Daily life in Melbourne during the 1960s

A suburban house, a rented flat or a migrant hostel offered very different starting points for life in 1960s Melbourne. This account brings together histories of the city and identifiable family recollections to explore housing, work, shopping and leisure.

Finding a home

Historian Graeme Davison estimates that almost three-quarters of Melbourne families owned or were buying their homes by the late 1960s. The expanding suburban frontier reached places including Doncaster, Templestowe and Frankston. Ownership was widespread, but it did not describe every household. Source: Suburbs and Suburbanisation.

The decade also brought substantial flat construction. Seamus O’Hanlon describes private rental blocks aimed especially at young adults, alongside Housing Commission multi-storey flats in inner suburbs. Low-rise flats and villa units appeared farther out as well. These different forms of accommodation complicate the familiar picture of a city made entirely of detached houses and gardens. Source: Flats.

Cars, distances and shopping

Davison identifies private cars as a major force reshaping Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s. Development spread between established train and tram corridors, while garages became more prominent features of suburban homes. Chadstone, opened in 1960, exemplified the regional shopping centre associated with this changing geography. These changes connected housing and shopping increasingly closely to access to a car; they do not establish that every household owned one. Source: Suburbs and Suburbanisation.

One working household: the Myerscoughs

John and Doreen Myerscough arrived from England in December 1963 and stayed at Altona Migrant Hostel until returning to England in January 1966. They recalled cramped accommodation: their children occupied the bedroom while the parents used a sofa bed. John made furnishings and flyscreens. His employment included pipeline work, casual construction and ceiling installation, sometimes requiring lengthy absences from home.

Doreen took a job at a tobacco factory in Brooklyn about six months after their son’s birth in June 1964. The account also mentions a daughter attending school and another using the hostel kindergarten, showing paid work alongside childcare arrangements. After buying land at Melton, Doreen feared isolation if John took the car to work. Their story illustrates practical difficulties behind suburban aspirations, rather than a typical experience shared by all migrants. Source: Myerscough family history.

Food, neighbours and making a home

The Spiropoulos family reached Melbourne from Greece in October 1964. In a retrospective family account, Stavroula Spiropoulos describes their subsequent home in Fawkner as close to schools, shops and a Greek church. Her father grew vegetables, and the family exchanged produce and homemade salami with Italian neighbours. Australian-born neighbours helped with English and navigating services, and encouraged the purchase of a television for language learning.

Efstathia Spiropoulos remembered relief from the wood gathering, handwashing and water carrying of her earlier life in Greece. These recollections connect domestic comfort with food growing and neighbourhood help. However, the account does not date every Fawkner memory precisely, so it should not be read as a year-by-year record of the 1960s or as representative of all Greek migrants. Source: Spiropoulos family narrative.

Entertainment in the living room

Television offered Melbourne households comedy, sport and locally recognisable drama. Graham Kennedy’s In Melbourne Tonight, which began in 1957, continued through the 1960s. World of Sport, launched in 1959, made sporting discussion part of television entertainment. From 1964, the police series Homicide brought Melbourne settings into viewers’ homes.

The eMelbourne history also describes a specific clash between viewing and other routines: in 1968, the popularity of the ABC’s The Forsyte Saga prompted many Protestant churches to reconsider evening services. Such examples show television influencing schedules, without implying that everyone watched the same programmes or had identical leisure habits. Source: Television.

What this evidence can tell us

The city histories describe broad changes in housing and entertainment; the two family narratives reveal particular experiences and remembered feelings. They serve different purposes. Neither family can stand for an entire migrant community, and their accounts do not establish citywide wages, household budgets or a standard daily timetable. This selection also does not adequately document Aboriginal Melburnians’ experiences. It is a bounded account of several aspects of ordinary life, rather than a portrait of every resident.

For the preceding decade, see daily life in Melbourne during the 1950s.