Living History

Memories of The Queen’s visit 1954.

At the time of the Queen’s visit in 1954 I was just 8 years old and in grade three in Brighton, Victoria. Unfortunately for a week or so during the royal visit I found myself in bed with the chicken pox followed shortly after by measles. Thanks to Mum I was never bored and always occupied with things to do, including reading comics, (I loved the Phantom) short stories, colouring-in books, constructing Meccano models or listening to the local ABC radio stories of the Magic Faraway Tree. There was no Television in Australia in 1954.

One day Mum bought me a big scrapbook with pictures of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on the cover. I filled this book with coloured pictures of the Queen, which I carefully cut out from various magazines Mum had bought. All the magazines had filled their pages with photos and stories, following her visit and activities around Australia, so I had lots of photos to choose from. Each picture was pasted to a page in chronological order and then I drew a red and blue border around each picture, making sure I included the caption describing the picture. I continued this for her entire visit, filling the whole book.

When I eventually returned to school, I found to my surprise that my teacher had asked the class to create some sort of project to commemorate the Queen’s visit. At the end of her visit, all the entries were displayed, and to my delight I had won first prize!

During her tour the Queen visited Melbourne and our family decided to go and see her. The times and places she visited were published in the newspaper each day. My parents, grandmother, brother and sister all hopped into the family car decorated with red, white and blue streamers, and motored off to the city to see the Queen. We also had an Australian flag stuck on the car window, but I remember it being blown off in the wind. We parked the car and eventually found a good spot to wait for her. We chose the steps of a building in Swanson Street, as this was slightly raised, and gave us a clear view above the crowd lining the street. The Queen and Duke were driven slowly down the street in a beautiful shiny black Rolls Royce with the Union Jack flying from the bonnet. They smiled and waved back to the cheering crowd. It was all over in a matter of minutes, but we were all so excited to have seen the Queen.

PCFP, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.

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