My parents in their Sunday best, us kids clasped firmly by the hand, the family undertook a small war to fight their way into the  Scout Hall in High Street. We were there, we were assured, to watch a miracle. In community halls all over the city that magic night, half the city took to hastily arranged seating and watched while Channel 7 got underway with our first program transmissions. They began with a gala, they called it, a concert really that seemed all the worse for lack of colour and condensed size.
    For me, standing on tip-toe peering over shoulders and around ladies’ hats, it began to wear off very rapidly. The audience began to fidget. They all knew they would have been better off with the colour and proportions of a movie musical. The Galah finally ended, and the first drama began—Richard Greene drew his bow to the sky in yet another version of The Adventures of Robin Hood!  It was the BBC drama series, that would become a great favourite with us all, but right then it was the last thing I wanted to see. This television thing, I knew, would never catch on. Although, next day at school, everyone was singing the song…
    
    Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
    Riding through the glen.
    Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
    With his band of men.
    Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
    Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.
 

   Everyone else seemed to think much the same. “It was very balanced programming,” was the nicest thing anyone could think of to say about it. A couple of hundred people cramped into a smoke-filled hall watching on flickering, 11-inch screen. You can imagine how disillusioning it was.
    But I was wrong. It turned out that television was a true wonder, even if I hated those chilly evenings standing in pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers on the pavement outside Prahran Electrical Appliances with my entire family and most of the neighbours. No radio shop proprietor would have dared close up for the night without turning his window display videos on unless he desired a brick through the pane.