Born in 1947? What else happened?

BORN IN 1947?

WHAT ELSE HAPPENED?

RON WILLIAMS

AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL HISTORY

One of 30 Year-Books, covering the period from 1939 to 1968

BOOM, BOOM BABY, BOOM

FRONT MATTER

Published by Boom Books. Wickham, NSW, Australia

Web: www.boombooks.biz Email: [email protected]

Cover design by Billy Boy Design

Distributed by Woodslane Pty Ltd. Warriewood, NSW.

E: [email protected]

© Ron Williams 2017

A single chapter or part thereof may be copied and reproduced without permission, provided that the Author, Title, and Web Site are acknowledged.

Creator: Williams, Ron, 1934- author

Title: Born in 1947? : what else happened? / Ron Williams.

Edition: Premier edition

ISBN: 9780995354975 (paperback)

Australia--History--Miscellanea--20th century.

Dewey Number: 994.04

Some Letters used in this text may still be in copyright. Every reasonable effort has been made to locate the writers. If any persons or their estates can establish authorship, and want to discuss copyright, please contact the author at [email protected]

Cover images: Cover images: National Archives of Australia A1200, L8923, Sir Isaac Isaacs; A1200, L7774, bushwalkers with baby; A1200, L46645, Don Bradman; A1200, L4504, Reverend John Flynn; A1200, L9554, shearing team at work.

IMPORTANT PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Oz Prime Minister Ben Chifley

Opposition Leader Bob Menzies

Governor General William McKell

Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Atlee

Britain’s Opposition Winston Churchill

US President Harry Truman

British Monarch King George VI

Heir to the Throne Princess Elizabeth

Catholic Pope Pope Pius XII

WINNER OF THE ASHES

1938 Drawn Series 1 - 1

1946 - 1947 Australia 3 - 0

1948 Australia 4 - 0

MELBOURNE CUP WINNERS

1946 Russia

1947 Hiraji

1948 Rimfire

ACADEMY AWARDS 1947

BEST ACTOR: Frederick March

BEST ACTRESS: Olivier de Havilland

BEST MOVIE: The Best Years of our Lives

PREFACE TO THE SERIES

This book is the 9th in a series of books that I have researched and written. It tells a story about a number of important or newsworthy Australia-centric events that happened in 1947. The series covers each of the years from 1939 to 1968, for a total of thirty books.

I developed my interest in writing these books a few years ago at a time when my children entered their teens. My own teens started in 1947, and I started trying to remember what had happened to me then. I thought of the big events first, like Saturday afternoon at the pictures, and cricket in the back yard, and the wonderful fun of going to Maitland on the train for school each day. Then I recalled some of the not-so-good things. I was an altar boy, and that meant three or four Masses a week. I might have thought I loved God at that stage, but I really hated his Masses. And the schoolboy bullies, like Greg Favell, and the hapless Freddie Bevan. Yet, to compensate for these, there was always the beautiful, black headed, blue-sailor-suited June Brown, who I was allowed to worship from a distance.

I also thought about my parents. Most of the major events that I lived through came to mind readily. But after that, I realised that I really knew very little about these parents of mine. They had been born about the start of the Twentieth Century, and they died in 1970 and 1980. For their last 20 years, I was old enough to speak with a bit of sense. I could have talked to them a lot about their lives. I could have found out about the times they lived in. But I did not. I know almost nothing about them really. Their courtship? Working in the pits? The Lock-out in the Depression? Losing their second child? Being dusted as a miner? The shootings at Rothbury? My uncles killed in the war? There were hundreds, thousands of questions that I would now like to ask them. But, alas, I can’t. It’s too late.

Thus, prompted by my guilt, I resolved to write these books. They describe happenings that affected people, real people. In 1947, there is some coverage of international affairs, but a lot more on social events within Australia. This book, and the whole series is, to coin a modern phrase, designed to push the reader’s buttons, to make you remember and wonder at things forgotten. The books might just let nostalgia see the light of day, so that oldies and youngies will talk about the past and re-discover a heritage otherwise forgotten. Hopefully, they will spark discussions between generations, and foster the asking and the answering of questions that should not remain unanswered.

The sources of my material. I was born in 1934, so that I can remember well a great deal of what went on around me from 1939 onwards. But of course, the bulk of this book’s material came from research. That meant that I spent many hours in front of a computer reading electronic versions of newspapers, magazines, Hansard, Ministers’ Press releases and the like. My task was to sift out, day-by-day, those stories and events that would be of interest to the most readers. Then I supplemented these with materials from books, broadcasts, memoirs, biographies, government reports and statistics. And I talked to old-timers, one-on-one, and in organised groups, and to Baby Boomers about their recollections. People with stories to tell come out of the woodwork, and talk no end about the tragic and funny and commonplace events that have shaped their lives.

The presentation of each book. For each year, the end result is a collection of Chapters on many of the topics that concerned ordinary people in that year. I think I have covered most of the major issues that people then were interested in. On the other hand, in some cases I have dwelt a little on minor frivolous matters, perhaps to the detriment of more sober considerations. Still, in the long run, this makes the book more readable, and hopefully it will convey adequately the spirit of the times.

I have been deliberately national in outlook, so that readers elsewhere will feel comfortable that I am talking about matters that affected them personally. After all, housing shortages and strikes and juvenile delinquency involved all Australians, and other issues, such as problems overseas, had no State component in them. Overall, I expect I can make you wonder, remember, rage and giggle equally, no matter where you hail from.

INTRO TO 1947

Australia in 1947 was a lucky country. That fact might not have been so obvious to the ordinary householder struggling with all the post-war problems that I will soon describe. But it was still true. In England, and in Europe, and China and Japan, and a dozen other parts of the world, citizens of county after country had been bombed, or invaded, starved, imprisoned, tortured, or killed. Entire families had been wiped out, large and small cities destroyed, all infrastructure was unusable, and crops and food supplies were totally inadequate.

We in Australia had seen some of this. In particular, we had seen our beautiful silly young men shipped off to foreign climes to be pointlessly killed and maimed by the beautiful silly young men from other countries. We had seen our crops and farms and infrastructure run down, our households disrupted by war-time conscription for all sorts of jobs, our food rationed, and the dreams of millions of young and old people shattered.

But we had got off lightly, compared to other places. We got off lightly during the war, and also now that it was over. Right now in Europe there were tens of millions of good, sensible, formerly-happy families, trudging slowly from east to west, or west to east, looking for a place they could call home. Their houses had been destroyed, their menfolk often killed or maimed, their lives were shattered. They had almost no food, only rags to stand up in. They shuffled along in vast columns of refugees, day after day. They stopped only to bury their dead, by the road, and they headed for places that they knew would be just as bad as the ones they had left.

In Britain, the situation was a little better. The main problems there were the shortage of accommodation, and the shortage of food and other products that were lumped together under the governmental term of austerity. What was implied here was that while food, and clothing and all sorts of goods were hard to get, this was only for a short time, and was not even a shortage. No, was the official theme, we have won the war, so we no longer have shortages, but we must remain restrained in consumption. It was time for austerity.

A typical news-clip from Britain told of continuing food shortages. It mentioned that all of Europe was drastically under-nourished, with the defeated nations from the war in a particularly bad state. Germans were surviving on a quota of under 1200 calories per day, compared to a normal adult average need of 2500 or more. Britain herself was still doing it tough, with her individual quotas well below those in Australia.

Britain’s Food Ministry, Jan 24: The Food Minister, Lord Woolton, said in the House of Lords that it was high time that there was a break in Britain’s debilitating austerity.

Give the people more food and more freedom and they will produce the goods. An extra pound of meat per week would give more stimulus to the miners than arid contemplation of the fact that the public now owns the coal mines.

Lord Henderson, also speaking in the Upper House, gave little hope of increased rations. He said that bread rations might yet have to be reduced further. There was practically no hope of restoring the bacon ration to three ounces per week in 1947, and the present ration of two ounces might have to be reduced.

Lord de L’Isle said it seemed from Government statements that there was no hope of ending rationing for years. Lord Cherwell said that Britain had less to eat in the first year of peace than it had in the last year of the war. Now, halfway through the second year of peace, and in spite of bumper harvests in practically every exporting country, people were told they would have to put up with even more meagre rations.

The Ministry announced that the weekly meat ration for 1947 would remain at one shilling and four pence, but the value of fresh meat in the ration would be one shilling instead of one shilling and two pence. The remainder would consist of canned meat.

And so the news coverage went on. And on.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN OZ

It was easy for the average young Australian to be optimistic at the start of 1947. Things had gone along pretty well in 1946. Granted there was a lot of grumbling over the fact that all sorts of war-time austerities were still around. For example, rationing and shortages of all sorts of commodities caused constant annoyance. Tens of thousands of soldiers had been poorly repatriated, and were still out of work. Housing was in very short supply, beer was in shorter supply, the number of strikes was increasing, transport services were terrible, and there was no tea left for a cuppa.

Yet despite all this, it would have been the rare person here who felt depressed by all of these things. Hope, they say, springs eternal, and that is what our worthy citizens felt at this time. Hope had been present at the start of 1946 too, but everyone was wiser now and knew it had been unrealistic hope. This time, in 1947, people knew for sure that things were going to get better. Despite the fact that new rationing books had just been issued, they knew that rationing would end soon. Despite the huge backlog in housing, they knew that they would all soon get out of their parents’ house, and into their own. Everyone knew that they would soon be able to buy cars and tyres, and rice, and nylon stockings. It was just a matter of time.

The newly elected Government of Ben Chifley said that it too thought all these good things would soon happen. Anytime now, these wise ones kept saying. Mind you, they went on to say under their breath, there might be a few difficulties. We, as a nation, are still desperately short of US dollars, so we cannot afford to buy lots of things we want. Also, we have strong ties to Britain, and that nation is suffering from a severe shortage of everything. We also have to give up our rations for the Mother country. Then, of course, we as a government want to keep control of prices, and rents, and just about everything, so that a few thousand regulations will still be in force by the end of the year. So the governmental types, too, were happy that better times would come shortly, though it all might take a tad longer than some people thought.

In all, it was a happy hopeful nation that faced the new year. People were no longer so starry-eyed about what they would do after the war, and were starting to actually do things.

For example, the handsome, gallant ex-soldiers were putting the miseries of military life behind them, and were finding mates from among the lovely young girls who had missed male companions for so long. They were all settling down in marriage, and starting to save, and plan and dream together. And of course, everyone felt lucky in love, so that although they somehow learned to make love, many of them did not find out about contraceptives. Thus, without any trouble at all, they did their bit to stimulate the economy via a magnificent Baby Boom.

In my previous book, Born in 1946, I was able to talk at length about the way that rationing worked, and point out just how extensive it was, and that it provided real hardships for the average Australian. I also dwelt on the obvious fact that, as a consequence, a sophisticated black market for all rationed products had developed, much to the