Summary

Large green vinyl school bag, used by Lorrainne Crawford during her time at Springvale High School in the mid-1960s.

Lorrainne didn't realise when she met her high school mates in 1967 that she was making friends for life. Growing up around Springvale and the neighbouring suburbs, she got to know Mike Richards, John Evans and Bryan Jackson. Through John she met John Baker and Ian Thomas, and Mike's cousin Laurine Gaston became Lorrainne's best friend. Over the years as people partnered up, their gang became even more spirited, and so did the tales. Lorrainne recalls being told that 'if you have six friends in your lifetime you're very rich'. Today she has 13, and they still get together every year for their annual 'Friends Day' that has been running since 1984.

This school bag is part of the Lorrainne Callister collection, which records one young Melbourne woman's progression from childhood to teenager to young adulthood. It succinctly documents her life, as well as some of the important aspects of 1960s Melbourne youth culture, including the challenges and advantages of life in the new outer suburbs, the domination of American and British popular culture, and the emerging political and social movements such as contraception and sexual freedom, conscription and the Vietnam War, and female equality and feminism. It consists of approximately 250 documents, publications and photographs, with a small number of objects, mainly covering the years 1960 - 1972.

Until recently, youth culture has been an under-represented subject in the history collections of Museum Victoria, so there is now a deliberate focus to collect in this area. Acquiring a collection such as this, documenting such socially and politically turbulent period in Australia from a teenager's point of view, seems to be unprecedented in Australian cultural institutions,

Physical Description

Green vinyl school bag with two side handles and central zipper on top. Yellow piping around edge and yellow printed crest and motto on side.

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