‘The Dunnies’: Tuesday, 13th September, 1977

At 6.30 a.m., on the “2KY News”, Doug Harris, who sounded as though he is elderly, stated that a man had been found guilty of tampering with his wife when he should have said his wife’s car. He later corrected himself.

A bitterly cold wind blew and it had begun to rain by 3.40 p.m. This had ceased by a quarter to seven and so we set out to walk as far as that corner opposite Sutherland Hospital and on which Brewer Ford’s caryard is situated.

“The Naked Vicar Show” screened from half past seven and featured a skit on the 1977 Dunlop Sports Awards: “The Dunnies”. ‘Dunny’ is Australian slang for toilet.

An hour later we sat through a repetition of the British film, “To Sir With Love”, from 1967. It stars Sidney Poitier, Suzy Kendall and Lulu, who sings the title song. Lulu’s recording spent five weeks at No.1 in the United States and peaked at No.2 in Australia. Curiously, the single did not enter the charts in Lulu’s native Britain.

I saw “To Sir With Love” twice at the pictures, the second time, in 1970, at the old Vista Cinema, in Woonoona, a suburb of Wollongong, where hoodlums flicked the ends of their live cigarettes over the edge of the balcony. I remember, even then, thinking how dated the film seemed to be.

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