Radicals Remembering the Sixties

The Sixties—an era of protest, free love, civil disobedience, duffel coats, flower power, giant afros, and desert boots, all recorded on grainy black and white film footage— marked a turning point for change. Radicals found their voices and used them. While the initial trigger for protest was opposition to the Vietnam War, this anger quickly escalated to include Aboriginal Land Rights, Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, Apartheid, Student Power, and ‘workers’ control.’ In Radicals some of the people doing the changing—including David Marr, Margret RoadKnight, Gary Foley, Jozefa Sobski, and Geoffrey Robertson—reflect on how the decade changed them and Australian society forever. Radicals – Remembering the Sixties will make you feel like you were there, whether or not you really were.

Meredith Burgmann is a former academic who also served as a (Labor) president of the NSW Upper House. She is the co-author, with Verity Burgmann, of Green Bans, Red Union: The saving of a city, which was reissued twenty years after its original publication in 1998. Meredith has also authored books on ASIO and misogyny. She is the founder of the Ernie Awards for Sexism. On retirement from parliament, she was elected president of the Australian Council for International Development. Meredith is a Sydney Swans ambassador. Nadia Wheatley is an Australian writer whose published works include picture books, novels, biography, memoir, and history. Five Times Dizzy (1982) was hailed as Australia’s first multicultural book for children. Other social and political issues explored in her work include conservation, unemployment, refugees, and learning from Country. Among her numerous awards is the NSW Premier’s History Award (2002) for The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Nadia’s most recent book is the memoir Her Mother’s Daughter (2018).