The Eighties

I was born three years before the eighties began and was thirteen at their end. At the time the eighties was all there had ever been, but now I can see their special character.

There was an earthiness to the eighties – all those everyday tracksuits. We were comfortable being Aussies in the summer sun.

We were confident of the future. We felt like we could be anything when we grew up.

The eighties had a wildness. Not a random, purposeless wildness, but a wild narrative. We grew up recognising wildness and expecting some fluidity and unpredictability in life. We grew up conversant with narrative.

Then the grungy nineties changed our focus from the fun and mad to the bad. We acknowledged suffering and despair but we stayed defiant and made it through. And now we’ve arrived at the noughties – where we have embraced the dubious honour of creating our own meaning. So far it’s a happy, worldly-wise, humanist place.