It was orange and it had a black leather case.  The case had a hand strap, and the hand strap had a tiny little pocket which clipped closed that could hold an earpiece. I also worked out that little pocket was the perfect size to hold a 20c coin.  I had received it as a gift for my 13th birthday, and thought I was the coolest gal, one of the elite now. I was like the other cool kids.

It was my hand sized transistor radio.

My ‘tranny’ and I went everywhere. I was fast becoming a music nut and spent the long, hot days of the Perth summer holidays listening to 6KY on my tranny. When 6KY sold out and went classical – much to my mortification – I switched to 6PM. No such thing as FM radio then, AM was your dish of choice and the selection of music was limited to 5 or so AM stations of which 3 carried ‘pop’ hits. 

Gary Shannon was just beginning his career, and his voice was a new fresh breath. Sunday afternoons, Kasey Kasem would be broadcast, and on Sunday nights, Wolfman Jack would spill the dirt on what was happening on the US charts. It was so, well, cosmopolitan to me, then.

I would lay on my towel in the backyard and the cicadas (we called them tick-tocks) would buzz and click relentlessly.  As I rubbed baby oil or coconut oil into my young white skin, I would day dream of being tanned – I had the type of skin that allowed me to be the brownest kid in class, which was a good thing back then – and glamourous, somewhere where music was live and people danced the streets.

Every day, once I got too hot too continue roasting, I would don white shorts and my purple burger rings T shirt. Earpiece installed, I would walk down the street singing along to ‘Billy, don’t be a hero’ and ‘Bye bye baby’ until I reached the old red phone box with the hinged bi-fold door. I’d fish the 20c coin out of the earpiece pocket, and dial the request line for 6PM. 

I knew I was in luck when they answered, so I had to make sure I quickly let go of my coin so the announcer – for the DJs answered their own phones back then – could hear me. “We have a caller on the line” he’d say. “What can we do for you, caller?”  I’d request my favourite song – usually something they had already played 5 times that day – and then hang up. By the time I exited the phone box (which always smelled of stale ciggarettes)  the requested song was usually playing.

I would feel so special, famous even, for this song was dedicated to me, requested by me, on the radio!

It was my orange transistor radio that blocked out the world when things were tough.  It went camping, it went to and from school on the bus. It went on the train, it hung off my curtain rod filling my room with tinny tune, it went to bed with me at night.  Once the earpiece stopped working, I could just hold the tranny up to my ear or lay down on it like a plastic pillow, and become absorbed by the music.

To this day, I still have that plastic transistor radio. It works, although the station dial is a bit dodgy. When ever I look at it, I am immediately transported back in time to the sounds and smells that only a Perth kid knows, the 40c+ days, the ‘tick tocks’ buzzing, the flies, the hot hot easterly winds… and the freedom of walking the streets, me, my tranny and a 20c coin.