There was no TV in our part of Australia until I was already 13; and when it came to our house it was firmly rationed by our parents. Three times a year Mum rented a set for the school holidays, and three times a year it went back to the shop the day we returned to school. And even though it was school holidays, we were absolutely not allowed to eat in front of the TV except on sunday nights, when we could take our crumpets, toasted sandwiches or similar light meals to the set. At all other mealtimes the TV had to be turned off, and we all had to sit up at the table. The radio however, was never turned off for meals, unless we had non-family visitors.
Most families including ourselves had just one radio in the house, and ours was on a dining room bookshelf just around the corner from the kitchen. People still gathered around a radio to listen together. I found a photo of the exact model online, but not being able to find who holds the copyright to the photo to get clearance to post it, can only suggest you click this link to see the photo of what Barry Humphries most probably would have described as a beautiful piece of furniture. It was an AWA, a long trusted brand in Aus, acknowledged by many to be the best. About 30cm h x 50cm w and maybe 30cm deep, it was covered with fine wood veneer and some fascinating boucle fabric in front of all the valves and inner controls to let the sound come through. When you turned it on, it hummed softly for 1-2 minutes until the big valves inside were warm enough to bring the voices or music to us.
That radio was on from first thing in the morning to last thing at night, and we were never allowed to change the station from the local Australian Broadcasting Commission’s station, 7NT, to a commercial one. It was as if that tuner was welded into place. Not that it hurt us to miss programmes like The air adventures of Hop Harrigan, Biggles, The Drama of Medicine, Night Beat, When A Girl Marries and the weekly hit parades that some friends were starting to listen to. And of course we changed stations to listen to those if Mum and Dad were out for the night as our much loved baby sitter, Mrs J, didn’t mind. Our parents listened to war time hits, musical and movie scores, and modern non-rock music, plus classical favourites often in the form of broadcasts of orchestral concerts. We itched for some freedom of choice, but in the late 50s to 60s, it was accepted that children had little choice in anything, really, compared with the latitude most kids have today … as observed by every wrinkly generation since Plato’s time.
Much changed with the remodelling of the kitchen in the late 50s. All new kitchen cupboards, right up to the ceiling in places, were painted with black frames and drawers and doors of three shades of dusky pink. We got a new kitchen table with fancy white wrought iron legs, whose flecked laminex matched that on the benchtops. Matching wrought iron chairs had upholstered cushions in pink vinyl. New lino on the floor was black with little squares of colour. A crowning touch was a black and pink AWA radio with gold trim very like, if not exactly like, this 50s beauty. It sat on the counter at the kitchen’s ground zero where the kettle also lived and boiled water for tea umpteen times a day.
With the remodelling came new, modern electrical appliances. I don’t remember the new fridge, really, but the new stove and oven unit was pretty glam. I think it had to be specially ordered – and always seemed so sensible to me. Though I’ve scrolled through pages and pages of stoves and ovens, antique and vintage, I haven’t found anything much like what we had – so this is a from memory-and-not-to-scale sketch:
On one side was the set of 4 hotplates, the controls might have been at the back though I drew them at the front – and beneath them was a warming drawer. Beside that, not under it, was the oven with a nice slide out grill tray. The cook didn’t have to bend down to put things in and out of the oven then, and an extra convenience was that the open oven door could be pushed back into the structure, all very well thought out. And beneath the whole unit was a cupboard divided into narrow segments that permitted platters, baking trays and other flatware to be stored vertically. Mum was a marvellous cook and did justice to this renovated kitchen. It was great for that era, and far better than most kitchens I’ve ever had, with the exceptions of Denver and Perth.