sent through a lot of old family photos 🙂

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  15. I just know I’m going to love your posts on this theme Linda. Looking forward to following on. Aerogrammes bring back memories of writing to penfriends when I was a young girl. Emails aren’t the same as waiting for an aerogramme to come from the other side of the world.

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