Dr Guy Hansen: Hi, I'm Guy Hansen, Director of Exhibitions here at the National Library of Australia. We're looking at the 1975: Living in the Seventies exhibition, and it's a great exhibition which explores Australian culture and politics in the 1970s.

Karlee Baker: It's so wonderful to have you all here for our Learn with the Curators session today. My name's Karlee. I'm the Assistant Director of Lifelong Learning here at the National Library, and I'm joined in the studio by our Director of Exhibitions, Dr Guy Hansen. How are you doing, Guy?  

Dr Guy Hansen: Very well, thank you.

Karlee Baker: Here at the National Library, we acknowledge the First Australians as the traditional owners and custodians of the land that we're very lucky to work on. We pay our respects to elders, past and present, and through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  

This Lifelong Learning session is made possible by the generous contribution of the Opalgate Foundation to the Library's Lifelong Learning Initiative.

Now, today, Guy, I'll be sending you back into the gallery a few times. We’ll also meet some of your fantastic team that I've been learning a lot from over the last few weeks. There'll be opportunities to share your questions throughout, and we'll have an extra Q&A session at the end. Thank you Nicole from Queensland. Lovely to have you here. So Guy, we will send you back into the gallery. We'll also meet curators Peter, Karen and Grace in there.

Dr Guy Hansen: One of the things people remember about the 1970s is the popular music. So here we have a display of some of the hit songs from 1975. Of course, back then it was singles and albums were the things that people bought. But when you went to your music store, you could also buy the sheet music, so you could go home and bash out the song on your own guitar or piano.

So here is some of the sheet music from 1975 with some of the big hits. You've got Bohemian Rhapsody. You've got Leo Sayer. You've got AC/DC, of course, and ABBA. And of course, some of the big albums of 1975 was ABBA. ABBA were popular in Australia before they were really popular in the rest of world, so a bit of a trailblazer there.

We also had Skyhooks, who had two big hit albums, they were a big glam rock band. Ego Is Not a Dirty Word was their album, which came out in mid 1975. And then, of course, you've got The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, whose album came out towards the end of the year. So some of the big albums from 1975.

Peter Appleton: Hi, my name is Peter and I'm one of the curators on the 1975 exhibition. I'm going to tell you a little bit today about television in the 1970s. One of the big things that was different in the 70s with TV than today was that television was linear. What that means is there was no streaming. There was only what was on the channel. And you had to watch at the time that it was broadcast. There was no way to record it like there is now. And what that meant is a lot of shows were repeated ad nauseum.  

And in particular, the one I used to watch when I was a kid was Doctor Who. This is an absolutely iconic image, and probably what most people of a sudden generation think of when they think of Doctor Who. The good news is, because every show was repeated ad nauseum. I got to watch every episode so many times that I knew when the scary bits were coming up, and that meant I could hide behind the couch and not watch the bits that I knew were going to scare the hell out of me.

One very big innovation in television in the 70s in Australia was the introduction of colour television. And if you had the equivalent of about $10,000, you could buy yourself a colour TV and enjoy your show in colour. Of course, many of us didn't have that money back then, and so we still got to enjoy our shows in black and white.

But for those that were lucky and rich enough, you could transition to colour TV. So when we transitioned to colour television in Australia, The Aunty Jack show was one of the first Australian shows that did so. And to make it a magical moment, what they did was this character here, was literally coloured black and white. So he stayed in black and white even though the broadcast was in colour. So he had white make up, a black and white dress. And so when the magical transition to colour occurred, he was left stuck in the past.  

At the National Library, we don't just collect books, but we collect a great variety of material, including posters, photos, promotional material, all sorts of material. And when we came to put this exhibition together, we were very careful in selecting what we thought best represented television in the 70s. So we went with Doctor Who and Fawlty Towers, a couple of iconic BBC series which everyone who grew up during the period would know. But then we made sure we covered Australia as well, with Aunty Jack and also a couple of well-known Australian media personalities with Norman Gunston and Denise Drysdale.

Dr Karen Schamberger: The 70s were a time of experimentation and change. Metric units of measurement became standard in 1971. Chest freezers were popular as people tried to beat the price rises due to inflation. Convenience food became popular, as did foods such as fondue, deviled eggs, apricot chicken, duck l’orange, and shrimp cocktails. Tropical fruits like pineapple also rose in popularity. Have you ever tried a pineapple hedgehog?

On television, you might have seen Bernard King. After hosting a lunch for actress Vivien Leigh at his Brisbane flat, Bernard King was invited by Maureen Kistle, the presenter of ABC TV's A Woman's World, and a guest at the event to demonstrate his cooking skills on her show. He went on to host a daily segment on the Ten Network's Good Morning Australia before getting his own show, King's Kitchen, which aired from 1972 to 1983. The exhibition features his Spring Cookbook, published in 1977.  

There was also a growing interest in international flavors at this time. Which leads me to the next object. Margaret Fulton was a food and cooking writer who encouraged Australians to diversify our eating habits from the staples of meat and three vegetables. As cookery editor of the Woman's Day magazine, she introduced her readers to cuisines from places like Spain, Italy, India and China.

The exhibition features her crockpot cookbook, where she teamed up with the company Monier to give recipes for a range of dishes like goulash, beef curry and cassoulet for their new technology. The Crock Pot was an electric slow cooking pot for career girls and working wives. Fulton's recipe book was supplied with each purchase. While slow cookers became popular from the 1940s when many women began working outside the home. The Monier Crock Pot was a US based brand first introduced in Australia in 1973. Fulton's book was published along with the product in 1976.

Dr Grace Blakeley-Carroll: Mon dieu! Bonjour, mes enfants.

I am not Mademoiselle de Poitiers, my name is Grace and I'm one of the curators from the exhibition, 1975. Today I'm going to talk to you about Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is my favorite film of all time and happens to have been filmed and released in 1975. Now, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a landmark film in Australian film making, part of Australia's new wave of cinema that occurred in the 1970s.

It was popular across the country but also across the world. It's based on Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel of the same name, and it tells the story of a group of schoolgirls who go missing at Ngannelong, or Hanging Rock in Victoria in 1900 whilst on a picnic with their school teachers. It's partly based on true accounts of people going missing in the bush, but it's also based on a lot of fiction as well.

Here at the National Library, we have wonderful collections related to Picnic at Hanging Rock, including the papers of Joan and Darrel Lindsay. We have the papers of the person who wrote the script, Cliff Green. We also have Bruce Mason's papers. Bruce composed some of the film music for hanging Rock, and he also selected pieces for the film, including Gheorghe Zamfir’s very iconic pan flute music.  

To complement our display and our collection material, we've loaned this very striking poster from the National Film and Sound Archive, in which you can see how the film was advertised at the time. Picnic at Hanging Rock is somewhat divisive. Some, like me, adore the film. Others have different views, particularly the ethereal, eerie and sometimes unsettling nature of both the film itself and the way it was put together, but also the use of sound in the film, such as the cicadas and their menacing noise that's used. It was also a very important film for Peter Weir. His second feature film, and he directed Picnic at Hanging Rock. He went on to become a very acclaimed director across the world.  

But really, the film was the brainchild of Patricia Lovell, who some of you may know as Miss Pat from Mr. Squiggle. She had worked in children's television, but it was really her idea to bring Joan Lindsay's novel to life, and she was the one who convinced Peter Weir to work on the film. And of course, at the time, having a woman produce the film, and there were other producers involved as well, but having Pat Lovell on the film was a wonderful moment for her career as well, and also for women in filmmaking.  

I really like seeing the annotations here, because you can see how the process evolved in terms of developing the script, like for example, originally, it was going to be a woman's voice who introduced the film. And of course, those familiar with it will know that it's a man's voice who introduces it, in the final cut. So some of the changes that came through, I love seeing the references to the cicadas and their menacing sounds and that being used to great effect in the film as well. These photos offer a glimpse into behind the scenes of the filming of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

We can see the actors having a break between takes. Author Joan Lindsay watches on in one image as her story is brought to life on film. We can also see director Peter Weir and scriptwriter Cliff Green behind the scenes during the filming. Looks like it was a very hot, day, and certainly not the day to be dressed, in clothing from 1900.

Karlee Baker: Guy, could you tell us a little bit about some of your memories of the seventies?  

Dr Guy Hansen: Well, I was 12 in 1975, and I was I was growing up in Parramatta in western Sydney and I remember the Westfield shopping mall very well. That was the place where teenagers would hang out, so to speak. And, of course, I remember the movies and the TV shows. Aunty Jack was one of my favorites as well. And the music, listening to music on your little, AM transistor radio. Of course Double J came into existence in 1975, and that was a wonderful thing. If you're a young person listening to the music and, I love watching people in the gallery doing little dances as they listened to the music. They became quite unaware and start doing a little boogie as they're looking at the objects. And I love that kind of interaction in an exhibition space.  

Karlee Baker: You’ve created a very groovy exhibition, that's for sure.  

Dr Guy Hansen: It's a gas.

Karlee Baker: We will head in to the next theme of the exhibition. This one's called News of the Day. Before we head in Guy, can you introduce this part of the show for us?  

Dr Guy Hansen: Well the first two rooms of the exhibition space are very much the popular culture. So music, food, fashion, films, magazines, books, photographs of Australian life. So those first two rooms set you up and sort of take you into the time tunnel or back into what it was like in the 1970s. And then as we move further into the exhibition, we get a little bit more serious and we start looking at some of the big news events of 1975. And it was a very grim year, actually, for some of the news. So some dramatic events occurred that year.  

Karlee Baker: Okay, thank you. We'll send you back into the gallery, along with Nicole and Karen.

Nicole Schwirtlich: The overthrow of Portugal's authoritarian government in 1974, known as the Carnation Revolution, enabled all of Portugal's colonies to become independent. This included East Timor. In January 1975, a coalition was formed between the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, or Fretilin, and the Timorese Democratic Union, or UDT. That August, UDT staged a coup, resulting in a short but violent civil war.

The National Library holds a significant collection of material about East Timor across multiple formats. For example, Penny Tweedie was an English photojournalist who was in East Timor in August and September of 1975. Her archive of 216 boxes was donated to the library in 2011. We have selected two photos from her archive for this exhibition. An unidentified Fretilin soldier and an unidentified activist attending an address by Jose Ramos-Horta, who would later become president of Timor Leste.

On the 28th of November, a democratically elected Fretilin government declared independence for what was to be the democratic Republic of Timor Leste. From December 1975 until 1999, East Timor was occupied by the Republic of Indonesia.

Dr Guy Hansen: So one of the big events of 1975 was the independence of Papua New Guinea. New Guinea, of course, had been a colony of a number of countries. Germany, Britain, and then became a protectorate of Australia. During World War Two, parts of New Guinea were under the control of the Japanese, and then of course, Australia again.  

So you can see there's a history of colonisation here with the flags of the imperial powers in behind. And then in the front you can see the Papua New Guinea flag, which you can also see over here with a famous bird of Paradise silhouette on the flag, celebrating the new Papua New Guinea nation. So independence was a big event in Papua New Guinea, and posters were produced to celebrate that. We have two examples here. One talking about the history of Papua New Guinea. And you can see a little Australian serviceman there in that one. And over here you can see the word ‘unite’ as a slogan. New Guinea is a very diverse place with over 800 languages. So bringing that together as a nation was a very complicated thing. And that's why they went with the word unite, as a slogan for independence.

Dr Karen Schamberger: The Vietnam War started in 1955. It was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies, including Australia. The fighting spilled over into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

By 1971, Australia had already begun to reduce its commitment to the war and had commenced withdrawals by October of that year. The same year, Elaine Moir, a Melbourne secretary planned her own orphan airlift from Vietnam. She was dubbed the Waif Smuggler by the local press. The National Library has five boxes of archival material from Moir relating to her involvement with Vietnamese orphans in the 70s.

The collection includes newspaper clippings and photographs taken in Vietnam and Australia, as well as correspondence and other documents. By 1972, she had flown five Vietnamese orphan girls to parents in Australia. She played a significant role in others in other adoption flights, culminating in Operation Baby Lift in April 1975. This was the name given to the mass evacuation of about 3000 children from South Vietnam to many countries, including Australia.

Moir kept the Saigon Post newspaper from the 4th of April 1975, and noted that it was, “the day we left Saigon on Babylift.” The first plane bound for the United States crashed 12 minutes after takeoff, killing 143 babies and volunteers, including two Australians, Margaret Moses and Lee Mack. Moir also kept newspapers from Australia reporting on Operation Babylift in a scrapbook. The children transported from Vietnam to Australia were given to families that were already approved for overseas adoptions.

On the 30th of April 1975, North Vietnamese tanks burst through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. Now, Ho Chi Minh City, ending the Vietnam War. Moir has also kept an issue of the student newspaper Farrago from the University of Melbourne, which celebrated the fall of Saigon. The end of the Vietnam War forced millions of refugees to leave Indochina.

About 250,000 died at sea. More than 100,000 were resettled in Australia, and only about 2000 of those came by boat. On Monday, the 21st of November 1977, six small wooden fishing boats carrying 218 Vietnamese men, women and children arrived in Darwin. All were given temporary entry permits into Australia for one month, while their future was considered. Michael Jensen a series of photographs of their arrival also featured in the exhibition, and can be found online via the Library's catalogue.

Karlee Baker: [Participants in the webinar] are noticing that the selection that you have made, yourself and your team, must have been very difficult. Karen’s asked “was the process of deciding what to include and exclude as difficult as it seems?”

Dr Guy Hansen: Oh, very much so. I mean, it's a fascinating process. There are literally tens of thousands of objects which relate to 1975. We start a survey of the collections by just finding out what kind of material the library holds, and then we map that onto the events of the year, the major moments in popular culture, and refine our search. And winnow our way through. And then, of course, within the team, we'd have quite protracted debates about what deserved to go into the exhibition and what perhaps didn't need to be in the exhibition.  

Because it is an exhibition, we do like to select material, which is visually striking and attractive. And you can see that in some of the items. The Penny Tweedie photographs, for example, relate to a very significant event, but they're also very visually stimulating. So, books and magazine covers and things like that are ideal for exhibitions.  

But we did also include some, some very plain-looking material because it is extremely significant. So some of the manuscript material, the scripts from Picnic at Hanging Rock, not necessarily visually exciting, but very representative of the of the library's collection and sometimes boring-looking things are incredibly significant and you need to show those as well. So we had a lot of fun. And we debated lots about what should be in and what should be out.

And we didn't even come close to covering off all the major events of 1975. There were many more things we could have put in. But I'm really pleased how people are enjoying it and finding it a really stimulating introduction to the events of 1975.  

Karlee Baker: Absolutely. Susan noticed that the way that you've chosen to display these, particularly the political materials, has been really ‘informative and sensitive’.

Dr Guy Hansen: You know, I think we, it is a wide range of events relating to, say, Indigenous land rights and the Dismissal and Women's Rights. It could have been a very earnest and serious exhibition. But what we thought, look, let's make sure there's a lot of popular culture and a lot of fun material as well. So as you go through the exhibition, you can have experiences of nostalgia. You can have you can be amused. You can be amazed. And then there's some challenging and more, you know, perhaps, historically, significant events which are dealt with towards the end. Particularly with something like the return of soil by Gough Whitlam to Vincent Lingiari and, and also the Dismissal. So we tried to make sure there's serious issues, but also there's a lot to enjoy in the exhibition.

Karlee Baker: Absolutely. Well, that brings us to our next room. So in this next theme, you'll also meet curator Allister, as well as a really special conversation between Nicole and one of our fantastic volunteer guides here at the Library, Helen. So we'll head on in.

Allister Mills: In 1975, legendary photojournalist Mervyn Bishop carefully framed this photograph of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring a handful of soil into the palm of stockman and activist Vincent Lingiari's hand. The act represented the return of the traditional lands of Daguragu to the Gurindji people, and is seen as an important step in the recognition of land rights for Australia's First Nations peoples.

For decades, Gurindji stockmen and domestic workers at Wave Hill station and its outstations had negotiated slowly improving working conditions, with Vestey Brothers, the organisation that owned the pastoral lease on the property. But in the early 1960s, the Gurindji people were beginning to find that their efforts were stalling. Additionally, equal payment had been ordered by the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, but the transition to equal payment was to be rolled out over three years.

In 1966, on the advice of Darwin based Aboriginal labor activist Dexter Daniels, the Gurindji Workers, led by Vincent Lingiari, went on strike, walking off the job. These posters included in the exhibition come from the papers of author Frank Hardy, held here at the National Library. Hardy was an author who brought attention to the Wave Hill walk off through his book The Unlucky Australians, published in 1968.

Both of these posters were used to publicise events held in Sydney to raise awareness for funds for land rights claims in the Northern Territory. The 1970s were a time of changing social attitudes, and with the momentum of the 1967 referendum, the issue of land rights was central to the conversations of Indigenous self-governance taking place throughout the decade. While 1975 marked the symbolic return of Aboriginal lands, the mechanism by which they were returned, another pastoral lease, this time for the Gurindji Peoples, reinforced colonial occupation of traditional lands. It wasn't until 1986 when Prime Minister Bob Hawke gave the Gurindji inalienable freehold title deeds, that the land was truly returned. Gurindji traditional owners continue to assert their native title rights today.

Dr Grace Blakeley-Carroll: 1975 was International Women's Year. In Australia, Elizabeth Reid, who occupied the new-ish position of special adviser to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on Women's Affairs, led the Australian Advisory Committee for International Women's Year.  

In 1973, Reid was appointed as Special Adviser. It was a new position created by the Whitlam Government. She'd been a philosophy tutor at the Australian National University in Canberra and was a successful candidate from many. And much was made of the fact that the role sat right within the Prime Minister's office, so she was very close to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Now, for her work on the National Advisory Committee, Reid was joined by a number of other influential figures, including Margaret Whitlam. The committee organised a range of activities in Australia, including a large and important conference about women in politics towards the end of the year.

In June, Elizabeth Reid and others ventured over to the International Conference for Women's Year, which was held in Mexico City, Mexico. There, delegates from all over the globe gathered to discuss women's affairs and, importantly, set targets and international benchmarks on issues related to women. There was a lot of discussion about things that were affecting women, and ways that women's lives could be improved, and governments could take seriously women's issues into the future.

And of course, many of the topics discussed at the time are still topics that we're talking about today, 50 years later.

Nicole Schwirtlich: It's been 50 years since 1975. Now, what do you think has changed? But what do you think is also stayed the same in Australia?  

Helen Stuart: Well, Nicole, I suppose in a way I was very interested in the women's movement and things had changed a bit by the 1970s. But when I started teaching in 1965, I was very conscious of the fact that the men were getting paid a lot more than I was, and it did seem to me, even then, rather unfair.

So by 1975, things had changed. But Whitlam brought in such a fresh taste of what life could be. And certainly they were, as in this photo, considerable demonstrations about women's rights. These are young people, but they're also older people who are involved. Because now you remember all this idea about women and women's lib and so on wasn't new. It's just the change had happened and then gone back. One of the really watershed things was this book, Damned Whores and God's Police, that Anne Summers wrote, and it was very much using primary source material, which really staggered people. It was very confronting. It was just the way the world was.  

But it was also the fact that women could go to work. You know, before 1975, there was an expectation that women should stop work when they got married, or certainly when they had babies. And, now, of course, there was maternity leave and you could go back with difficulty, but you could go back.  

Nicole Schwirtlich: Yes. I guess, like, for me, when I was in high school, it was always a given that I'd go to university and then get a job afterwards. But if I was in the same position maybe 50 years ago, my life could have looked quite different because I'm a woman.  

Helen Stuart: Oh absolutely.

Nicole Schwirtlich: Helen, I heard that you were at Old Parliament House on the day that Gough Whitlam was dismissed. What are your memories from that day?  

Helen Stuart: Well, yes, I was. I was in the in the, not on the steps, a little bit out from the steps because we were a little bit late. I'd been teaching in the Woden Valley, and one of the things was that you didn't get information straight away, news straight away. But someone came into the staff room and said that this had happened, it had all been building up, so we didn't expect that to happen. We expected something to happen. And so we all got in our cars and drove into Parliament House, because it's a much easier place in the 1970s. And when we got there, of course, there was a big crowd of news people, but also people from offices nearby.  

Those of us who went in were very much Whitlam supporters and very, very much supportive of the changes that he brought in. And this, in a way, the style of government to not so stuffy anymore and not so bound to England and to the UK and but we weren't the only ones who went. They were also people who were very conservative, who were concerned about the way in which our system was being corrupted, at least what we thought.

And, we waited there and everything unfolded that, you know, about, you know, finally Whitlam came out and we had the Kerr’s cur and all that. And the other, other real concern for us was what this what this would do, whether it would be, something that, cause riots everywhere. And I think there was an element too, of, as time went on, of pride that Whitlam didn't ferment as much turmoil as he could have.

Nicole Schwirtlich: So, like civil unrest?  

Helen Stuart: Yeah. Civil unrest. Yeah.  

Nicole Schwirtlich: So I suppose if you were, whether you were a Labor voter or a Liberal voter, seeing an elected prime minister being dismissed would be quite confronting for a lot of people.  

Helen Stuart: For a lot of people, it well, it certainly was confronting. But of course, there were people who'd seen the things that had gone wrong, like the loans affair and all that sort of thing. And Jim Cairns and they were pleased. Really terrible day. It was, you know, shocking, and we were disturbed.

Nicole Schwirtlich: In the 1970s, a lot more women were entering the workforce. What were attitudes at the time like towards women and finances?  

Helen Stuart: Well, look, a lot of us had our own money because we had been working for some time. And, you know, when you married, you made some arrangement of your own. Our arrangement was that I would buy the furniture in the house, and that was perfectly fine, which meant that I could choose, but I remember going to Fyshwick and, buying a lounge suite, choosing one, and then offering to pay for it, you know, going to pay for it: signing the check. But the shop assistant was not keen on that and was very keen that my husband should come and give approval! We've come a long way since then, you know, I don't think and I think that was the very end of it I think that was sort of dinosaur stuff even then.  

Nicole Schwirtlich: I purchased my first home this year so 2025, 50 years after, and I actually I bought my first lounge suite recently, and I could not imagine having to get my father's permission to buy furniture for my own home, especially when I've got my own money. I've been in the workforce, I and that it's incredible how things have changed.  

Helen Stuart: It is. And it's when you look back, of course, it's quite illogical and awful, really, but for the most part, you know, the jobs we chose were jobs that fitted in with family life, and I guess that's still to a certain extent, the same thing. As you see on that poster, there was an idea of, you know, women being able to do anything, any apprenticeship and so on. But it has changed a lot for the better.  

Nicole Schwirtlich: For this exhibition, we worked really closely with an exhibition designer and they did this wallpaper for us. What do you think of the pattern?  

Helen Stuart: Well, it's pretty awful now, but in 1975, as I said, we bought our house and I need the curtains, even though I'm not a sewer and there were lots of curtains. And in the family room I had yellow curtains very similar to this. I mean, it's just one of those things. It was very 1970s, but I think for a lot of us, you know, it's for all people of my age. It's brought back memories of what life was like, the clothes and the way we lived.

And, even the bookshelf. I have to tell you, we had a bookshelf. A bit slightly better quality than that, I'd have to say in the lounge room. So in that teak colour, that was the sort of thing we did. Yes. Funny isn’t it? In another 50 year’s time, you’ll be looking back on your lounge suite and wondering why on earth I bought that.  

Nicole Schwirtlich: And why did I pick that colour?

Karlee Baker: Guy, we've got heaps of fantastic contributions to the discussion here. I wanted to point out - thank you very much, John. You attended a conferral ceremony for Michael Somare, Gough Whitlam and John Gorton, who were given honorary doctorates from the University of Wollongong for their role in the formation of the independent Papua New Guinea. Thank you very much. We also got lots of comments talking about the hopefulness of that time and the youth vote, and I guess the significance. Jennifer, you were able to vote for the first time after that drop in the voting age. So the significance of the youth vote particularly for the Whitlam government?  

Dr Guy Hansen: Yeah, the voting age coming down to 18 years was a big reform measure. And of course, there's some other really important reform measures, like no fault divorce was introduced in 1975, which was a huge social reform. We just heard some discussion about how there was a kind of a controlling atmosphere for women. So, making divorce easier was a huge, change in Australian society, which I think was a massive improvement for people. Yeah.  

Karlee Baker: Thank you. [Participants in the webinar] have also thought about... Karen, thank-you for mentioning ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow’. It's one of the first things that a lot of us think about when we see that iconic photo of Vincent Lingiari and Gough Whitlam, it’s so embedded in our pop culture as well. Now through that Paul Kelly [and Kev Carmody] song. And Sue, you've noticed it was a really transformative and hopeful time for you. Thank you.

As we finish up today, we have one more conversation to show you. The fantastic Quentin who works in our library, donated a whole lot of her own childhood toys to this exhibition. So she and curator Shelley discuss those toys. We'll leave you now with that conversation, but for now, we will say thank you very much and goodbye.

Quentin Slade: Hello Shelly, and thank you so much for including my toys in your wonderful 1975 exhibition.  

Shelly McGuire: Thank you Quentin, and I am so glad you could loan them to us. I’d love to ask you a few more questions about them. How did you come to have such a great collection of 1970s toys?  

Quentin Slade: I was very lucky. My parents would buy because my birthday and Christmas were so close together that my parents would buy me one good present for Christmas and one good present on my birthday. The rest might be like little toys or your Santa bag, but that's how it started. So each year I would receive two really good toys, and for storage it was much easier just to keep them in their boxes when I'd finished playing with them and put them in the cupboard, because I don't know if you can remember, but houses were a lot smaller back in the 70s as far as the child's bedroom.

Shelly McGuire: Yeah, that must be why they’re in such great condition because you've been able to keep them in the box. They're all really well cared for, but well loved and played with. There's a lot of creative toys in here. Were you creative as a child?  

Quentin Slade: I do remember doing those ones a lot. My painting wasn't so good. But the activity of the painting was the fun part.

Shelly McGuire: And while I was doing some research into the toys just to get some more information about them for the exhibition, I was just amazed to see how many are still in production today. Like the Spirograph, we've still got Lego, Connect 4. We’ve all played Connect 4, right? Did you have a favorite growing up?  

Quentin Slade: My favorite would have been the Mr. Potato Head. Yeah, because you've got Mr. Potato Head, but then you had a carrot and a capsicum, and it was kind of fun to put all the little pieces together.  

Shelly McGuire: We had a lot of fun putting them together for the exhibition.  

Quentin Slade: So, it was that one. And my other favorite one, was behind me is the mosaic tiles. And because they just wooden pieces in different shapes and colours, but they had such a nice texture to them. And I remember just being able to sit down and just make different shapes as the box suggested.  

We lived in Wollongong for a while, but my great grandmother was in Canberra, so during the school holidays my mum would travel down going to Canberra to drop me off and I really loved having the Fuzzy Felt because it was, I guess, the first portable toy. I could just sit in the car and put the shapes together and create all sorts of things and then would either fall asleep or look out the window or have something to play.  

Shelly McGuire: Perfect size for your lap, right?  

Quentin Slade: It is definitely. Yeah.  

Shelly McGuire: I do have a bit of a favorite toy, I must admit, which is the little puppy here and in my research I found out its name is Peppy Puppy. And, I have seen iterations of this recently with the batteries are inside the animal, I've seen a horse, I've seen a unicorn and a dog, and I could see the battery pack is separate on this one. What did the puppy do?  

Quentin Slade: Okay, well, the puppy was interesting. This was at my great grandmother's house, and it was my Christmas present. And I opened up the box and there was this puppy and I thought ‘oh, wow.’ And I was told to put the puppy on the floor and my parents had put the batteries inside, and I flipped the switch. And because I'd not seen animation before with soft toys, this thing moved and then it barked!. And I was so frightened. Apparently I jumped up on the couch because I wasn't expecting any sound coming from a soft toy! So it was a very new toy to have, but afterwards I did enjoy it and played with it, but apparently that first experience I was frightened.

Received quite a bit of Lego. Again, good piece of Lego each year. And yes, there was this kitchen set. I don't know how many of those were actually made or if they're still being made today.  

Shelly McGuire: I'm not sure. When I was researching this is one of the hardest ones to find because it didn't have the box. So I had to really, really put my search terms in to have a look for it. I think there was a blue set and it had a little table as well, but I like the shapes of it as well, it looks like they've combined the Duplo size for the kitchen doors with the Lego style to press down. So, that was really fun to see that together.  

Quentin Slade: So, it was the bracelet. And of course, when I was much younger, the big wooden beads of course, and that was to help with, fine motor skills.  

Shelly McGuire: We've got some great 70s music playing in the exhibition. Did you listen to music as a child?

Quentin Slade: Yes, I did, and I remember Sherbet very fondly. So it was so nice to see the Sherbet poster as soon as you walk in. But I also had the toy record player that worked, and I was given all these small nursery rhyme albums, and the publisher was Pickwick, so that a very long time ago. And so I had about seven little albums that I could put on the record player. And there were nursery rhymes.  

Shelly McGuire: Oh, wow. Sort of like this?  

Quentin Slade: Yes. Yeah, yeah.  

Shelly McGuire: Oh that's great. Let's play a song. We’ve got Hickory Dickory Dock today.