The Summer of '62

The Summer of '62

Those who have seen the movie "The Summer of '42 (1971)" starring beautiful Jennifer O'Neill may be disappointed if they are expecting a romantic drama, but maybe ... a hint.

The summer of 1962-3 actually refers to the break between Physics III and IV, when I was a vacation student at the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) at Salisbury, north of Adelaide. Science and Engineering students came from all over Australia, and apart from me, there were two others from SydUni Physics. One was Mark Diesendorf who went on to do his PhD in Applied Maths at UNSW, and some may recall him. Mark took holy orders in the Green religion and was eventually sacked from CSIRO, but that's another story. The other was Dave Wiley who did his PhD on the Mills Cross, so most will recall him. Dave was already on a Defence Dept scholarship and spent his whole career in Defence and toured the world. I saw him at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Pyrmont, where Tony Bray also worked, in the 1990s. Dave reached a very high administrative position in Defence Science for Naval construction, based in Melbourne. BTW Defence Science has undergone many name changes over the years, so WRE is now DSTO, and the Salisbury site is the largest, but it is now contracting around the Edinburgh Air Force Base and the excess land is being sold off for development.

During summer 1962, while the local students were away, the vacation students were housed at Lincoln College, North Adelaide, abutting the huge parklands north of the Torrens River, where it is a nice walk to the footbridge over the river to the University of Adelaide and the centre of the city. During that summer there were open air classical music concerts, and in pre-open tennis days the professionals played at the famous Memorial Drive grass courts. As a fan I saw my idols Laver, Hoad and Rosewall, and Sedgman. Lew Hoad beat Rod Laver in a 5-set thriller. Near Lincoln College was the Women's and Children's Hospital full of student nurses! A magnet. In those days nurses did their training on the job and they were all female. Lincoln College was then Methodist with no alcohol and no visitors, but non-Methodists will find ways of doing things. Dave, Mark and I and others had to meekly apologise to the College after one alcohol party! We met Don Bradman's daughters and many others. The social life was good with cheap wine from the wineries plus from the local brewery Cooper's Ale with the residue in the bottle. I don't think they still make it that way as they went all Swan-VB-style. The beer was necessary as Adelaide's water from the tap was then a strange brown colour with that river smell!

Now to justify this conversation it's time to get technical. At WRE I built and tested the temperature sensor telemetry unit for the Jindivik drone jet which was sold all over the world. This might amuse electronics techos. They were so British at that time that when I went to the store to get some little 1/4W resistors, they gave me some HUGE wire-wound Welwyn power resistors! I forget how I got some proper resistors for the small aluminium box. Those were the days of the Brit Blue Streak rocket - the students had the full plans - I forget how security handled that! No doubt full of huge British resistors. How the Brits built the successful Harrier VTOL jump jets I'll never know. The Yanks bought them. Reminds me of the top Russian fighter jets with vacuum tube electronics.

--TonyP

PS This amusing video gives the flavour of Adelaide in the sixties:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RkNeNF2-Esw


Made by The Commonwealth Film Unit 1966. There's a pretty girl in it so blokes won't fall asleep.