Pictures 1958
Catalogue / Memoir
Introduction
Pictures
Objects
Animations
PICTURES are both finished and ephemeral works made for animations.
1949---- 1950---- 1951---- 1952---- 1953---- 1954---- 1955---- 1956---- 1957---- 1958---- 1959---- 1960---- 1961---- 1962---- 1963---- 1964---- 1965---- 1966---- 1967---- 1968---- 1969---- 1970---- 1971---- 1972---- 1973---- 1974---- 1975---- 1976---- 1977---- 1978---- 1979---- 1980---- 1981---- 1982---- 1983---- 1984---- 1985---- 1986---- 1987---- 1988---- 1989---- 1990---- 1991---- 1992---- 1993---- 1994---- 1995---- 1996---- 1997---- 1998---- 1999---- 2000---- 2001---- 2002---- 2003---- 2004---- 2005---- 2006---- 2007---- 2008---- 2009---- 2010---- 2011---- 2012---- 2013---- 2014---- 2015---- 2016---- 2017---- 2018---- 2019---- 2020---- 2021---- 2022---- 2023---- 2024---- 2025---- 2026----
Brother Tom is born.
1958. Nanna Geise (Phoebe)
with baby Tom, Glen Waverley
1958. L-R: Cousins Simon and Richard,
Their mother Auntie Marg,
My sister Nadya,
Me in Richard's stroller
Canterbury, Melbourne
We leave Talisman in Kallista and move into a new house in Glen Waverley. The new house is tiny, built from the smallest allowable floor plan and financed with Noel's war service loan. We are closer to our family and closer to the Chelmsford school in Glen Iris that they hope will be suitable for Nadya. Nadya and I are both accepted by the school and travel together by train from Glen Waverley station to Glen Iris station, with long walks at each end. It was never clear to me who was supposed to be looking after who, but to me it did feel safer with my big sister. She was physically strong and determined. I felt she would defend me.
The Chelmsford school was for children who didn't fit into normal schools. Nadya and I didn't last there long.
One weekend Mum takes me to visit a school friend in Glen Iris. In the photo below I am wearing one of the many outfits Mum made for me. Here my friend and I are sitting on crazy paving in her back yard. The paving stones felt hot, heated by the summer sun.
Mum loved fashion. She worked as a tailor in a shop in Toorak making and adjusting clothes for rich women. She loved to dress me up in the latest styles. One day I felt like I was just her doll and rebelled. I was reading Pippi Longstocking at the time and loved wearing my father's old hand-me-down clothes with holes. I loved that Pippi's father, like mine, was away a lot working on ships at sea. I loved that Pippi believed her mother was an angel looking over her.
1956. Me (right) sitting with a friend
on crazy paving, Glen Iris Melbourne
The Glen Waverley house has a garage with a space closed off at the back with room for Noel's ham radio gear. A proper Ham Radio Shack outside the house, with a side door and wooden steps leading up to it. The ham shack walls were lined with QSL cards - cards with messages confirming two-way radio communications between amateur radio operators. Noel used to say, "Friends all over the word; none here but friends all over the world". There were (and likely still are) strict rules about what topics ham radio operators could talk about. Whenever I was in Noel's shack I would hear him 'talking' with people about technical things, like fixing a piece of electronic equipment, or the strength of their signals. I say 'talking' because communications were transmitted not directly by voice, but in morse code, and later printed text with a teleprinter.
This is the place to say my father was well known in his community for winning speed competitions in morse code communications. He was ambidextrous; he would operate a morse code key and simultaneously write by hand to document his communications.
c.1958 An Australian QSL card
Not my father's QSL. His was VK3NR.
Here's Norah and Ca in their driveway in Kew, Melbourne. I swear their cat Tigger spoke to me once, just at this spot where they stand in this photo, beside the fence. Tigger crept along the grass from the right, looked at me, and said 'Hello'.
c.1958 Norah and Ca in their driveway
7 Orford Avenue, Kew, Melbourne
Noel's friends from the Mission to Seafarers in Melbourne's Docklands would visit our new home in Glen Waverley. One was a sailor called Nobby. He came several times. He would sit me on his knee and tell me stories about the natural world - big picture stuff like how the oceans work. He gave me this book with pictures of earth's evolution, and pictures of creatures large and small - from dinosaurs to phytoplankton. He introduced me to krill and explained how important they are in the food chain.
You can see a krill in the lower left corner of this picture below.
1956. Page 102 from The World We Live In Published in 1956 by Time, Inc., Simon and Schuster, Inc., and Artists and Writers Guild.
Other people came from other places to exchange messages with their family members working in Antarctica, through Noel's radio system.
This was my first encounter with Antarctica.
EVENTS
1958: The Dictation Test (1901) repealed
1958: Television expanded to all Australian states with the granting of licenses.
1958: Australia's first nuclear reactor began operating at Lucas Heights, Sydney.
The Australian Almanac, Pub. Angus & Robertson 1985
May 1958 crisis in France ends the Fourth Republic and returns Charles de Gaulle to power;
the United Arab Republic briefly unites Egypt and Syria;
China launches the Great Leap Forward;
the 1958 FIFA World Cup sees Brazil win its first title with a breakout performance by Pele;
the 14 July Revolution topples Iraq's monarchy;
the 1958 Lebanon crisis prompts U.S. intervention;
the Prestonsburg, Kentucky, bus disaster kills 27 children;
the Our Lady of the Angels School fire kills 95 in Chicago;
Tennis for Two, created by William Higinbotham, becomes an early video game.
Imagine everything connecting.
Written by me, Lisa Roberts/Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill), on
19/04/2026
