Arabic version: إحياء ذكرى «بلو هيلز» بعد 50 عاماً على آخر بث

According to ABC News, September 30 marks 50 years since the ABC radio drama Blue Hills ended after a 27-year run. Broadcast from February 1949 to September 1976, the serial followed rural families in the fictional town of Tanimbla.

At the time it concluded, Blue Hills was Australia’s longest-running serial radio drama. Former ABC broadcaster Ian Doyle said that throughout the 1950s, “one in two radios in Australia were listening to the Country Hour and Blue Hills” at 1pm, describing it as compulsory listening in regional Australia.

The programme grew out of The Lawsons, a series created to encourage returning World War Two servicemen to improve crop production. Doyle described that purpose as “a piece of rural propaganda,” while saying the ABC’s rural department worked to ensure accurate portrayals of climate, crops, harvests and farming innovations.

Author and playwright Gwen Meredith wrote all 5,975 episodes herself. In nearly three decades, Doyle said, she “effectively” wrote 70 novels. Her stories extended beyond farm life, including issues that reflected regional Australia, such as employment, interest rates and multiracial identity.

Lorraine Greenfield, who grew up on an isolated station in South Australia’s north, recalled that her family could tune in only to the ABC. She said her mother was devoted to the programme and that, after Greenfield married, her father-in-law stopped everything at 1pm to listen. “It was a very sad day when it ended,” she said.