I remember with fondness growing up on the North Coast of NSW in the 70s and 80s. I’m sure you’d all agree things were A LOT different back then. Things were more a lot more simple and carefree.
As kids, we all had much more freedom than kids do now. We would roam the neighbourhood, riding our bikes (without helmets), climbing trees, exploring the back lane, hanging out at different neighbourhood houses. Mum knew we were around but not exactly where. As long as we were within yelling distance she was happy. (And she could yell quite loud so we wandered far). I remember being outside and carefree almost all the time – if we were inside my Mum would say: “go outside and get out of my hair!”
We only had 2 television channels – Northern Rivers TV and ABC. No cable, downloaded movies, no hiring DVDs, no You Tube, no mobile phones tethered to our hands, no IPod, tablets, IPads or computers of any kind. And when we did start playing computer games, we played pacman over and over again and never got sick of it.
Yes, things were simpler and quite often I really yearn for those days. My 7 year old cannot comprehend it when I tell him we didn’t even have a phone in my house until I was 13 years old. And I remember clearly the day we got a video recorder. My Walkman was my most prized possession and I had cases and cases of dusty tapes. We used to set off fire-crackers, almost never had take-away, when it was hot we wound the windows down, we had to get up to change the TV channel and when remotes first came in they were attached by a cord to the TV or VCR and vandalism was scratching the school desk with a compass. In 1980: bread cost 54 cents a loaf, milk 63 cents a litre, 250g butter was 50 cents, potatoes cost 70 cents/kg and a stamp was 22cents.
What do you remember about growing up in the 70s and 80s?
Here are some images I’ve come across that make me all nostalgic!
