For those who grew up in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, a new exhibition from the National Archives, Summers Past: Golden Days in the Sun 1950-70, should gently stir memories of idyllic summers spent by the beach.

Teen pop star of the early sixties, Little Pattie, will open the exhibition at the National Archives on Thursday 8 December at 6 pm. She will also attend the media preview at 11 am.

The Director-General of the National Archives, Ross Gibbs, said that the images in Summers Past were selected from the Archives’ collection, mainly from its store of Australian News and Information Bureau photographs.

‘This vast archival resource is the legacy of nearly half a century’s work by the Bureau’s photographers who reeled off hundreds of thousands of candid snaps of Australians at work and play,’ Mr Gibbs said.

‘The 75 images selected for the exhibition encapsulate summer in the 1950s and 1960s, and vividly recall our enduring love affair with the sun and the sea – the era of the bronzed Aussie,’ he said.

As the exhibition shows, two sports dominated the headlines in the 1950s and 1960s – tennis and cricket – mainly because Australia won so often.

With role models like Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Frank Sedgman, Australian youngsters were drawn to tennis. On most summer Saturdays at suburban tennis clubs all around the country, boys and girls decked in their whites and Dunlop Volleys learned to serve and slice from patient instructors with peeling noses.

Being able to swim was an essential part of summer fun, and most kids learned their strokes at an early age. With swimming carnivals to enter, backyard cricket to play, waves to surf, bikes to ride and kites to fly, Australian summers in the 1950s and 1960s were largely spent outdoors.

It was a time that many baby boomers now fondly remember as the ‘good old days’.

Summers Past will remain on show at the National Archives until 25 June 2006.