How a 'piece of rural propaganda' became 'compulsory listening' for Aussies

It's been 50 years since the iconic theme music for the Blue Hills drama swelled on ABC radio for the last time.

At the time, the show was Australia's longest-running serial radio drama, broadcast from February 1949 until September 1976.

Blue Hills told the stories of the rural families who lived in the fictional town of "Tanimbla".

Throughout the 1950s, former ABC broadcaster Ian Doyle said "one in two radios in Australia were listening to the Country Hour and Blue Hills" at 1pm.

"It was compulsory listening for people in regional Australia," he told SA Country Hour's Cassandra Hough.

"You couldn't go into a country store in the 50s and expect to be served between 1 and 1:15.

"Anybody selling insurance and knocking on the door in regional Australia, of course, the door wasn't answered. You had to sit and listen to Blue Hills because everything was so compelling."

Lorraine Greenfield grew up on an isolated station in South Australia's north and the ABC was the only radio station the family could tune in to.

"My mother was an absolute devotee of Blue Hills and after I was married, my father-in-law was also a big fan and very strict, so at 1pm everything stopped," Mrs Greenfield said.

"I felt sorry for the stock agents who travelled three or four hours to see him only to be told he couldn't speak until Blue Hills was over.

"He carried that through until the end of Blue Hills.

"It was a very sad day when it ended, I still think about Blue Hills."

'Rural propaganda' 

In the late 1940s, author and playwright Gwen Meredith had been tasked with writing a radio series to encourage returning World War Two servicemen to "grow better crops and increase production".

That show, The Lawsons, would be the genesis for Blue Hills.

"It was a piece of rural propaganda, one way or the other," Mr Doyle said, adding that the ABC's rural department went to great lengths to make sure the show gave an accurate depiction of climate, crops and harvest times as well as new innovations in the farming sector.

"[It was an] attempt to try and improve the production of Australian farmers … [its] connection with the rural department was fundamental and important and she had to be across a whole lot of material to ensure that she got it right."

In an old interview, Ms Meredith recalled how the ABC's rural department wanted the show to have as much farming information as possible and this was met with some resistance from the drama department.

"[They] said, 'It'll only ruin the story. It'll all bog [it] down. And I had to run a middle course," she said.

Reflecting the real regional Australia

In the nearly three decades Blue Hills ran, Mr Doyle said she "effectively" wrote 70 novels. 

"It was an institution in Australian radio … The Hills was not just about what was happening on the farm, it also dealt with lots of other issues as well."

At the show's height in the 1950s, the White Australia Policy was in effect, as was the Assimilation Policy for First Nations people, as well as segregation and state protection acts. 

Against this backdrop, Ms Meredith had written an episode where a relative had a baby with an Indigenous person to try and better reflect Australia's multiracial identity.

"That caused enormous controversy, but she wanted to introduce the idea of the fact that there was multiracial involvement in Australia, and she pushed it as far as she could go," Mr Doyle said.

In other episodes, she was accused by politicians of being "anti-government" by featuring characters commenting on how high interest rates were or how hard it was to get a job.

"Which was what was happening in regional Australia at the time. The government at the time said … 'She shouldn't be saying those things'," Mr Doyle said.

"Well, she hadn't thought about the politics of it. She's just saying that's what they were talking about in regional Australia."

The writer, who died in 2006 at the age of 98, was the sole writer for all 5,975 episodes.