DUSTY dirt roads, sun-soaked weekends at the beach and wet winter days at the football are memories that encapsulate 1960s suburban Frankston for political journalist and former The Age associate editor Shaun Carney.
Life was simple and predictable; children still walked shoeless to the beach and didn’t come home until dinner was on the table, and the infectious sense of community pride was reflected in friendly neighbourhood banter and well-kept gardens.
A highlight of the year was the much-anticipated Australia Day procession down the main street, where people waved flags and stood together in a show of unity and suburban pride.
“Frankston back then was full of new housing estates and was very blue-collar, very Anglo-Celtic and full of ‘nuclear families’ with conservative values and a strong sense of self,” Carney said.
Carney reveals some of these childhood memories in his forthcoming book Press Escape, a beautifully crafted memoir and social commentary about growing up at the beginning of the television age, navigating family secrets, his daughter’s struggle with cancer, and the changing nature of journalism in the digital age.
Born in Frankston, brought up in Seaford and educated both in and out of school in The Pines, by the time he was in his early 20s Carney was itching to get out of suburbia to see the world and pursue his childhood passion to be a journalist.
But he has never forgotten his roots, and remembers those earlier days with fondness, exploring Kananook Creek, wandering barefoot across the highway to the beach, and staying well clear of “sharpies” at the then Monterey High School.
“Those days as a young, carefree kid in Frankston were days of freedom and the beach and football, and we were pretty happy with that,” he said.
“I’m a proud product of Frankston, I suppose you could say Frankston made me – it certainly shaped who I was as a person and a writer.
“But as I reached my 20s, I wanted to get out and experience a more exciting life as a journalist, so at the embarrassingly late age of 22 I left home and headed to the city,” he said.
In his last year at Monash University at the end of the 70s, Carney began his journalism career with a cadetship at The Herald, moving on to The Age after eight years, where he became a columnist, and then associate editor from 1997 until his departure in 2012.
His memoir is filled with imagery and flair, and he manages to capture the quirkiness of quintessential suburban Melbourne as he covers everything from life in the “frontiers” of Seaford and Frankston, to the Blues playing the Pies at Princes Park and the raucous newsrooms of the 70s.
It is at times funny, insightful, and heart-warming.
Carney said he wanted to write something that reappraised his public and private roles – as a son, a father, and a journalist. He reveals the struggles of watching his brave 12-year-old daughter endure chemotherapy, and explores the shifts in Australian television, music, news and politics across the past 50 years.
Back in Frankston last week, Carney said he remembers a community in the 60s and 70s full of hope and pride, with lots of nervous but excited new arrivals from the UK, and a strong sense of new beginnings.
- Press Escape by Shaun Carney, published by Melbourne University Publishing, is available to buy now at all good bookshops.