Living Colour

Jeroen van Dyk was born in 1966 and emigrated with his family to Wollongong, Australia from the Netherlands in 1970. He shares his childhood memories of television:

“We’d had a black and white TV for as long as I can remember, and then in 1976 (around the same time as my parents forked out on an extension to the house), we became the first family in our street to have colour TV. I was as surprised as anyone, because we generally weren’t up with these things. It was a big deal back then, and a bit of a status symbol thing at the time perhaps – ‘dirt-poor immigrants made good’ sort-of-thing.

Source: vintage-radio.com.au

“We suddenly became popular. There was lots of interest from young kids in the neighbourhood who came over to our house to watch TV. Pretty quickly, other kids’ families got colour TV too, and everyone would go around to each other’s houses to watch TV.

“We all knew Elvis Presley had three television sets in one room and we couldn’t fathom why anyone would want three TVs on at the same time – how you could possibly watch three at once?

“Our TV was in the living room, with the furniture arranged around it. The living room would be considered small by today’s standards; the house itself was a tiny two-bedroom place about half the size it is now which still isn’t very large, on a massive block. By the time we got the colour TV, we had a style of furniture called “post and rail”, which was popular at the time. This is six years into being Aussie residents and my parents were starting to buy nice things with their hard-earned money after years of making do with crates and homemade curtains. Our TV was an HMV. Reception was very good and we had channels 10, 9, 7, 5a (ABC) and the local channel 4.

“Everything changed when colour TV came. We suddenly spent more time indoors. We used to spend lots of time outdoors, but then what we did became governed by what was coming up on TV. If there was something on that my brother and I wanted to watch, we’d always make sure we were at home so we could watch it.

“During the building extensions, the builders commented to my parents how well behaved and quiet we were. It was because we were glued to the TV the whole time, watching Wacky Races.

“We didn’t watch TV during the day on weekends – only in the morning and at night. There was never anything much on telly on Saturday night. Hawaii 5-0. My parents would watch televised sport. If you saw it now, you’d be horrified at the grainy images and camera angles.

“We had a ritual of watching lots of shows, including ABC News at 7pm, Countdown on a Sunday night (not because my parents wanted to watch it, but because they were supervising what we watched) and after-school cartoons. It blew our minds to see it in colour.

“3.30 to 5pm was TV time. There’d be lots of reruns of American sitcoms. These were in the days when parents actually believed that if you watched too much TV, your eyes would go square. Comedies like Are You Being Served, Number 96 and Benny Hill were strictly for the adults only because they were too rude, but Love Thy Neighbour was fine, with all its racism!

“We’d have dinner, and then 7pm to bedtime was when we all watched TV together – first the news, then whatever happened to be on afterwards, usually a comedy. Dad would’ve only got home from work maybe an hour or so before. He’d sit down to eat his dinner then watch TV to chill out.

“Trying to watch a movie on TV on a Friday night would take 3-and-a-half hours because of all the commercials.

“Before school we’d watch Miss Marilyn’s Wheel with Marty and Emu and after school Get Smart and Hogan’s Heroes. We also watched I Love Lucy, Petticoat Junction and Bewitched, but I didn’t like them so much. We couldn’t take our eyes off the lady in I Dream of Jeannie – Barbara Eden.

Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie. Source: i-dream-of-jeannie.wikia.com

“For a Saturday afternoon special treat, we’d watch The Banana Splits Show and on Sunday mornings without fail, no matter how tired we were, we got up to watch Thunderbirds at 6am. The whole family would watch Disneyland at 6pm on Sunday nights. They’d be showing some fuzzy kids movie good for family viewing.

“To be up with conversations happening around the playground, you needed to have been watching TV – shows, footy, the Bathurst race once a year. Loads of kids seemed to have watched shows we weren’t allowed to watch.

“In the very early ‘80s, after Dr Who and just before the news came on, they’d play a music video clip – whatever was happening in the day. I remember Simple Minds’ Love Song in particular. And Mickey. And The Pretenders. The music segment on Simon Townsend’s Wonder World in the early ‘80s was up there with Countdown as far as being hot on the pulse of music: Duran Duran, Mi-Sex, The Teardrop Explodes, PiL, early INXS – it was the only reason I watched Simon.

“It had a huge impact on me; I was already an avid fan of Countdown and any other glimpses of music clips that were around. I wasn’t old enough to attend concerts and it was the only way to see music clips at the time.”