If the 1960s was a decade of change, then the 1970s was one of reflection and consolidation. The economic boom that began after the War came to an end in the early 1970s. During this period, overseas companies had spent millions of dollars establishing themselves and their products and services in the lucrative Australian marketplace, thereby managing to keep Australians in full employment for most of that time. The event that brought the slowdown in economic development and sent businesses down a path of rationalisation was what became known as the oil crisis of 1973. It began in earnest on 17th October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (i.e., the United States, its allies in Western Europe, and Japan). About the same time, OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil in order to raise world oil prices after attempts at negotiation earlier in the month failed. Due to the dependence of the industrialized world on crude oil, and the predominant role of OPEC as a global supplier, these price increases were dramatically inflationary to the economies of the targeted countries, while at the same time suppressive of economic activity. The targeted countries responded with a wide variety of new and mostly permanent initiatives to contain their further dependency. Since oil demand falls little with price rises, prices had to rise dramatically to reduce demand to the new, lower level of supply. Anticipating this, the market price for oil immediately rose substantially.

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The effects of the embargo were immediate. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974. The shock produced chaos in the West. The United States suffered its first fuel shortage since World War II. After a few months, the crisis eased. The embargo was lifted in March, but the effects of the energy crisis lingered on throughout the 1970s. The price of energy continued increasing in the following year, amid the weakening competitive position of the US dollar in world markets; and no single factor did more to produce the soaring price inflation of the 1970s. Another oil crisis occurred in 1977 but people were ready for it and thus coped so much better second time around.

In Australia, heating oil ceased being considered an appropriate winter heating fuel. All the oil-fired room heaters that were popular from the late-1950s to the early-1970s were now considered outdated. It also opened the door for a few enterprising individuals to design gas-conversion kits that allowed these heaters to burn natural gas or propane. Though the crisis was short-lived, Australian industry took it as a wake-up call both to have contingency plans in the case of emergencies, and to streamline operations so the effect of any similar crisis in the future would be minimalised. This rationalisation saw many companies downsizing, and others, like car manufacturers British Leyland and Volksgagen, even pulling out of manufacturing in Australia altogether. The fallout of this business rationalisation was an increase in both inflation and unemployment.

The Big three motor manufacturers - Holden, Ford and Chrysler - had to do some serious re-thinking about their marketing strategies. The trio were locked in a battle at the high-performance end of the car market when the oil crisis hit. Every year, their new models had larger, more powerful engines than the previous year's. When the fuel crisis began hurting Aussie motorists in their hip pockets, the big gas guzzlers suddenly fell out of vogue. The public had already rejected Leyland's big 6, the P76. Fearing a similar fate if they continued along the same path, the Big Three (GM-H, Ford and Chrysler) quickly axed their V8 models. By the end of the decade, Holden had downsized its six-cylinder family car from the Kingswood to the more compact Commodore. Chrysler persevered with the Valiant and eventually had to pass its Australian car manufacturing operations over to their Japanese partner, Mitsubishi, as sales continued to dwindle. Ford soldiered on with the Falcon, but placed an each-way bet on which way the market would go by developing a strong range of 4-cylinder models.

The change, it had to come, we knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that's all
And the world looks just the same, and history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war ...
There's nothing in the street looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced by-the-bye
And the parting on the left is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around,
Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday,
Then I'll get on my knees and pray we don't get fooled again

And were we fooled again? The very last line of the song holds the answer: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Townsend's conclusion is the same as all those before him who had tried to change the world - it's an impossible dream, because the more things change, the more things stay the same. Jackson Browne expressed a similar disillusionment in his song, "The Pretender". Arguably his darkest lyric, it was released in 1976, after the suicide of his wife, Phyllis. He asks "what became of the changes we waited for love to bring, Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?" and draws a similar conclusion to Townshend as he gives up and submits to the corrupt world of consumerism that his generation had originally rebelled against:

I'm going to be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy
Though true love could have been a contender
Are you there? Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong, only to surrender.

During the early 70s, Browne had shared a flat with The Eagles' Glenn Frey before that band became one of the most popular recording groups of the 1970s. Clearly, Browne, Frey and his fellow Eagles shared similar views about the times. The band's landmark album, "Hotel California", the theme of which is "Paradise Lost", is seen by many critics as having defined the decade. The title song of the album is a downbeat tale that portrays California and everything it represents as a hedonistic prison. Glenn Frey explains that the song explores the under belly of success, "the darker side of Paradise. Which was sort of what we were experiencing in Los Angeles at that time. That song became a metaphor for the whole world and for everything." "The Last Resort", another song on the album, describes the American dream (and the Australian dream for that matter) as a paradise lost. It is a polar opposite to Hotel California; it explores the dark side of man's quest for greener pastures. It is no coincidence that the person whose journey is followed in this song starts out from a place called Providence with a view to ending up in Paradise. For Don Henley, who wrote the lyrics, the song and the album is all about the greed, waste, and lack of caring that he, like Don McLean, believed had overtaken his (the Baby Boomer) generation. His belief is that, whenever mankind finds paradise, by his very presence in it, he destroys it and it is no longer paradise.

For the man in the street, the idealism of the previous decade had long been left blowing in the wind. There were increasing anxieties to cope with; global pollution, the exhaustion of the earth's natural resources, conflict in the Middle East, the humiliating defeat in Vietnam, corruption in the highest levels of American government with Watergate and Nixon's resignation, an oil crisis, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia turning its fertile land into killing fields. A daily diet of the world's troubles poured into Australian homes via television.

On the homefront, the changes that Pete Townshend told us had to come, did come, but their arrival was akin to opening a can of worms. Cynicism abounded as militant feminism and human rights, French nuclear testing in the Pacific, a shortage of fuel, Watergate and Vietnam brought gritty reality to the fore. These influences left the public yearning for a new fashion wave and armed designers with the ammunition they needed to introduce one. It came in the form of disco. Not just a music style, disco, though relatively short-lived, became a way of life, a visual statement in which fashion ruled. In many ways disco fashion was the logical progression from the bright colours and radical designs of the 1960s. The catch-cry was "do your own thing" - let it all hang out. For some, it was a case of the uglier and clunkier, the better. For others, soft and feminine was the way to go. The 1970s evolved into an "anything goes" decade and for that reason it will forever be remembered as the decade that style forgot.

In spite of the caution that other industries subjected themselves to, the 1970s were boom years for the electronics industry and the consumer ended up the winner. Electronics technology advanced in leaps and bounds, and the major players dazzled consumers with their latest gadgets. The Australian consumer, like their American counterparts, embraced every new piece of technology that was offered to them, but much of that would happen in the 1980s when the inventions of the 1970s had been fully developed. For further details of these products, see the chapter on Technology. In terms of household goods, the colour television, which arrived in Australia in 1975, was seen as the biggest technological advancement of the decade. Rubbish dumps around the country were piled high with black and white tv's that were ditched in favour of the new colour models that came in a variety of styles and sizes. Not long before colour television arrived, students around the country had put their slide rules away for good in favour of the pocket calculator. When I turned 21, pocket calculators were the latest piece of electronic wizardry everybody had to have. I bought one as a 21st birthday prseent for myself. A top-of-the-range scientific model, it cost me half a week's age and I recall taking it home and showing my brother. I said to him, "How's this for the latest technology. Surely they can't top this." Little did I know! A few years later, I saw a home computer for the first time. My first impression was that it was heavy, rather bulky and a brand name that I'd never heard of (they went broke soon after, so it would be a name I'd never hear of again also). I recall thinking, "why on earth would anyone waste their money buying a thing like that; what would you use it for?"

In the late 1960s, the protest movement added bulldozing forests and heritage buildings to its list of things it wanted banned. As the new decade was ushered in and with the shocking pictures of the Vietnam War being etched deeply into their consciences, it was with a righteouos indignation that Australians woke up to fact that for a number of years the French had been conducting nuclear tests within their region. The site of the tests was Mururoa, and its sister atoll Fangataufa, which the French used for nuclear target practice between 1966 and 1996. French embassies in New Zealand and Australia soon got a knock on the door from the ban-the-bomb brigade, the conservationists and the Whitlam government. Numerous vessels were sent to the test sites to protest these activities, including the Rainbow Warrior, which was eventually sunk by the French while docked in Auckland harbour in July 1985. The incident gave the ship and the Greenpeace movement cult hero status.

As the union movement had recently found its conscience and had all become conservationists, they added their voices to the protests. The Australian Waterside Workers Union introduced bans on handling French products in 1972, which propelled anti-French sentiment in Australia to fever pitch. The newly elected Whitlam Labor government failed to intervene, and businesses with any connection to France - real or precieved (including Australian-owned patisseries with French-sounding names) - were boycotted in large numbers by Australian consumers.

Armed with their new-found consciences, Australians then focused their ire on whaling. Protection for certain whale species had been introduced in the 1930s after the effects of whaling on whale populations became apparent. Whaling of humpbacks had ceased in 1963, and they were protected worldwide in 1965 after recognition of a dramatic global decline in numbers. Persistant lobbying resulted in all commercial whaling in Australia ceasing in 1978 with the closure of Australia's last whaling station, the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company, in Western Australia. In 1979 Australia adopted an anti-whaling policy, and began working towards the international protection and conservation of all whales.

The next decade: 1980s