Few countries can have changed as dramatically as Australia since 1961. The population was only just over ten million; steam trains plied the major routes; agriculture was the major industry and in many outer suburbs of Sydney the dunny cart came once a week to take away your unmentionables. Businessmen were highly affronted if they couldn’t park their cars right outside their Pitt Street offices; the Opera House was a hole in the ground; Brisbane International Airport was a collection of unsightly tin huts — much like Brisbane itself in fact — Perth was a sleepy country town and Cairns a mangrove swamp.
Socially, too, the country was unrecognisable. Aborigines were not allowed to vote. God Save the Queen was sung with gusto in picture theatres. Obesity was a rare genetic disorder; drugs were something you got from the chemist; people addressed each other as Mr and Mrs, and women were not allowed into the public bars of hotels. Eating out was a special treat and churches were the only places allowed to open on Sundays, when even mowing the lawn was frowned upon by some.
But since the mid-fifties these and many other seemingly entrenched conventions had been increasingly challenged.
Not haunted by the traumas of war and Depression — or so readily influenced by the church — the young were rebelling. The pillars of social behaviour from previous generations — sexual probity, obedient acquiescence to authority and parental control — all came under siege. It was not a planned or organised rebellion, more a subconscious one stoked by Elvis, the novelty of take-away food, Col Joy, stovepipe pants, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. However, this rebellion was confined mainly to the cities. In the country, attitudes remained very much as they had always been: hard-working, conservative and religious. In 1961 the city/country divide was a chasm, the outback truly was ‘outback’ and few city people ventured there. Many country children had never seen the sea, there was no television and the goings-on in ‘the big smoke’ were as remote and irrelevant as events in China.
Vast stretches of the major highways were little more than tracks, often devoid of traffic for hours; sometimes days at a time; even the great east coast highways — the Pacific and the Bruce — hard as that might be to imagine. Bridges were washed away and towns cut off when it rained, and if you broke down you could be stuck for weeks. Outside cities public transport was virtually non-existent and over-taking lanes and dual carriage ways were called ‘the other side of the road’. Hitchhiking was recognised and encouraged as a legitimate form of transport and the original backpackers the ‘swagmen’ were a common sight west of the ranges, although overseas tourists were like wombats in Tunisia; rarely seen.
Today swagmen, even hitchhikers, have become endangered species, hounded to the brink of extinction by the three bastions of progress: laws, rules and regulations. In 1961 there were no speed cameras, no breathalysers and most cars weren’t even fitted with seat belts, never mind it being a punishable offence not to wear them. Farmers would stop to pick up even the drunkest or most rancid swagman, knowing they could chuck him in the back of the ute with the dogs. Interstate truck drivers would screech to a halt the moment they saw a hitchhiker, glad of the company to help keep them awake. You could travel in the back of a semi-trailer without the police batting an eye, you could ride pillion on a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, and, outside cities, people could drive as fast as they wanted with little or no fear of being stopped. Driving at one hundred miles an hour and more was not uncommon on country roads, despite their terrible condition and very few people were pulled up because their tyres were worn, their vehicle not registered or their insurance lapsed.
Day-to-day living was also more relaxed in the country. People were more trusting and more welcoming and strangers were viewed with curiosity rather than suspicion. Few people locked their cars on the high street when they went shopping, hotel residence doors were left unlocked all night, guards were not too bothered if you jumped on a freight train, and shoplifting and graffiti were virtually unheard of. Above all there was not the myriad by-laws and council policies dictating where we can and cannot smoke, swim, eat, sleep, play ball games, park cars, pitch tents, light fires, hose gardens or ride push-bikes. All this, coupled with a relatively benign climate, no man-eating animals, a fertile, vast, fantastic countryside and a welfare system that ensured nobody starved, meant that in 1961, good or bad, right or wrong, no country in the world — not even the much touted USA — was more attractive, more hospitable or better suited to life on the open road than Australia.
In essence there were three types who took to the roads. The first group was the original fair-dinkum swagmen, homeless vagabonds who not only carried all their worldly possessions on their backs but, for some, the psychological baggage of war, disaster or personal tragedy that so often derails life. In the main, the swaggies were unsociable loners who kept themselves to themselves. Sometimes they might find employment on a farm or cattle station, and sometimes they might get drunk for weeks on end. Some were real characters, others complete bums, but almost all of them were scornful, occasionally resentful of the two other upstart groups that were increasingly invading their patch.
Itinerant workers, who may or may not have their own transport but still lived fairly rough for most of the year, followed the seasonal work up and down the country as they had done since the Depression. Many were married with families to feed; paying the mortgage was their holy grail no matter the cost to family life caused by long separations.
The third group was the newly emancipated young from the cities. Whether idle surfers intent only on catching the next wave, or wayward youths looking for excitement or just something to do, few in this group had particular goals or aims other than not being prepared to enslave themselves to the soulless nine-to-five grind their fathers had been forced to endure all their lives. Life had to be better than that! The problem was most of them were spectacularly ill-prepared for the nomadic, transient lifestyle they set out on; meaning they were rarely comfortable, frequently hungry, often delinquent and occasionally stupid. Only one thing was common to these three groups; they were almost exclusively male; some no more than boys.