17 Events

In this chapter I describe some events I attended, mostly from some time back, trying to recall the atmosphere behind them.

1954: The young Queen Elizabeth II

The first time I was aware of royalty was when I was walking 1952 as a five-year-old with my father Jim in Adelaide's Hindley Street and he told me the King had died. He mentioned that the King smoked and he probably died of a smoking-related disease, aged just 56. Ironically Jim was to die in 1984, also presumably from a smoking-related disease. It had been impossible to be a soldier in World War 2 without being a smoker, they all smoked. Cigarettes were part of a soldier's rations and when Dad died mother Betty automatically qualified for a War Widow Pension. Later, in 1980, I was to record a mathematics tape in Alexandra Palace, where I was told King George VI made his war time broadcasts. Very historical place, his speeches were probably as important as Churchill's as while he had his daughters safely in Canada during the war, he felt it his duty to stay in London and face the same risks in London as other people and he and Queen Mary (later the Queen Mother) stayed in Buckingham Palace.

The unusual thing here was that King George VI had no male children, as would normally have been the case (in fact when he was fathering the two daughters he would not have thought he would become King himself) and so the young Princess Elizabeth would to some extent unexpectedly become Queen. The 1953 Coronation attracted tremendous interest in Australia. Souvenirs were everywhere. Everyone listened to it on the radio, there was no television until the 1956 Olympics, and people crowded to picture theatres when film became available. We even had devices with mirrors to help us believe we were on Pall Mall and we could see above the people in front of us, even though we weren't there. Picture Theatres showed newsreels before movies and were the main visual source of news other than newspaper photographs, in black and white. People would go there to see the Coronation newsreels having no interest in the main movie to follow (although they may have been a little selective). It was in any case normal before television to go to the local movies on a Saturday afternoon. We had one on South Road a block away, the Institute building, since demolished, near the intersection of Neville Avenue and South Road, where we'd go as kids. In those days the movies were often westerns. Cowboys and Indians, lots of shootings with guns and bows and arrows. Anyway it was the place to go in those days.

Further excitement was to follow in the form of the new young Queen's tour of Australia in 1954, to meet all her subjects, as I guess they were seen at the time. No reigning Monarch had ever visited Australia before. This visit was a massive event. I think the current Catherine rivals the popular image of the Queen at the time, although the Queen at the time was much more overwhelming. In Adelaide all schoolchildren were bussed into the Adelaide Showgrounds at Wayville, packed around the arena, which doubled as Adelaide's Trotting Track. It was a day off school, a lot of logistics, but we all got the chance to see the young Queen make her circuit around the track. We were all able to go home that night and tell our Mums and Dads we had seen the Queen. I am sure the Mums and Dads took us for other looks during the visit but the Wayville Trotting Track was the appearance which stuck in my memory.

Whereas nothing would ever match 1954 there were later visits. I remember on visit a few years later all schoolchildren were taken to the Victoria Park Racecourse, in the eastern parklands, where she processed around the course.

1955: Introduction to Cricket at the Adelaide Oval

The first cricket match I recall was the Ashes Test of 1954-1955 at the Adelaide Oval. It was a much heralded event with the English team captained by the great Len Hutton, who held the then Test record of 364 set at the Oval in 1938. It also boasted the fast bowler Frank `Typhoon' Tyson, who had the longest run-up I ever saw, starting near the pickets. Tyson must have been a nightmare for umpires on no balls as he seemed to be furiously in mid air while delivering. England also had Peter May, Colin Cowdrey, Tom Graveney and Bill Edrich for batting, with Brian Statham partnering Tyson, the veteran Alec Bedser still playing, and Godfrey Evans as a rather eccentric wicketkeeper, whose trademark was to rapidly transfer each ball to a slip so it looked like he never had it. Australia had legends in Arthur Morris and Neil Harvey batting, and the great stylist Ray Lindwall as main strike bowler.

My father and mother took me every day, in a match which Australia lost clearly, sitting on the concrete steps each day behind the pickets in front of the scoreboard. I always remembered Australia's second innings collapsed to all out for 111. And that there were two sixes, England's Willie Watson (a spin bowler) out toward us at long on and Australia's Ron Archer (Lindwall's opening pace partner) a low hook over square leg into the members. It was hot and often uncomfortable, with Susan and I drinking lots of Hall's lemonade from the boys going past. We were certain the drink was loaded with salt to make us thirstier and boost sales.

We all became Test match attenders, although I should note my father Jim had been in the record cricket crowd at the time of the bodyline Test of 1932/33 and had seen Bradman and Oldfield felled by Larwood and had experienced the ire of the crowd towards Jardine. Gradually over time we all became members so enjoyed more comfort and I would use the Test match as my excuse to go home each year.

I also sometimes visited the other grounds, and know them all. Probably the most memorable was to watch the famous 1974/5 Ashes Test in Sydney, where Lillee and Thommo carved their way through to help a crushing victory. In those days it was standard to take your own esky to the match as it made the beer cheaper. We all loaded our eskies as luggage on the plane from Canberra on the morning of the first day. In fact the whole plane was full of Canberra people with the same plan. I still remember an old lady at Sydney airport looking for her case on the baggage belt and exasperated as all that was coming out were eskies. We watched the whole match from the hill, which was a pretty rough place.

1957 and 1986: Things in the sky

In 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite (Sputnik). This created a lot of interest, and for several days we would be told how to look for it in the sky, which we did. It was certainly a bonus in conversations to say you had seen it.

In 1986 Halley's comet arrived. At first it could be seen in the evenings, but whereas I saw it on some occasions then, the view was not good. Several weeks later it became visible about 4 or 5 in the morning and I got up regularly and got very good views on those occasions from the back balcony at Melba, looking east. In 1994, while travelling in France with Stephanie, we went to Bayeaux and saw the comet on the tapestry (see above).

Of course, as described below ("Do I remember...") another highlight was in 1969 to see live the first walk on the Moon.

1962: Chubby Checker in Adelaide

In 1961 ballroom dancing was so integrated with society that it was considered wise for all young people to attend lessons. In Adelaide a popular way was to turn up at Joanne Priest's studios on Wellington Square, North Adelaide, to learn. It was rather a social event on Friday nights and also a common place for boys and girls from various schools to meet. It was also something which increased my interest in pop music. Eddie Hodges had his one hit `I'm going to knock on your door', Neil Sedaka was active, in Australia still Johnny O'Keefe ruled, but as the year was drawing to a close the Twist was becoming a major craze. Chubby Checker became the first singer to dislodge Elvis Presley from number 1 for many years.

And he was coming to Adelaide, supported by two other tops of the pops Bobby Rydell and Del Shannon. The concert was held in Centennial Hall of the Adelaide Showground at Wayville in late January 1962. I got a ticket but didn't hear much of the music. The singers could not be overheard at any time above the shrill, continuous squeals of teenage girls.

1964: Beatles in Australia

I think the first I heard of the Beatles was probably towards the end of 1963, with hits like `Please Please Me'. By the end of 1963 and 1964 the Beatles had become the biggest thing, probably in a lifetime. I guess that they had a number of things in their favour, but Lennon and McCartney in particular proved outstanding songwriters, and in the end their personalities and energy were features which drove them well to the top, creating also a generation of other rock groups, many of them English.

In June 1964 they toured Australia, and played concerts in Centennial Hall on the evening of 12 and 13. This was the start of their tour and even though Ringo Stark was missing for the Adelaide leg, it was impossible to get tickets so crowds thronged anywhere in town where they might step on to a balcony, just to get a look instead. Their main appearance on 12 June was on the balcony of the Adelaide Town Hall, where hundreds of thousands of people (including myself, having walked down from the University), filled the King William Street area below. It has been estimated that a third of Adelaide's population were there.

They were staying at the South Australia Hotel, the classiest in Adelaide, opposite Parliament House, and long since demolished to make way I think for what is now the Stamford Plaza, and they made a similar appearance on that balcony the next afternoon in front of masses of people.

On the following day they flew to Melbourne for the next leg, and drove on a route to the airport along the Anzac Highway. Even my parents wanted to see them so we all went down there and were among the crowds lining the route and waving to them as their limousine went past. Crazy, in retrospect, does it sound?

1965 to 1970: Sturt in 6 consecutive grand finals, 5 consecutive premierships

I had always been a Sturt follower in the SANFL, Adelaide's local Australian rules football league. My father had always taken me to Norwood games, hoping to sign me up, but somehow my affiliation ended up with Sturt, my mother's team. Sturt, Double Blues as their Unley Oval was on the intersection of Oxford and Cambridge Terraces and light blue and dark blue were the colours of these two famous English Universities, had been easy beats for a few years but they had improved under new coach Jack Oatey. They made the 1965 grand final, which I attended with my father. This was the record crowd of over 62,000 people ever for the Adelaide Oval, although now that the ground has been redeveloped crowds are getting close to this again. That day was very crowded, very hard to move on the south eastern hill where we were, and the record more remarkable because in those days, and still for some time longer, most people would take in their eskies, taking up a lot of space (my father and I did not take in an esky).

Sturt narrowly lost this grand final, but then followed a remarkable period under Oatey of five consecutive premierships, one short of Port Adelaide's record of six. I watched every Sturt game during that period, with university friends. Sturt were a fabulous team, Oatey was revolutionary in style like Hafey with Richmond, and in those days there would be a match between the VFL premiers and SANFL premiers. Oatey had Tony Clarkson, not as tall as some others as first ruck but introduced check side ruck, where Clarkson would come in from the other side, running in front of his opponent, and manage to win the encounter, get the ball out to the wing and set up the attack. He also, independently of Hafey, created with Sturt generally a system of run on football which had not been seen before. In these matches between VFL and SANFL premiers Sturt usually beat the Vics and I remember a particular match when John Nichols of Carlton ironed out a Sturt player in the first minute but Sturt still won. Until that time I had been a Carlton fan as they were the Victorian Blues but that match put me off Carlton. I also remember on that occasion some arrogant Carlton fans, who I had never experienced before, coming to Adelaide to watch these matches and being rather scary, drinking beer from the scoreboard bar and generally believing they were superior to South Australians.

1966: Walking out of a Bob Dylan Concert?

Who would walk out of a Bob Dylan concert? Certainly not me. But people have, and on one evening in Adelaide they walked out in droves. The people who walked out were the purists.

Dylan's brief stay for his concert on 22 April 1966 got off to a rather prickly start. Adelaide's doyen DJ Bob Francis, who was very much in the style of Sydney's Bob Rogers, interviewed him live on his drive show before the concert. Francis ran Adelaide's most accepted Top 40 chart on radio 5AD and his shows were so popular he broadcast live each afternoon after school in an auditorium at the top of the Advertiser Building on the corner of King William and Waymouth to a packed house. As a schoolboy I used to roll up on occasions myself if I could get in. It was relatively easy for me as my school was in the city, not far away. Francis dominated Adelaide's airwaves. He has been around for a long time since, apparently until the new millennium on 5AA, maybe with some slight change in focus.

Francis began his much anticipated interview by noting that more Dylan's songs were sold by other artists with better voices. Dylan just said "Oh. In that case this is the end of the interview", and walked out, leaving Francis much unexpected time to fill in.

The concert, held at the old Palais Royal, Adelaide's most famous ballroom where schools like mine ran end of year balls, on North Terrace, was held in the wake of Highway 61 Revisited, which was a new direction for Dylan, with a long ballad called Desolation Road and other songs deviating from straight ballads. The first part of the concert was enthralling, with all of the audience Dylan's captives. It was somewhat the most recent material but completely within all of the audiences parameters of expectation.

Some had heard rumours of what was to come after the interval but most were still unprepared. As the curtain opened Dylan was in front of his new folk rock band called The Band and electric guitars and drums blazed away. Some of Dylan's songs were now sung in this new style. It was too much for the purists. Most people streamed out. A friend of mine and I stayed and enjoyed it very much but we more or less had Dylan to ourselves. It was very lonely where we were seated.

I didn't keep my ticket but I did keep the program, which is priceless and can be found here.

1967: South Australia 1 Manchester United 5

As noted in Chapter 1 I was just 11 years old when I picked up a News (the Adelaide afternoon tabloid of the time which led to News Ltd and News Corporation) which had the Munich plane crash on the front page and photographs of various killed and injured Manchester United players. Whereas I had not taken notice of them before I became an instant fan for life.

Barely nine years later they were to recover to be one of the strongest teams in Europe. They had won the English First Division title and were about to become European champions, first English team to do so. They had two survivors of the plane crash (Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes) still playing, two members of the English Champion World Cup team (Charlton and Nobby Stiles), Scottish ace Dennis Law, Northern Ireland's flamboyant George Best, also Paddy Crerand, Bruce Kidd, goalkeeper Alex Stepney and the list went on.

Kensington Oval had been used as a SANFL ground for neutral games, such as when two teams played each other for a third time, but by now had been taken over as Adelaide's athletics track and used by Juventus for soccer (the other main soccer ground, used by West Adelaide Hellas, was Hindmarsh Oval). But Kensington, otherwise then known as Olympic Park, was chosen for South Australia's match forthcoming against the visiting Red Devils, on their first trip to Australia.

I was not going to miss this and was among the record crowd of 20,000 for this small ground. It was one of the most memorable football games I ever saw, with Manchester United producing all their big guns for this. The atmosphere at the ground was electric. So I saw Charlton and Law both score and Kidd get a hat trick before South Australia actually closed it off with a consolation goal.

Probably the day is best described here by an Adelaide journalist who witnessed the game as a 14 year old.

Kensington Oval is now just a quiet suburban ground. Adelaide built a new athletics stadium in the west parklands and Hindmarsh became the headquarters for football. Nothing much at all is played at Kensington now. It is amazing in these modern times to reflect when driving past that this ground once hosted the world's most famous football team before 20,000 screaming fans.

1985: World Cup Athletics in Canberra and Marita Koch sequel

In 1977, in the wake of the Australian failures of the Montreal Olympics, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser commissioned the opening of the Australian Institute of Sport and built a state of the art Athletics Stadium at Bruce to attract world class events. In 1977 this was used to stage the Pacific Conference Games which saw the advent of Robert de Castella as a star.

In 1985 things got better. The 1985 Athletics World Cup came to the Bruce Stadium. With Greg I bought tickets to each day, making sure I had prime tickets on the western side to see Sergei Bubka in the Pole Vault for day two. Greg and I rode our bikes to the stadium for each of the three days.

For the first two days it was great and we saw Bubka (above) attempt to break his own world record at something over 6 metres. He won the event but didn't break this mark.

The third day was to be explosive, with two world records, both to East German women, the 4 by 100 metres relay and the 400 metres, won by Marita Koch. Both records stood for a very long time, and Koch's record still stands with no runner getting close by 2015. I do note that East German women were later basically proven to be on drugs, including Koch, but Koch is a relatively petite woman and was great anyway.

A week later by chance the TV station which covered the meeting replayed the event and I got my video equipment out and managed to capture the Marita Koch race.

My recording is not bad but I contacted the TV station later and they said they could not find a record of it in their archive, so I was not going to be able to get a better one. I think it was just covered locally and not taken seriously.

A few years later I told my friend Dieter Gronau, who was the German IMO team leader, that I had a copy of the race film. He said that was interesting as Marita and he both lived in the same city, Rostock, and she ran a sports store there now. He said he would go in and have a chat with her.

He told me she was most interested in the film of the race. The East German government had never been able to get a copy and she had assumed no film existed. So I sent him a video cassette for which she was very grateful and sent me this very nice personally autographed card as a gesture of thanks (face of card shown above).

In 2004 Lois and I stayed with Dieter in Rostock. He suggested I go to the shop (above, her name is in orange on the window) and meet her if she was there. She was and we had a very nice conversation. But she said she no longer had the film. Her husband is a top coach and they had the French Olympic Champion Marie-José Perec staying in the house while training and at that time the film disappeared.

I was able to return her another copy, this time better, on DVD, for which she was relieved and I hope she still has this one.

1985: Meeting the Duke

When I was at the Open University in 1978 I joined the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the relevant British Mathematical Professional Society for my interests. My professional profile was sufficient for me to be admitted as an Associate Fellow and when I received my certificate I noticed it was personally signed by the Duke of Edinburgh as `Philip'.

My research showed that Prince Philip showed more than an active interest in the Institute, was a Member of the Institute's Council and attended Council meetings. I suggested to Peter O'Halloran we could invite him to be a Patron of the Australian Mathematics Competition. After some discussion Peter O'Halloran agreed that it was a good idea and he wrote to Prince Philip inviting him as such. We were thrilled to hear back a few weeks later that he would be very happy to accept. So he remained our Patron for quite a number of years.

In 1985 it was announced Prince Philip would be visiting Australia in October and would be spending a few days at Government House in Melbourne. We asked if he could be our Guest of Honour for our Medal Presentation at Government House. Again we had an affirmative reply, and the ceremony was set for Monday 14 October.

A few days before this event was due the Victorian Governor became embroiled in a local scandal and it was decided Prince Philip would now stay at the Hilton Hotel opposite the MCG instead and perform commitments there instead, in our case at 0900. We arrived and noticed that in fact Prince Philip was Patron of quite a large number of Australian charities and not for profits, and by the notice board outside the presentation room we saw we were to be the first of many cabs off the rank for the day. I recall the one after us was the World Wildlife Fund, but there were a lot of others.

We were handed our protocol running sheet and to my embarrassment they had mixed me and Peter O'Halloran up and I was placed in front of Peter in the line to meet the Duke on arrival (the Chairman of the Westpac Board Sir Noel Foley, and Principal of our College were the two ahead of me). The Duke arrived and stopped with me and said a number of very nice things about what I was doing. Maybe I deserved a little of his praise because as Problems Committee Chairman I was responsible for the product, but I was not the entrepreneur. He then moved on to Peter and asked `and what do you do?' A rather exasperated Peter exclaimed `I run the competition!'

The Duke with Peter O'Halloran after the presentation. The program for the event can be found here.

Do I remember where I was when ... ?

Yes, I do remember where I was when I learned some of the more earth-shattering events took place.

1952 Death of King George VI. As narrated above my father told me while we were walking together in Hindley Street. It attracted my interest.

1958 Manchester United Air Crash at Munich. As narrated above I discovered it by picking up a newspaper at my grandparents' house.

1963 Assassination of JFK. I was playing tennis for my school on a Saturday morning in the South Parklands.

1969 Neil Armstrong walks on Moon. I was able to anticipate this and went home on a Friday afternoon as I recall from University (not missing lectures) to watch it all with no interruption on the old black and white TV set in my room at home.

1990 Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. I was in Russia, well USSR I suppose, actually at that time in Estonia. My Russian hosts, who were concerned about it, thought I should be informed, took me aside and objectively explained what happened.

1997 Death of Princess Diana. I am pretty sure it was a Sunday morning when I heard the news she had been injured overnight, but thought no more about it and as I often did on Sundays if free, went to do some work by myself in my office that afternoon and heard the news of her death on the car radio driving back home.

2001 9/11. We had moved to Burra. I was alone that night watching the Channel 10 news by myself as Lois was in Melbourne with her mother. There was an interruption as a news flash came through about 2240 on the evening of the 11th saying there was a report that a light plane had hit the World Trade Centre. Shortly after the news appeared more serious, they switched completely to CNN and I got no more sleep during the night as it all unfolded.