For some it was a time of certainty, prosperity, rising income, improved lifestyle. For others it was a decade of oppression, censorship, prejudice, discrimination, hatred.

For most, whether an immigrant or someone who had lived in Australia through Depression or war, it was a new era.

This is about the time when new arrivals felt the sting of prejudice, and when bureaucrats could remove children from indigenous families or make narrow-minded decisions about what books we read and films we saw or whether we could have two telephones in our homes.

Read how full employment was achieved in factories protected by import tariffs; how a powerful union movement won major improvements for workers; how rationing and forced saving ended, ushering in an era of 21 per cent inflation; how Communist spies were thought to be everywhere and nuclear war was imminent; how the Labor Party tore itself apart; how the nation went crazy over a young Queen; and how Robert Menzies presided over all of it.

This was The 1950s, the decade in which the horrors of war were forgotten and Australia launched itself into a whole new era.