My first two years in Australia from 1965 to 1967 will forever be linked to "My Name's McGooley - What's Yours?" It was Australia's first truly successful sitcom which ran to an unbelievable eighty-eight episodes.
I lived in Barton House at the time, and as soon as I heard the opening theme featuring a harmonica wafting down the corridor, I would run down to the grandly named "TV Lounge" and flop into one of the well-worn armchairs to watch McGooley fishing off Balmain Wharf (with a sign saying "Fishing from wharf is prohibited") on the B&W Astor TV.
For more episodes click here and here
Hidden behind the unwieldy title "My Name’s McGooley – What’s Yours?" was an half-hourly social realism that we all could identify with. The central characters are working class battler Wally Stiller and his wife Rita, who live with Rita’s father Dominic McGooley, a crusty old pensioner. Their house is in Balmain, an inner suburb of Sydney that was then still largely working class.
I don't know how many of the eighty-eight weekly episodes I watched, but since the series premiered in September 1966 and I was aboard a ship heading back to the (c)old "Vaterland" by late 1967, I may have missed quite a few. Watching them all would take me right back to the days when I was still young and full of hope. I could only find three episodes on YouTube. Does anyone know if they're available on DVD?
