Readings and Ramblings

This is a survey of the more frivolous aspects of the 1960's. It covers fashion, fads, movies, television, sports and things like that. The more important historical events are only touched on and passed over pretty quickly. If you lived through the decade and are on a nostalgia trip you might be interested in this, but if you have a serious interest in history then you can give this one a skip. As a resident of the United
States the most interesting thing about it was the geographical perspective. The author is an Australian who lived through the sixties in Australia and continues to live there and he gives his take on the decade from his perspective as an Australian and most specifically as a Southwestern Australian. According to him the experience of the sixties was different in different parts of Australia. It was of interest to me that a lot of the trends that I knew of in the United States also swept Australia. Some trends were uniquely Australian too and I only just learned about them by reading this book. It seems that the normal Australian diet changed significantly at that time, for example. It was also a bit amusing in that the author liberally sprinkles his book with Australian slang. It took me a while to figure out that he was talking about mosquitos, for example, when he kept referring to mossies. It was apparent that he meant some kind of insect, but for a good while I thought it was some kind of insect that was unique to Australia.