Torch fans flame of TV
THE recent Queen’s Baton Relay through the streets of Queenscliff, Torquay and Geelong for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games recalled a similar torch relay for the 1956 Olympic Games held in Melbourne.
But while the Commonwealth Games relay in February came two months before the Games kick off next month, the 1956 torch relay came to Geelong early on the Olympics’ opening day.
Thousands of people lined the streets of Geelong to catch a glimpse of the team of 56 runners who carried the torch for the Geelong leg of the relay, which started near Meredith and finished at Werribee. The Olympic torch arrived in Geelong on the morning of November 22, 1956, slightly ahead of schedule, and was presented by runner Frank Palmer to the-then mayor Cr Albert Backwell on the steps of City Hall.
The mayor then lit a brazier at the foot of the City Hall steps, which was kept burning for the duration of the Games. While the torch continued on to the MCG, Cr Backwell and the local relay runners positioned themselves in front of a television that had been presented to the City of Geelong the previous year to watch the opening ceremony.
The 1956 Melbourne Olympics coincided with the advent of television in Australia, and the city’s television — the first made in Australia by Pye — had a long wait before the first pictures were broadcast.
The first test pattern was screened in July 1956, but it was not until the following month that an antenna was installed at City Hall.
It was on the night of September 16, 1956, that Bruce Gyngell’s famous words, “Good evening and welcome to television”, launched the new modern wonder to Australian households.
In Geelong and elsewhere, however, few households actually possessed a television in those early days, and people crowded in front of shop windows to catch a glimpse of the new phenomenon.
Gyngell went on to repeat his famous words for the opening of SBS in 1980, by which time colour television had arrived. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com