It was gestated at the Olympia Club around the corner of Oxford Street in Palmer Street, as a faint memory serves me. Of course we smoked dope and dropped acid, although not excessively. There had been no culture of drinking wine in those early days, especially among us ordinary young suburbanites who were ushering in a new wave of excitement and change. We certainly hung out in pubs, but the real ‘it’ places to be at were wine bars. It was becoming a hub of student activism, live music and ‘ethnic’ restaurants. Oxford Street had been in almost terminal decline. This was a wonderful, edgy strip where a teenager just starting university life could discover her emergent identity and make new friends. Share Opinion by SUE HANLEY The main CBD night strip in 1966 stretched from the corner of Sussex and Liverpool Streets up Oxford Street and to what is now the Greenwood Hotel in Paddington.
