Daily life in Perth during the 1960s

Housing developments, working routines and weekend gatherings offer different views of Perth in the 1960s. Films, photographs and community histories reveal both the promise of suburban life and experiences missing from the city's promotional image.

Work, shopping and the city's public image

The 1965 film Life in Australia: Perth presented working, studying, shopping, health care and recreation as parts of an attractive urban routine. Its organising viewpoint was the local newspaper, while beaches and community activities helped advertise the city to prospective migrants. These subjects show what officials wanted newcomers to associate with Perth: employment, services and leisure within reach.

That portrayal needs qualification. The National Film and Sound Archive identifies the film as Department of Immigration promotion and notes the series’ restrictive gender roles and exclusion of First Nations people. It provides evidence of the city’s advertised lifestyle, rather than proof that every household enjoyed its promised opportunities. NFSA collection description.

New homes at the suburban edge

The athletes’ village for the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games provides a specific example of housing development. The State Housing Commission used the accommodation project to establish new housing in the City Beach area, where land set aside in 1959 was still largely bushland in the early 1960s.

Modern construction did not necessarily mean abundant household equipment. According to the NFSA’s account, most village houses lacked televisions and none had telephones; scouts and guides carried messages during the Games. These details describe the athletes’ accommodation at that event. They should not be treated as a measure of television or telephone ownership across Perth. 1962 Games Village.

Planning around the car

Perth’s expanding suburbs formed part of a longer planning story. In a State Library interview, historian Jenny Gregory explains how Gordon Stephenson’s metropolitan planning of the 1950s gave considerable importance to cars and established routes followed by later freeways.

For everyday history, this suggests that the relationship between home, workplace and shops was increasingly being planned around road travel. This is an interpretation of the planning evidence, not a claim that every family owned a car or made the same journey. The interview does not establish a typical commuting time for the 1960s. Development of Perth suburbs.

Aboriginal families and access to housing

Coolbellup offers another view of suburban change. The City of Cockburn’s local history records significant movement of Aboriginal people into the area in the early to mid-1960s. During the middle and later years of the decade, the Native Welfare Department bought State Housing Commission houses there for Aboriginal families.

The account places these changes against earlier restrictions and discrimination that had obstructed Aboriginal people’s access to homes. A new suburban address therefore belonged to a history of unequal opportunities and official intervention, as well as urban growth. This evidence concerns Coolbellup and its surrounding district; it does not describe the circumstances of every Aboriginal household in metropolitan Perth. Aboriginal housing in Coolbellup, 1960s.

Saturday afternoons and teenage music

The State Library’s Perth Teen Scene collection documents performers and fans around the beginning of the decade. Its photographs are catalogued as dating from 1960–1962, although the summary describes the group more approximately as about 1960–1961.

The accompanying account connects Colin Nichol, Radio 6IX and the Coca-Cola Hi Fi Club with dances at the Embassy Ballroom. It reports attendance of up to about 1,500 on Saturday afternoons. This gives a concrete example of commercial radio, branded entertainment and dancing coming together in young people’s leisure. The photographs record one social scene, rather than the activities of all Perth teenagers. Perth Teen Scene collection.

Friday nights and Aboriginal community life

Aboriginal social life continued through gatherings that the city’s migration publicity overlooked. The City of Vincent’s Moorditj Footprints history explains that, after the Coolbaroo Club ended in 1960, the Aboriginal Advancement Council continued holding dances at 201 Beaufort Street through the 1960s and into the 1970s. Regular Friday gatherings were remembered as an eagerly anticipated part of the week for many Aboriginal families.

These recollections make community organisations and particular meeting places visible in the history of leisure. They also help distinguish the earlier Coolbaroo dances from the events that continued during this decade. Moorditj Footprints: Dances.

What these sources can tell us

This account covers selected places and experiences within metropolitan Perth between 1960 and 1969. Its examples should not be combined into an invented typical family or a single representative day. Promotional films, event accommodation, photographs and retrospective community histories each answer different questions. Together they support a varied picture, but they do not establish citywide household budgets, meal patterns or ownership rates.

Explore the broader period in Modern Daily Life Locations.