Dilly Dalley’s Reviews > Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood > Status Update

Finished Bird lovers chapter - Bird clubs hugely popular in the early decades of twentieth century. Also very aligned with school education. Brought about some creativity and national identity and bird conservation (egg collecting declined) but was also a vehicle for a type of eco-nationalism that allowed for the erasure of Indigenous people from the Australian narrative discourse.

Australia in this period has a highly literate popn - 90% of 5-14 y in 1911 can read & write. There are lots of libraries, and children’s pages in all major newspapers - originally written for children, eventually by children (letters, essays, jokes, limericks, stories & drawings). Playing editor of children’s mags booms. Hobby printing presses become common from the 1890s on - these children pursue “the Inky way”.

Playtime is a history of Australian Childhood covering the period 1890-1945. An era picked because it pre-dates the arrival of television, mass ownership of cars and the concept of a ’teenager’. There has been a long boom in Australia - the Gold Rush of 1850s produced a society of high living standards & high prop'n of children (1870s child <15 make up 42% of the population & by 1901 it is 35% - so lots of children).