Chapter Eleven

Let the Games Begin

In late November 1956 Melbourne police intercepted a letter addressed to Prime Minister Robert Menzies and handed it over to the nation’s chief spy. Dated 18 November, it was written in Russian. ‘Mr Menzies,’ the letter began, ‘I desire to settle in Australia and I am appealing to you as I would to my father to allow me to remain here. I have nobody left except you now.’

It was accompanied by another letter, this one simply addressed to ‘Immigration Office, Elizabeth St, Melbourne’. That letter was written in Ukrainian. Neither letter had a return address, only the words ‘Free Australia Nina’.1

Those Australians who had been following the news would have known that ‘Nina’ was the stewardess who had gone missing from the Soviet ship Gruzia, anchored at Port Melbourne for the Olympic Games, a few days before. Already her disappearance was shaping up as an international incident.

Her letter to Menzies was pleading:

I beg you to save me from the Russians with whom there is no life. Throughout my whole life, I have not known freedom and I hated communism. I ask you very much not to refuse my application to remain here. If you hand me back to be shot by a Russian bullet I prefer to be shot here by your bullet. I have decided to remain here for the rest of my life.

The anti-communist message of Paranyuk’s letter was a powerful endorsement of Menzies’ opposition to the ‘socialist menace’, which was so strident he had tried to outlaw the Communist Party in Australia.

But ASIO director-general Brigadier Charles Spry was unmoved. He advised the prime minister that there was no evidence Paranyuk was the author of the letter, and that a formal response ‘would only result in unseemly haggling and unwelcome publicity’:

My own opinion is that these letters have been despatched — if indeed they are from the lady in question — at the instigation of her ‘harbourers’ in an attempt to precipitate an issue which has been overshadowed by the Games. I have no doubt that it is their hope that action will be taken on these letters and that she will be granted political asylum. Such a precedent would then be used by them to provoke others.2

Spry’s message was clear: this could well be an act of opportunism rather than a legitimate plea for help. The world’s attention was on Melbourne. The Soviets already believed that ASIO was planning to provoke defections among its team, and Spry knew Australia had to proceed carefully to ensure no one jumped to the wrong conclusion.3 A false move could trigger a Soviet withdrawal from the Olympics, and spark a diplomatic incident that would wreck the Games and imperil the nation’s security.

If Paranyuk was to trying to defect, the ASIO chief knew, the matter had to be handled with delicacy and tact. Spry’s overriding priority was to ensure that nothing political interfered with the Games. ‘I would recommend that where such a course is practicable an applicant for political asylum should be encouraged to defer his final break until all the competitive events are over,’ Spry told Menzies. The prime minister was in firm agreement. Nina, however, had upset those plans: she had gone missing at a time when the world was looking at Australia. It was the scenario Spry had feared, and the Gruzia was at the centre of his anxiety.

‘The individual concerned might already have compromised himself with his fellow countrymen when he makes his application for asylum and it might be unsafe or unwise for him to return to them,’ Spry wrote ahead of the Olympics. ‘The presence of a Soviet ship in Melbourne during the Games, to which any Communist national might be transported and detained, is of real importance in this connection.’ In anticipation of such an outcome, where it became impossible for a member of the Soviet team or its operation to return to the ship, Menzies gave Spry the authority to act, with minimal consultation. But the problem for Nina’s case was that no one could find her. No one knew exactly what her circumstances were, what she had to offer, and if she was genuine.

The situation turned theatrical. ‘I have decided to commit suicide on the day [the] Gruzia leaves Melbourne,’ one of Nina’s letters claimed. ‘I shall be in the port and as soon as the Gruzia signals her departure, I’ll jump in to the sea to help the Russian people.’ It was the promise of a desperate woman. To the public, it seemed that no one was willing or able to help her, let alone believe her. Nina Paranyuk was apparently abandoned to her fate while the country she wanted to call home watched the curtain rise on the biggest sporting party in its history.

*

Five days before the Olympic Games opened in Melbourne, the other Olympic festival was launched at the city’s National Gallery. The opening of the Olympic Arts Festival was the moment when Melbourne’s high society met high art. The women wore gowns, furs, jewels, and, in one case, a tiara. The men’s attire was all black ties, sashes, and medals. The Victorian governor, Sir Dallas Brooks, stood in front of a large group of international Olympic officials, local VIPs, and a smattering of city council officials to open the festival.

His tone was downbeat, verging on the apologetic. ‘Our national treasures have not been brought forward in any spirit of boastfulness,’ he said. ‘We simply offer the best we have.’ The British playwright and wit Noël Coward once described Dallas Brooks as ‘a typical Royal Marine officer, which means he was efficient, sentimental and had perfect manners’. Perhaps it was the manners — pointing out that Australian culture was not quite good enough — that came to the fore in the governor’s next remarks: ‘Australia is only a young country and we are very proud of our achievements. But we are also fully conscious of our shortcomings. So we hope you will find something to enjoy and admire in the exhibitions and we all look forward to learning something from your friendly criticism.’4

Sir Dallas’s sentiment chimed with Melbourne’s mood: it was trying hard to be worthy of the world’s attention but expected to come up short of providing the sort of international experiences visitors were used to. This feeling found its strongest expression in the arts festival. Not only was it a secondary and largely forgotten adjunct to the Games, but the caution surrounding it was in stark contrast to the anticipation — and confidence — which attended the nation’s athletes. Sir Dallas had metaphorically put the nation’s writers, artists, architects, and musicians into a collective act of self-abnegation. No one publicly challenged his view of the cultural offering; no one seemed particularly interested. The festival of sport was where the real business of national promotion was going to be done. And that party was just getting started.

*

A heady mix of Olympic VIPs, international visitors, and national and local dignitaries became regulars at the social whirl around the Games. Mrs Brundage admitted to 41 social engagements during the Games, and the prime minister at least ten parties in the first week.5

There was even a frisson of pride when the Marchioness of Landsdowne — from a family of British peers dating back to the country’s first prime minister — had to shop locally for a new frock. ‘I brought only short evening dresses with me from England, but I’m so impressed by the glorious clothes your women are wearing to all these Olympic festivities, I had to hurry out and buy something more befitting a gala,’ she said, with the impeccable manners of the upper class.6 The locals purred. Even Avery Brundage’s impact on the Games was celebrated in a particularly Australian manner: a cocktail was named after him. The Brundage Buster had brandy, sweet vermouth, vodka, some maraschino, and apricot brandy (just a dash).7 There was a squeeze of lemon, topped with ginger ale and soda. Here was a drink that packed a wallop, just like the man himself.

Spectators keen not to miss any of the opening ceremony camped outside the MCG the night before to ensure they could get a place in the standing-room section of the ground. Some were women who came straight from work, while others brought chairs, flasks, and even a Davy Crockett hat to keep themselves comfortable during the night.8

Bruce Howard felt there was an overriding sense of doubt that Melbourne would pull the Games off. ‘I think people were nervous, the attitude that we’ve bitten off more than we can chew here,’ he explained. Many felt that if Melbourne made a good fist of the opening, everything after that would be all right. Howard made his way to the MCG, mingling with the crowd.

By midday on 22 November 1956, three hours before the opening ceremony was to start, the MCG was already half-full. The weather had been cool and wet in the lead-up to the Games, which not surprisingly had contributed to a growing sense of anxiety in Melbourne. It had been a sunny morning, but still many male spectators were in suits and ties. By midafternoon the temperature hit 27 degrees.

The mood in the stadium was heating up too: the torch was not far away. It had taken a remarkable journey down the coast after the dramas of getting to Cairns. More than 30,000 people had gathered at Sydney Town Hall to await the torch’s arrival, but it was almost upstaged by a hoax torch made out of a plum pudding tin and a chair leg. The tin contained three pairs of Army-issue men’s underpants and a quart of kerosene. The bloke who finished up carrying it was a Sydney University student called Barry Larkin. Even though he was wearing long grey trousers, a white shirt, and a green tie, rather than the white T-shirt and shorts of every other relay runner, Larkin was given a police escort for the final stage of his run. He bounded up the steps to hand the ‘torch’ to Lord Mayor Pat Hills, who took it and embarked on a short speech to the 30,000 people thronging around the Town Hall. But the silver paint on the fake torch was still fresh and came off in Hills’ hand.

Marcus Marsden, who was standing next to the lord mayor, recognised Larkin from when he was studying at the University of Melbourne. Marsden tapped the official on the shoulder and told him that he wasn’t holding the real torch. ‘[That] was a trial run by our friends at the university who apparently think this is funny,’ Hills said to the crowd, trying to save the situation. Minutes later the real torch arrived.

Now, in Melbourne, the torch was making its final approach towards the MCG. Earlier that day, the teenager who would carry the torch into the stadium and light the Olympic cauldron had been picked up at his home in Essendon by a chauffeured car and taken to the MCG. He was given a balaclava and an old Army pullover to disguise him from the press and officials at the ground. Secrecy about the identity of the final torch carrier was paramount. There had been much speculation about who it would be, but the suggested names didn’t include the runner finally selected for the honour. At 10 am, before the general public was admitted, the runner had set off on a test lap of the MCG, carrying a torch fired by a magnesium flare candle. This was a different mechanism to the relay torches, which were designed to burn with a low flame for only seven or eight minutes. The magnesium flare created an almost pyrotechnic effect, sparking and arcing from the torch. By the end of the trial lap, the sleeve of the Army jumper was lacerated by sparks.

One person had worked out who was under the balaclava: radio station 3AW’s Norman Banks, who had come to the MCG early and recognised the runner’s stride during the rehearsal lap. Banks broke an exclusive story about the Olympic torch carrier’s identity several hours ahead of the event.

The torch had one more hurdle before it reached Melbourne. Marsden’s convoy of helpers from the university medical school had been promised all-venue passes to every Games event when they had joined the relay. The passes were to be distributed when the torch team reached Brisbane, but the passes hadn’t turned up — and they weren’t in Sydney either. Once the convoy crew reached Bendigo, the students let Marsden know that unless they received the passes the following morning, they would strike and the torch would have to find its way to Melbourne without them. The ultimatum worked and the passes reached Bendigo in time.9

Relay runners’ police escorts had to be strengthened to cope with the massive crowds lining the streets when the torch reached Melbourne. The final route went along Spencer Street, up Collins Street, past the Town Hall, right into Spring Street, and left into Wellington Parade, at which point the MCG almost came into sight.

At Clarendon Street, in East Melbourne, Victorian steeplechase champion Doug Eales took the torch for the final stage of the relay. Eales would actually finish at the Richmond Cricket Ground, where the athletes were being marshalled for the march into the opening ceremony. Eales was then to enter the MCG through the players’ race leading to a small green wooden door and then to a room in the Olympic Stand, where he would complete the final handover.

Eales got changed in a room beneath the Olympic cauldron, donned his relay uniform and donated white Dunlop Volley shoes, and went to receive the torch. Once he had it, he ran along Wellington Parade, down Vale Street, through the park, and then into the Richmond ground. He was due to be there at 4.24 pm. An attendant at the Richmond ground spotted the torch and went to give Eales entry through the gates, so that Eales could continue on to the MCG. But someone had mistakenly padlocked the gates and the attendant didn’t have a key. After so much time and so many miles, a padlocked gate now threatened to end the 1956 Olympic torch relay at its most critical point.

Eales was desperate. Could he get around the gate somehow? Would that make him late delivering the torch? How long would the flame last? He set off around the ground and saw a ticket booth. He slid in through the booth, galloped across the adjoining park, past the milling Olympians, and headed off to the green door that led him back to the room underneath the cauldron.

The 4,594-kilometre torch journey was practically at an end. The deadline had been 4.32 pm on 22 November, and the torch had made it.

Eales’ flame was transferred to the ceremonial torch and handed to Ron Clarke, the junior world record holder for the mile, who was about to take the Olympic flame into the MCG.10

By the time Clarke was ready to emerge from the bare concrete room where he had been waiting, the clouds had rolled in and it had become humid. Bruce Howard had gone to the position he had identified a fortnight earlier, and was set up for the moment when the cauldron would be lit. His instructions were clear: get an upright shot of the moment Clarke lit the flame. He had his Speedgraphic camera and standard lens ready. The shot was in Howard’s head.

After the second round Salute of Guns at the opening ceremony, Clarke emerged with the torch, sparking and firing, creating its own fireworks against the bruised sky. The sudden change in weather had created the perfect backdrop for the torch’s pyrotechnics. Nearby athletes ran alongside Clarke, trying to get their own pictures, but Clarke kept on running, completing the lap, not pausing to brush away the sparks that were falling on his arm. He disappeared from view to mount the steps to the cauldron. After the cauldron had been slow to ignite at the morning trial, the gas had been turned on well in advance.

Clarke emerged on to a platform near the cauldron and paused, holding the torch aloft. The crowd roared, and Howard thought for a moment that the young man looked like a statue of sport. He was captivated by the image: it would make a wonderful photograph. The temptation to shoot a frame was hard to resist, but Howard knew that if he took that shot, he may miss the image he had been sent to take. Clarke was about 30 metres away and down in front of Howard.

Now Clarke took a step towards the cauldron. Howard readied himself. Clarke stepped onto a stool and touched the torch into the cauldron, and the Olympic flame roared to life, pushing Clarke back for a moment before he regained his poise. At that moment Clarke felt ‘an eerie sensation of omnipotence’.11

Howard squeezed the shutter button. It was one frame, no more — no time.

He secured his camera in his camera bag and bolted down the stairs, out of the stadium, and out onto Wellington Parade, where a motorcyclist was waiting for him. He climbed on and was driven straight to Flinders Street, where a lift was being held to take him up to editorial and the darkroom. The processing trays were ready — the developer had been warmed to speed up the processing — when Howard rushed in. He was vaguely aware of there being more people in the darkroom than he had ever seen, but nothing distracted him. From processing the film, he then made one print and handed it to The Herald’s production team. It was just 15 minutes from taking the photo to handing over the image.

In the meantime, Clarke was having treatment for burns to his arm from the torch sparks. The torch kept burning for more than five minutes, despite the best efforts of Marsden and his team to extinguish it. It even briefly set fire to the bitumen roof of the building that was the cauldron’s base.

Clarke, his parents, and Clarke’s girlfriend, Helen, would take the train home that evening. Along with 102,000 other people who left the MCG, they were able to buy the special final edition of The Herald that featured Bruce Howard’s picture of Clarke lighting the Olympic flame.

*

The international reaction to the opening ceremony was the sort of publicity the organising committee had been craving. One UK reporter, who had been to three Summer and two Winter Olympics, declared it at least the equal, if not the best of those he had seen.12 The Canadians were told the Games opened ‘in a riot of colour, music, pageantry and brotherly love’. The somewhat acerbic but always engaging US sportswriter Red Smith likened the MCG’s ‘double decked old stands with weathered red brick suggest nothing so much as a brewery in south St Louis. Grafted on to them is a sleek new addition of battleship grey, triple decked and as modern as penicillin.’ He found the whole torch and Olympic flame routine a little tired. ‘[Clarke] tossed his torch in to a gilded gaboon that looked a little like a trash incinerator. Thanks to the gas and fuel corporation of Victoria flame leapt from this dingy urn and will leap until the gas man turns it off.’

Smith’s greatest criticism was saved for the emerging Cold War narrative that came to characterise the 1956 Olympics:

Beneath this effluvium from the founder of the modern Olympics was a reminder to the jingoists who try to picture this muscle dance as a head on collision of democratic and communist ideologies: ‘Classification of points on a national basis is not recognised.’ In other words, this is for fun, and no death struggle between the United States and Russia.13

Smith’s idealism was catching. The Manchester Guardian reporter observed: ‘Melbourne is happy tonight and full of peace. Furore and the Middle East seem not only far away but something in another world.’14

The dignitaries at the opening ceremony had addressed the fractured international situation directly. The old Olympian and devoted amateur Kent Hughes told the packed MCG at the opening ceremony that the Olympic spirit outrode the storms of international ‘misunderstandings’; he hoped that the festival of sport would rekindle an enthusiasm for nations to uphold the Olympic spirit. At the Olympic banquet that night Prime Minister Menzies admitted that the world was not an easy or comfortable place: ‘I believe that the Olympic organisation will do much to bring about that balance, that sensible and human understanding of men and affairs which the world has only to learn to usher in the greatest period of peace we have ever known.’15

Avery Brundage was similarly optimistic about the spirit of sportsmanship and fair play. It was their absence, he said, that helped explain why there were international tensions. Brundage went on to praise Australia and the Melbourne organising committee: ‘British Commonwealth members do not know how to spell words like “program” but when it comes to sport and amateurism they know not only the spelling but also understand the spirit.’16 Brundage was playing to the head table: the Duke of Edinburgh, who opened the Games, and Menzies.

For those who weren’t interested in Brundage’s soft soap, there was always the Duke’s ringing endorsement of the organising committee. ‘The committee can relax. For once it is not going to be abused,’ he said. ‘I have the most profound admiration for the organising committee … People have come from all over the world to see athletes compete in peace and brotherhood.’17

Indeed they had. The Games of the XVI Olympiad, in Melbourne — miles away, out of season, and a basket case of missteps and broken promises — had delivered the first day of its great sports festival. Just how deeply this feeling of brotherly love went would become clearer on the first day of the track competition.

*

Vladimir Kuts had survived famine and the loss of many relatives and friends in Ukraine, slave labour under the Nazis, and regular beatings with a club — all before he was 16. He escaped his captors and became part of the Soviet Army’s fight against the Germans while he was still a teenager. There was no doubt that Kuts had forsaken Ukraine for Mother Russia. ‘He lived with a gun in his hand and death at his shoulder in the battle for the Soviet Union,’ one observer remarked.18

Kuts came to Melbourne with his eye on the 10,000 metres and 5,000 metres double. With the legendary Czech distance runner Emil Zátopek still recovering from hernia-related injuries and fit perhaps only for the marathon, Kuts’ biggest rival would be Englishman Gordon Pirie. The 10,000 metres gold medal would be decided on the first day of the athletics.

Kuts had a coxcomb of blond hair, a steely look, and a remorselessness to his running that extinguished hope from his opponents. Not even a car accident outside the village in the days before competition interfered with his preparation. At the MCG Kuts surged and stalled, surged and stalled, taunting Pirie, and eventually leaching the spirit from him. With four laps to go, Pirie thought he could still win it, but Kuts was unbreakable, and Pirie felt the soft, yielding surface at the MCG slowly sapping his strength. There was no way back for Pirie, and the Russian surged to the gold medal.

Kuts’ performance provoked an extraordinary crowd response. There was no sense of animosity, no cavil about communism, nothing but enthusiasm for an athlete dominating his event. The Cold War hostilities appeared to have been suspended. Bruce Howard felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as the crowd roared their support for the Russian. ‘When you consider the tension in the world in advance, the Russians doing what they did and him coming to Australia and everyone probably being anti-Russian, it was a classic case of sport transcending everything,’ Howard said. ‘When Kuts did those victory laps, everyone stood.’19

The victory meant Kuts was the first male Russian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. Kuts pointed out that the running track ‘was very bad on the inside’, but not even this mild criticism could detract from the bonhomie generated at the MCG. Several days later, Kuts told the Australian communist newspaper Tribune: ‘Sport has found a common language out here in Melbourne. They have helped the cause of peace … [Australian crowds] are wonderful. It is a pleasure to run before them. The Australian people are very sporting. I like their attitude.’20

*

It wasn’t quite so warm at the Gruzia, where Nina Paranyuk’s absence was becoming a problem.

Filimonov and Zaikin were immediately involved after they were told of her disappearance. The pair called on the minister for external affairs Richard Casey’s head of protocol, Francis Stuart, to find out what the Australians were doing about her disappearance, and to gauge how much the locals actually knew about her whereabouts. Not content with the answers they received, they rang Stuart three times later that day, seeking more information. They suspected Paranyuk had been lured into leaving the ship by people on the dockside who encouraged her ‘to come over’, and that she was in the clutches of white Russians, and therefore associating with those who were no friends of Moscow. These elements, they told Stuart, would exploit Paranyuk and harm Australian–Soviet relations.

The Soviet officials also thought it worthwhile to give Stuart a snapshot of Paranyuk’s personality: she was a nervous type, prone to despondency, timid but a good worker, although slovenly in her personal habits. The implication was that Nina Paranyuk was not an ideal citizen.

Stuart discerned a larger agenda lurking behind all of this bluster: he told Canberra the two consuls were close to making a threat about Russia pulling out of the Games.21 This was the scenario Spry had warned cabinet about months before. The Soviet consuls let the threat hang in the air while they pursued the more mundane aspects of the investigation.

Filimonov alerted Special Branch to a person who had offered the Gruzia’s crew some idea of where Paranyuk might be. The informant was someone who was loitering around the ship, and he claimed to be able to show them a house and a car that could help the investigation. Detective Sergeant James Rosengren went to Appleton Dock but had no success in finding the informant.

Publicly, Menzies said there had been no application for political asylum — whether this was accurate depended on your reading of Nina’s letters to the prime minister. This wasn’t the only instance of public statements appearing to be at odds with private information. ASIO had been at the Melbourne Zoo and taken photographs of the group that Paranyuk was part of: it appeared she was among them. In another odd omission, the Russians didn’t even contemplate using the Navigation Act, which would have enabled them to charge Paranyuk with desertion. The catch was that it would only have the power of law while the Gruzia was in Australian waters. So, who would blink first: Paranyuk or the Soviets?

*

In the village there were attempts to promote an atmosphere of détente. Bruce Howard spent many hours there, especially before competition started, and saw little evidence of tension. He took a photograph of a Russian lifting an American on his shoulders during one training session at the village, an image contrary to the narrative of the day. Red Smith observed something more compelling when he came across US sprinter Andy Stanfield and Russian hurdler Boris Stolyarov playing chess. ‘He’s a nice guy,’ Stanfield told Smith. ‘You should have seen him dancing with the girls last night.’22

But there were tensions, about the Hungarian flag and erroneous reports in the Melbourne papers that the Czechs had threatened to put the Hungarians in concentration camps if they refused to attend the Games. When Andor Mészáros visited the village, he was struck by his countrymen’s listlessness in the face of the tragedy in Budapest. ‘The poor Hungarian athletes did not know what to do — go home or stay,’ Mészáros said. After he had handed out some of the medallions he had designed, he noticed how few of the athletes thanked him. ‘[T]heir mind was so preoccupied. It was a sad sight to see them lifelessly linger about.’23

For Marlene Mathews, the village was a different experience: this was her first Olympics and it all seemed novel. ‘[T]here was no sign of racism and there was no sign of any political differences whatsoever, irrespective of whether you were Russian, Chinese or whatever, everybody belonged to everybody else,’ she said.24 Getting to know your own country men and women was a bit more of a challenge. The men and women were separated by a wire fence, and although Mathews knew John Landy, she had no chance to socialise with anyone. The separate accommodation meant the athlete you roomed with was the person you saw the most of. Mathews didn’t know the women in the Australian field team, or any of the swimmers. But for the moment, her biggest challenge was preparing for the heats of the 100 metres.

Mathews got nervous before every race. Maybe it was genetic — her father, who developed a heart condition, put an angina tablet on his tongue whenever his daughter was about to run. The heats and semifinals of the 100 metres were to be held on the first Saturday of the Games, 24 November. There were six gold medal candidates across the six heats: Mathews, Cuthbert, Giuseppina Leone, from Italy, the Soviet Union’s Galina Popova, and Germans Gisela Köhler and Christa Stubnick. On previous performances Leone and Popova didn’t have the speed of the Australian girls, and Popova had injured her leg a week before the Games. Köhler had some good times, but her form was patchy, and she was a far better hurdler. That left Stubnick as the most likely challenger.25

Mathews admitted that the Australian athletes’ knowledge of their overseas rivals was limited. There was hardly any sports coverage of international athletics in the Australian newspapers or on the radio. She certainly knew about Cuthbert’s form: they spent just about every weekend competing against each other in club, state, or national competition.26

The 100 metres heats were run in a testing headwind. Leone won the first heat in 11.8 seconds. Mathews was the clear favourite in the second heat, and ran impressively to win easily, equalling Marjorie Jackson’s Olympic record of 11.5 seconds. Cuthbert dominated the next heat, and pipped Jackson and Mathews’ mark by 0.1 of a second, setting a new Olympic record. Popova won the fifth heat in 11.6 seconds, and Stubnick won the sixth in 11.7 seconds. Köhler, too, qualified for the semifinal after finishing second in her heat. So all the favourites progressed through to the next round.

Cuthbert and Mathews were drawn in separate semifinals. The wind was stronger later in the day, and no one expected the fast times to be repeated. Stubnick won the first semi in 11.9 seconds, with Cuthbert 0.1 seconds behind her, and Leone third. Mathews narrowly won her semifinal, ahead of British runner Heather Armitage and Isabelle Daniels of the United States. The women had a nervous 48-hour wait, with the final not being run until 5.20 pm on the Monday.

Mathews was toey in the build-up — she had nothing else to do but prepare for the final. There was also an expectation now. If not the outright favourite, she was one of them. Marjorie Jackson had won the gold in the 100 metres in Helsinki: surely an Aussie girl could do it again? Mathews always felt she ran better in her second race of the day — a final after a heat — but she wouldn’t have that chance in the final. It was one race, lasting a little over 11 seconds, and you had no chance to fix any mistakes or change your strategy.

The next day, she was calmer than she had expected as she got on the blocks. A firm breeze blew in her face. The crowd was pulsing with anticipation. The gun went off and the crowd roared. Mathews looked up and saw five women already in front of her. Her notoriously slow start had come back to haunt her. Betty Cuthbert had burst from the blocks. Daniels too. At 30 metres Cuthbert was in front. At 50 metres her lead was a metre. Marlene was last. She vowed to herself that was not where she would finish.

Daniels tried to match it with Cuthbert in the last half of the race, but Marlene had found her groove, as had Stubnick. The pair of them raced up to Daniels but still couldn’t catch Cuthbert, who crossed the line 1.2 metres ahead of Stubnick. It looked like Daniels had finished third, but a photo-finish image showed that Mathews had just got the bronze. Cuthbert’s time was 11.5 seconds.

Mathews’ disappointment was almost tangible. ‘It was the worst race of my life,’ she said. ‘You just rely on what you practise,’ she explained — but a slow start was never part of the plan. She had trained on the blocks to help her overcome her difficult starts, but, at the key moment, it didn’t happen.

In time, Mathews would reflect on what had made Cuthbert an Olympic champion: Betty had a killer instinct. Mathews liked winning but Cuthbert thrived in the competitive environment — and she had a gold medal to prove it.

*

The Olympic Arts Festival failed to find an audience. The problem was not the art; those who saw it discerned something contrary to Sir Dallas’s opening remarks — there were signs of a local culture worth celebrating. No, the problem was that Melbourne — and the rest of the nation — had other things to look at.

The Age lamented that the festival was ‘held in an atmosphere of hushed calm and has attracted few visitors’. A reviewer, Alan Nicholls, wrote in the same publication: ‘The exhibitions are so fine in themselves and mark such a significant turning point in the Australian arts, that this lack of interest is astonishing.’27 Nicholls blamed a lack of publicity for the patronage problem, and could not contemplate any other reason for the audience being ‘only a thin sprinkling of students’. ‘There was hardly anyone present over 25,’ he continued, ‘and I did not once succeed in identifying an Olympic visitor.’28

Nicholls was right to argue that it would be a long time before Australia got the chance to put on a national cultural exhibition again. The most popular elements of the festival program were the public music performances, which included a sellout concert featuring a combined Sydney Symphony and Victorian Symphony orchestras, conducted by Sir Bernard Heinze at the Olympic pool. Menzies and a host of other dignitaries turned up and enjoyed what The Age appropriately called ‘communal arts’.

In truth, the arts festival was doomed from the start. The budget was limited, there was little appetite for it among the Melbourne Olympic organisers, and it was supervised by someone who had little interest in the end result. The festival was under the overall coordination of Maurice Nathan’s civics committee. Nathan was a businessman, with extensive connections to the football fraternity, but save for his successful push for the outdoor Melbourne festival that became Moomba, he was neither a patron nor a purveyor of high culture. And yet he opened the architectural and sculptural sections of the arts festival. Australia was on firm ground celebrating sport. But art and culture? That was another matter entirely.

The festival exhibitions were critically applauded, but their inability to engage audiences spoke loudly about what people in Melbourne wanted to see at that time. Not surprisingly, the man behind the festival, Avery Brundage, refused to see it as anything other than a success:

When [the Olympics] first began in ancient Greece, there was only one athletic event. More time was devoted to composing music, writing odes and making sculpture. Melbourne has done very well in this regard also. We are very happy about the music and the grand opera and the museum exhibition of art which has been put on as part of the Olympic festival.29

As long as Brundage was happy, then everyone in the Olympic movement was happy. The rest of the country had other distractions — in Sydney and Melbourne it was called television.

*

Television’s arrival had been preceded by a range of vested interests making sure that any misgivings about the new medium did not undermine it in the eyes of the audience. The evidence from other television markets in Britain and the United States was applied to the Australian consumer, with an attempt to reassure them that television was not the bogeyman that critics, including some churches, were suggesting.

Bold statements about television’s capacity to make ‘happier homes’ became part of the general discussion. Home had become increasingly important: it was the focus of family life. The emergence of new jobs that didn’t entail unsociable shifts in noisy factories meant that families were able to spend more time together. Although jobs in manufacturing were still growing, there was also a sizeable increase in white-collar jobs, across the property, finance, retail, professional, and entertainment sectors during the decade.30 The worries about what young people were up to — whether they were listening to rock’n’roll, or, worse, hanging out with bodgies or widgies — ensured that teenagers’ behaviour was a frequent topic of discussion when it came to TV. The Church of Scotland argued that television had a positive impact on teenagers. ‘Many more people, and especially young people, are prepared to spend the evening at home when the TV programme promises to be attractive, rather than go out and seek entertainment,’ the church claimed. ‘The increase of this habit may possibly play a really important part in the restoration of the family.’31 It was a nice idea, and might even have been true.

Beyond doubt was that television had an impact on how families decorated their lounge rooms and what forms of heating they used. The British Coal Utilisation Council found that a quarter of those who had bought TV sets had improved the comfort of their ‘viewing room’, with more comfortable chairs and small tables for their snacks. A further 40 per cent of TV owners changed their heating arrangements, because their source of warmth was in the wrong spot for them to watch the television.32

In Australia the advent of television forced families to make a choice about their next domestic purchase. The early evidence was that those who were buying TVs were sacrificing a new refrigerator or radio set for their television. Television sets were made locally, which was a useful antidote to the nation’s balance-of-trade problem, and families were comforted to know that both their car and their television were made in Australia. By the end of 1956, there were 40,000 Australian-made TV sets. The number was expected to grow to 300,000 by the end of 1957, driven by the boom growth in the number of manufacturers, which reached a giddy 23 at one stage.

Even so, televisions were not cheap. An Astor Table model — a standalone television, with a 17-inch screen and ‘high fidelity sound’ — cost 95 guineas, or almost £100. It was a fair indicator that televisions had some social cachet when the price tag came in guineas, as it was a currency that was usually only used for something of substance. Fridges could be more expensive, but they still only came in pounds — £166 for a unit of 7¾ cubic feet.

Another thing that made the television different was that only 20 per cent of customers took up the offered terms and bought their TV on a ‘hire purchase’ scheme. Most consumers paid cash.33 This was a significant departure from the growing tendency for Australian consumers to use hire purchase: at the end of 1955 Australia had a hire purchase debt of £200 million, twice what it had been only three and a half years earlier.34 The Menzies government was not best pleased with the frequency of hire purchase, blaming it for contributing to inflation, but the truth was it enabled many consumers to buy whitegoods, furniture, and, of course, cars. But in this instance, televisions were the kind of purchase that most Australians were happy to pay for up front. There was something fundamentally different between the necessity of owning a fridge and buying a piece of technology that delivered entertainment into the home.

If you didn’t get to the Games, and you weren’t able to access a television, there was no way you could see any other moving vision of Olympic events, as private filming was outlawed at the Games — with one exception: the president of the Australian Olympic Federation, Prime Minister Menzies. Menzies was a keen amateur filmmaker, who took his camera to the Games even though only accredited newsreel filmmakers were technically able to do so. The issue, for everyone else, was spelt out very clearly when the organising committee realised that some newspaper photographers were shooting movie film when they were not accredited to do so. The committee stated those caught shooting movie film would be asked to show their accreditation cards.35 Menzies had already compiled footage of the London Blitz, of the British royal family, and even of the Churchill family. He took his 16-millimetre movie camera, and from his privileged position — slightly elevated and in close proximity to the finish line for the track events at the MCG — shot a number of events, including Betty Cuthbert’s heat in the 200 metres.

The film showed the ease of Cuthbert’s win: she was almost 1.5 seconds quicker than her nearest rival. Marlene Mathews knew Cuthbert was an outstanding 200 metres runner, and it was a distance that Mathews didn’t much like. But her disappointment in the 100 metres drove her to do better in the 200 metres. Her previous form over the distance meant that she came into the event outside the world’s top six performers; her best time was 24 seconds dead, while Cuthbert’s record, set in September, was 23.2 seconds, a huge difference in a sprint race.

Cuthbert’s heat was the quickest by a long chalk, with Mathews winning her heat in 24 seconds. The other four heats were won by women recording slower times. Once again, the two Australians were the fastest qualifiers. Cuthbert ran another swift race at 23.6 to finish in front of Stubnick in the first semifinal. In the other semi Britain’s June Paul beat Mathews, with both of them recording over 24 seconds. On the face of it the race was Cuthbert’s to lose: she was 0.3 seconds quicker than Stubnick, and more than half a second ahead of everyone else who qualified for the final.

Cuthbert drew lane five in the final. Stubnick was outside her. Paul, who on the semifinal performance looked a likely bronze medallist, had Mathews on her inside. Queenslander Norma Croker qualified in the same time as Mathews, and was the third Australian in the field.

The start was delayed twice to shoo photographers away from the area, but when the gun went off for the third time, Marlene got away better than in the 100 metres final. Cuthbert, though, had got to the front early and opened a good lead on Stubnick, with Mathews some distance behind. Stubnick narrowed the gap on Cuthbert, and Mathews was threatening for the silver, as Paul, who had been holding her position, lost her rhythm and started to fall away through the bend and into the straight. Croker started to surge into contention for a medal. Mathews ranged up to Stubnick, but Cuthbert was too far in front for both of them. Cuthbert crossed the line for her second gold, four metres ahead of Stubnick and Mathews, who were almost locked together. Mathews’ bronze medal performance was her fastest ever time in the 200 metres, 23.8 seconds, just 0.4 seconds slower than Cuthbert’s.36 Croker finished just behind Mathews.

Her second bronze of the Olympics came with an epiphany. Mathews had treated the 200 metres as a race in which she should start flat-out, coast around the bend, and go hard from there. The 1956 Melbourne Games taught her that there was another, better way. ‘That was the first time I realised that I had to go flat out from start to finish, and that changed my whole aspect [on the race],’ she explained.37 But Mathews still had her greatest disappointment to come.

*

The time had come, Merv Wood said, to give up rowing. He and Murray Riley took the bronze medal in the double sculls, beaten by the Russians, who took the gold, and the Americans, with silver. ‘I’m now too old to row in first-class events,’ Wood said after the race. ‘I’m 39 and my time has come.’ It was a pragmatic end to a glorious career that had started 20 years earlier, at the Berlin Olympics, and ended with his third Olympic final, at Lake Wendouree, in Ballarat. Murray Riley gave no hint of his future plans. No one was sure if he would continue rowing without Wood’s stability and strength to guide him.

*

The captain of the Gruzia, Elizabaz Gogitidze, embarked on a charm offensive, inviting local journalists and some left-wing unionists on board. ‘I have never been aboard a craft more friendly than the Gruzia,’ The Argus’s journalist enthused, praising the captain as a ‘laughing, chunky and gravel-voiced’ man. The ship was ‘immaculate’ and the captain’s hospitality — Russian cigarettes and cognac — was exemplary. ‘All Melbourne people can come to my ship and see my people,’ the captain said. ‘We want to buy from you and sell to you, then everybody can work and eat and be happy.’

Perhaps keen to dissuade the locals from getting the wrong idea about communism, Captain Gogitidze volunteered that his salary was £650 a month, and admitted that he and his sailors were ‘not so poor’.38

The welcome, though, was not unanimous. Gogitidze confessed to representatives of the Seamen’s Union that ‘about 25 per cent’ of visitors to the Gruzia had been ‘very bad types’ who abused the crew and made their anti-Soviet feelings known. There were also what were described as ‘New Australians’, who stood on the wharf and abused the crew until 10 pm. The situation forced Gogitidze to institute a system of official passes for those visitors who wanted to tour the ship.

The union contacted the wharf police, threatening to man the wharf to protect their fellow seamen from the USSR if the police could not restore order. In a reflection of just how sensitive the issue was — and with Nina Paranyuk already missing — the authorities moved swiftly. The official organ of the union reported: ‘The response was immediate and the police called for a daily report, and the captain in thanking us, said “everything was good, no trouble at all now”.’39

*

Five days before the Games ended, planes carrying Hungarian refugees landed in Sydney. The 90 men, women, and children were just the first of the initial 3,000 Hungarians for whom Australia had committed to find homes — and there was growing evidence that this would not be enough. Austria was struggling to deal with the refugee crisis, where 200,000 Hungarians were living in camps at the border. The United States announced it was boosting its original figure of 5,500 refugees to 21,500. The new Hungarian government was vigilant at its border with Austria and reports emerged of between 1,800 and 2,000 Hungarians being caught at the border every day and taken to Hungarian camps.

The group that landed at Mascot airport on the morning of 3 December was made up of 36 men, 28 women, and 26 children aged under 16. There were several family groups, and many of the men had either trades or valuable qualifications — agronomist, chemist, geologist, lawyer, engineer. They would be easy to employ.

They all had stories to tell. One couple was reunited after being separated for eight years — the man had stayed in Budapest getting ready to join his wife in Melbourne, but it took the uprising to sweep away all the barriers to their reunion. A diminutive resistance fighter named Fereno Ritter, who was married to a double-bass player in a Hungarian orchestra, hid in his double-bass case to ensure they crossed the border into Austria safely. For Professor Islvan Pavlovitz, there was also the incentive of coming to a country where barracking at a football match was allowed. The professor of bacteriology at Budapest Technical University had been arrested, put in jail, and dismissed from his university post for barracking too loudly in support of a Hungarian soccer team playing a visiting Soviet side. When he was talking to Australian immigration officials in Vienna, the professor asked the question: ‘Is barracking at football matches banned or restricted in Australia?’ When he was told that barracking was fine, Professor Pavlovitz decided Australia was for him.40 Another refugee said: ‘It was such a heroic but hopeless fight. Boys as young as 13 with few arms and ammunition joined in the fight with whatever weapons they could find. I think conditions will be a little better as a result of the revolution, but it still won’t be real freedom.’41

The United Nations’ deputy high commissioner for refugees, John Read, outlined the extent of the humanitarian challenge: 92,000 Hungarians had arrived in Austria after the uprising, but as of the start of December, only 22,000 could be accommodated in new homes around the world. What was to become of the other 70,000? Two days after the first group of Hungarians arrived in Australia, the government announced it would take another 2,000 under assisted passage agreements. More would need to follow them.

World events were starting to have an impact on Australia’s migration. The requisition of ships, including the ‘migrant ship’ New Australia, for troop movements in the Suez Crisis, had an immediate impact on the number of British migrants coming to Australia. The crisis actually drove interest among non-British migrants, and the number of applications to emigrate lodged at Australia House increased. Australia was still seen as a safe haven in troubled times.

The chairman of the Federal Immigration Planning Council, Mr A.S. Hulme, praised Australia’s quick response to the Hungarian situation: ‘The plight of the Hungarians has aroused the sympathy and interest of all Australians … No other country, except America, has acted as quickly or in such a positive and practical way.’42

Just as ASIO director-general Charles Spry had anticipated, a sizeable number of Hungarian athletes didn’t want to go home. Hungarian officials had been coy in the build-up to the Games about whether there would be any defections, but it became clear as the Games went on that there had been discussions among the team and with local supporters who were prepared to help some athletes stay. In line with Spry’s advice, the Hungarians received no encouragement from Australian officials or government representatives to defect. Just as Nina Paranyuk’s pleading fell on deaf ears, so too did the Hungarian entreaties.

Not everyone was happy about this. The man who had seen the reports in Darwin about the atrocities at home, Miklós Martin, was upset at the Australian response. ‘The Australian authorities would have nothing to do with us,’ he said.43

The deadline for a decision was looming: 7 December was the date the plane carrying the Hungarian team was to leave Melbourne.