It was, I think a Phillips Radiogram. The image below is the closest that I can find it’s not the exact model or make. But nevertheless, you get the idea!

My father purchased it together with two boxed sets from The Readers Digest of The World’s 12 Best Classical concertos and The World’s Best Classical Symphonies.

These compilations were beautifully presented. Each shiny 12 inch vinyl long playing record was protected in a cardboard sleeve and the whole bound to look like a large book. Each ‘page’ to be listened to, rather than read. Each book’s front cover and spine were sumptuous with lithographic designs and prints and copperplate text.  Removing each record and placing it on the platter, was an act of nervous, excited anticipation. 

This new radiogram, according to the handbook, was ‘fully automatic’. Indeed, one could place as many as 8 LP records on the spindle and, having pressed the play button, close the lid and modern technology would do its’ thing. Not however with my inquisitive nature. I would peer over the top of the player, lid open, fascinated by the clockwork-like mechanism as the tone arm, at the end of the record, rose from the surface, travelled to the outside, and once clear, the next record would drop down the spindle, leaving the others teetering in anticipation, whilst the tone arm lurched in to the beginning of the record, poise above it then drop rather rudely and abruptly to the surface.

It was a somewhat unexpected acquisition on the part of my father. A self-made man, he had returned from the Second World War, an electrical fitter in the Airforce, and settled with his new bride in a small country town in rural New South Wales. To an eight year old boy, struggling to commit to memory the obligatory dates and facts of history, It was a revelation that my father could recite, verbatim the poems of Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson and for an encore, sing all the patter songs of Gilbert and Sullivan. This new piece of furniture, was to demonstrate to me clearly, why my father loved his Savoy Operas.

In those days, a radiogram was a well constructed piece of furniture, something to occupy pride of place in the lounge room, rather than be hidden away in a teak veneered ‘entertainment centre’.  My rather well to do grandparents had an elegant, beautifully crafted gramophone. It played 78 shellac records and even as an infant I was fascinated by the mechanics, pestering my grandfather to put on another record so that I could turn the shiny steel handle and wind it up. 

My life long love affair with classical music had begun!