Television may well have come to Australia in the late 50s, but it never got to our home until many decades later. To our dad, this new technological marvel was simply a killer of creative fun, the evil destroyer of precious time and more importantly, a great excuse for us kids not to do that “A+B” homework. Well, our long retired grandparents, Nana & Gonga, had no qualms about the loss of the above mentioned life-experiences and so purchased a TV pretty much the day after it was first released. And so, any pronouncement by my dad that we were going to see our grandparents, created an immediate scramble for that night’s TV guide followed by a sort of diplomatic voting pact between the siblings on what the order of viewing would be. I don’t know why we bothered, because Gonga was such a keen fan of World Championship Wrestling complete with black shorts bad man Killer Kawolski Vs white shorts hero Mario Milan that this was the obvious first viewing choice. The wrestling perfected the art of air swings with their accompanying foot thumping canvas fight acting. There was the dreaded sleeper hold followed by the one-arrrr two-arrr three-arrr, break that hold command issued by the black & white striped shirt umpire. See, everything back then was in black & white. TV directing must have been so easy in that pre-colour age – Badies wore black and goodies white and umpires 50/50 (so easy). Now, this meant to be taken seriously evolving melodrama was too much for Maggie on one occasion, where she broke a chair she was sitting on from too much raucous hilarity. Often, the raising tension of good white shorts in battle with bad black shorts would necessitate Gonga having to pop a heart pill just to settle his racing anxiety. Nana on the other hand was a devotee of “The Black & White Minstrels” with it’s black face white eyed Al Jolston singing that drawn out oh mammy just one too many times for our liking. This program easily took the viewing second place leaving what ever was left of the evening to us kids. Now, Nana had a rather disturbing habit of simply walking over to the TV and changing channels on a whim or even turning the set off all together with those now family folklore words “there is nothing much on here Harry”. The fact that 6 little kids were glued to the set awaiting the outcome of some very dramatic moment in the show was completely lost on her. At least, without the advent of a remote control, she had to get up out of the couch to do the changes and did manage to slow her down, a bit. One teething problem with this new technology created the need for the installation of a manually operated vertical hold override knob. This was needed when, for no explained reason, the picture would start to slip upwards forcing us kids to have to nod up and down in time with the picture motion just to stay abreast of the story. Eventually some grown-up would step forward and try to solve the problem with a twiddle of the V-hold knob. I tell you now, no picture problem or program break for advertisements was ever going to drag us kids away from that highly stimulating visual moving entertainer. So apart from our grandparents, we shared those evenings with Lux soap for that beautiful (movie star) skin, Omo for it’s stronger than dirt knight on hourse-back, the your soaking in it Parmolive dishwashing detergent, those happy little vegemites and the light up a Vicount & join the Escort club cigarette adds. It’s OK folks! No long-term brainwashing marketing effect here – just part of life, when growing up with Gonga’s TV.
