It was February, 1964, and we lived in a land the nervous first home buyers of today would barely recognise.

The basic wage was the equivalent of $30.70 a week, which is what most people now earn an hour.

You could but a home on Sydney's North Shore for around $20,000.

A black and white television cost a year's pay, a new car about three times as much.

Although their material possessions were paltry by today's standards, Australia's 11 million citizens enjoyed a standard of living considered amongst the highest in the world.

Indeed, Donald Horne was just putting the finishing touches to his seminal work "The Lucky Country."

But disaster was about to strike in the waters of Jervis Bay, where on February 10, 1964, the destroyer HMAS Voyager was cut in half in a collision with the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, with the loss of 82 lives.

It was a huge national shock, reinforced a few months later when Prime Minister Robert Menzies reintrduced national service as Australia stepped up its involvement in the Vietnam War.