Gather round the box

'Good evening and welcome to television.'
Bruce Gyngell, Sydney, 16 September 1956.

With those six words, the landscape of Australian lounge rooms changed forever.

In 1954, the Australian Government announced the introduction of a government-funded television broadcasting service and two commercial services in Sydney and Melbourne. The 1956 Summer Olympics (which were hosted in Melbourne) were fast-approaching and were a motivation to introduce television to Australia.

TCN-9 Sydney began test transmissions on 16 September of 1956 (with Bruce Gyngell's words above), and officially commenced broadcasting on 27 October. GTV-9 broadcast to Melbourne viewers on 27 September. By the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics opening ceremony on 22 November 1956, five stations in Melbourne and Sydney were operational.

It was 1959 before residents of Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia enjoyed the joys of television, with Tasmania following in 1960 and the Australian Capital Territory in 1962. The Northern Territory remained a TV-free zone until 1971.

By the end of 1956, it is estimated that only 1 per cent of Sydney residents and 5 per cent of Melbourne residents owned a television set. The cost of a television set was about six to ten weeks' pay for the average worker of the time.* However, over the following decades television rapidly became more popular and affordable.

Before our time, a home would contain just one television set in the lounge room and viewing of the television was a family affair. Shows such as Bandstand, Pick-a-Box and In Melbourne Tonight drew the family to the lounge room.

One of my own earliest memories is of watching Young Talent Time on a black and white TV with my parents when I was around three or four years old.

Nowadays, many homes have multiple television sets, and pay-TV options which offer niche channels to suit every taste at any time of day. Sport can be on in the lounge room, Disney Channel in the playroom, Lifestyle Channel in the sewing room. We are spoiled for choice, and have to the opportunity to exercise that choice at any time.

However, over the past few months I watched with interest the effect of the show Masterchef (Australia) on the viewing habits of family and friends. Here was a show that appealed to all age groups. It drew families together to watch amateur cooks invent dishes from set ingredients, concoct dishes from mystery boxes, attempt to replicate the signature dishes of Australia's top chefs and hone their tasting, plating and cooking skills in general.

It was good, clean family fun. There was none of the bitchiness of some reality shows. The judges were constructive and fair in their criticism. The contestants were retained or eliminated on the merits of their cooking by experts, rather than on the whims of an SMS-ing public caught-up in their personalities rather than their talent.

And the effect on family culture was phenomenal. Five year olds were discussing profiteroles in the playground. Smart-mouthed tweens were asking their parents as they prepared dinner, "Now Mum, what are you worried could go wrong?" Children were competing at the dinner table to identify the ingredients in that night's dinner. Adults were downloading recipes from the website and trying them out at home. Families started to call scraping up ingredients from the fridge to make dinner: "cooking with a mystery box".

Families have a shared language and conversation about this show that extends beyond the actual viewing time.

In my home, we were late to join the Masterchef bandwagon, but once we did we were hooked. There are a few TV shows that we watch together as a family, and what they seem to have in common is that a group of talented people compete to be the last one standing - e.g So You Think You Can Dance and Project Runway.

However, I know that this format doesn't appeal to all families.

What shows draw all the members of your household into the one room together?


* Source: http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/populartelevision/

Things my elders taught me: A Guiding Light

Today, we hand over to Before Our Time reader - The Mof- to share her memory of the skills she learnt as a Guide. If you would like to be added to the line-up to share what you learnt from your elders, email us on beforeourtime@bigpond.com - Megan and Alison.



Apart from parents and teachers the big influence on my young life was the Girl Guide Movement which was started in UK in 1910 by Agnes Baden-Powell, sister of Robert Baden-Powell who had started the Boy Scout movement three years earlier. Seeing their brothers having such adventures the girls were agitating to do the same but Robert Baden-Powell decided that the girls' movement should be organised differently and despite popular opinion of the day being that girls should not be in Guiding, the movement got off the ground.

The aims of Guiding were to foster physical fitness, survival skills, citizenship and outdoor activities such as camping.

In our the little village in Scotland a Guide company was started by our local doctor and her housekeeper when I was about 10 and I think I must have been first in line to join as there wasn't much extra curricular activity in country areas.

We were divided up into patrols and allowed to choose an emblem. As I was the leader of a patrol (in consultation with the rest of the patrol, of course) we decided to be Kingfisher patrol as I had long admired this colourful bird

Every week we had to turn up in clean uniform which consisted of a blue blouse which we were allowed to wear over warm tops in winter, light blue tie which doubled as a sling for first aid, a navy blue skirt and brown highly polished shoes. There was also the brass trefoil badge which had to be highly polished. All this in itself was a great lesson in discipline as we were inspected at the start of every meeting and there was extra pressure on the patrol leader to make sure her patrol was up to scratch.

Weekly we had to affirm the Guide promise:

"I promise on my Honour that I will do my best
to do my duty to God and the Queen
to help other people at all times
and to obey the Guide law"

We also had to promise to try to do a good turn every day.

The Mof and a Guiding friend.

In keeping with the aims of the movement the programme each week consisted of games for exercise, mental exercise of some sort, lessons in first aid, outdoor nature study and tracking and a time to work out things for personal growth.

We worked towards badges for areas we were personally interested in such as cooking, sewing,first aid, knitting or nature study.Each badge was sewn onto the outer sleeve of the blouse and so it was a big incentive to gain as many badges as possible! I distinctly remember doing the cooking badge. I was invited to the Leader's home where I had to cook the meal I had worked out beforehand and while it was cooking had to set the table beautifully and then present the meal which we sat down to. I had decided to make my mother's brown stew recipe with mashed potato followed by apple crumble but in the course of attending to the dessert I forgot about the stew and it stuck to the bottom of the pan and singed! The Leaders very politely ate it up and I was awarded the cooking badge!

Camp cooking was more my style and I loved the camps, cooking potatoes in the fire and toasting over the fire. We were taught to respect fire -- how to build a fire, make sure that it was enclosed in a stone circle and completely out and covered with soil before we left it.

Looking back it was a time of learning skills, discipline, socialising, lots of healthy competition and lots and lots of fun.




The Mof lives in a country town in Western Australia where she is involved with a variety of community groups. She has recently returned from a trip to Scotland revisiting all the haunts of her youth. She doesn't often burn brown stew anymore.

Were you a Scout or a Guide?