Friday open thread: fundamental changes

[dolorosa_12]

I wasn't sure how to title this week's open thread, but hopefully it will become clear what I'm asking.

Today's prompt is inspired by an article I read in my hometown's local newspaper, looking into the history behind Australia's adoption of decimal currency, which happened 60 years ago. They interviewed a woman who works at Australia's national mint (Canberra being Canberra, I — like virtually every Canberran school child — went on a school trip to the mint at some point, and it's also located on the same street as a) the pool where I learnt to swim, b) the location of my gymnastics club (although this moved to another venue two years after I started gymnastics classes), and c) the place where I did first aid training when I was working in child care), and the whole thing is a great snapshot of a moment of fundamental change in the way Australians lived their day-to-day lives.

Similar changes I can think of include Sweden shifting to driving on the right-hand side of the road, Samoa shifting into a different time zone in 2011, various countries changing to the Gregorian calendar, or massive political shifts such as a country gaining independence or having its borders redrawn (e.g. German reunification, the breakup of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, etc), or becoming part of the EU or similar international groupings.

So my question is: are there any similar fundamental changes that took place in your country? Were they within your own lifetime?

Comments

[lilysea]

Medicare (Australia) providing free or subsidised healthcare came in on 1 February 1984.

I was alive, but as I was born in 1976 and was therefore 8 in 1984, I don't remember it.

[rekishi]

The reunification is one of my earliest memories (I was 6). It has been a struggle, growing together, for this country. And we're still not done. Maybe we're actually further apart than ever, I'm not sure.

[vargrave]

In 1991, the first ever vaccine for HPV started development at the University of Queensland.

Showing my age here, but no, I wasn't alive then, though I was born by the time the vaccines actually started being rolled out in 2007.

Apparently there was zero documented cases of cervical cancer among women under 25 across Australia in 2021, which was very nice to hear. It was in the 2025 Cervical Cancer Elimination Progress Report, which said that the cause was "almost certainly" due to the vaccine.

[dolorosa_12]

I was born in the 1980s, so I remember when the vaccine was rolled out — I was among the first cohort of Australian women being called in to get the HPV vaccine in 2007. I remember it well. It's an absolutely incredible, and impressive achievement.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh yes, that's a good example! I wasn't born in February 1984, so Medicare has been in existence for my entire life.

[dolorosa_12]

I was alive for the reunification, but I was only four years old and it was on the other side of the world, so I don't remember it (my husband does, of course), but whenever I think about it, it makes me emotional and weepy. I agree with you that its promise has not yet been fulfilled, but that actual actions that brought it into being were an incredible feat of human spirit and hope.

[lilysea]

I wasn't born in February 1984

Huh, today I learned!

(I thought you were either my age, or up to 5 years older than me)

[lilysea]

I remember when the HPV vaccine first came out - I was too old to get it for free, and they were like "if you want it, it will be $1500 out of pocket".

So I didn't get it, because I didn't have that sort of money available.

I ALSO remember when the chickenpox vaccine first came out - I had chickenpox for the first time very very badly when I was 19, and then the vaccine came out 5 years later, and I was so angry/frustrated/disappointed that I hadn't managed to avoid chickenpox long enough to get the vaccine. (especially since chickenpox lives in your spine forever and can come back as shingles, and the latest research seems to show other long term health implications as well)

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, I'm amused that I seem 10-15 years older than I actually am! No, I was born in the 1980s.

[raven]

For me: Brexit, which I was--as you know--part of the machinery for. At this small remove it feels like a strange fever dream. The funny thing is that my workload is still about 75% Brexit; until June of this year at least, at which point it might finally, finally begin to trickle away.

My parents were both born in 1955, which was only eight years after independence, and a mere five after the founding of the republic. I always think of this every time I look at my overseas citizenship card, which states that my entitlement arises from the fact I was a "citizen of the Republic of India on or after 15 August 1947". It feels so recent, when you put it like that; my own grandparents didn't fall in that category.

[isis]

An argument could be made that my country is currently going through fundamental changes. I hate them.

[vriddy]

Your decimal mention reminded me of moving to the euro, for some reason, even though that's probably not what you had in mind! Buying treats in a small local shop, and the shopkeeper painstakingly doing the conversion with a calculator to return the change in what would be our new currency. That felt like a big deal!

[tellshannon815]

Unfortunately, the one that comes to mind is Brexit (going decimal here was before I was born). The Berlin Wall was one I wished I could properly remember when I ended up researching it for a fic to try and get some sense of whether someone would feasibly be able to dismiss the possibility as "That's not going to happen in my lifetime" when someone else raised the suggestion somewhere around 1987-8. (The character in my icon, a time traveller from 2019, stands up and shouts "Bet you 10 Deutsche Marks you're wrong!")

[eglantiere]

well, yeah. lol. it's for the most part wildly depressing (minus the USSR to RF transition, athough i was too small to notice any of it.)

bulgaria switched to euro in january, and despite the local cryptonazi trying for a whole year froth it into some kinda national tragedy thing, the actual transfer went pretty smoothly. (it helps that lev was firmly tethered to euro for a while before that). personally i'm mostly relieved to be juggling two currencies instead of three.

[mific]

I lived through NZ changing to dollars and a decimal-based currency (from British-like pounds before), and changing from miles per hour to kms per hour. I was young, though, and barely remember it other than being annoyed that there were no more sixpences to hide in Christmas puddings, and the need for a lot of mental arithmetic.

More recently, a big change that ended up not being one was Y2K, with all the anxiety beforehand. I even stockpiled cash and some basic supplies! And in the end it wasn't an issue, because it was SUCH an issue that businesses and organisations did take it seriously and made the necessary fixes.

[monksandbones]

What springs to mind for me is Canada's metrification, which officially concluded in 1985, just after I was born, but which has remained somewhat incomplete, mainly, I suspect, as a result of proximity to the US. As a child of the aftermath of the metric conversion, I grew up with the combination of the official metric system/unofficial usage-specific imperial system that Canadians now use, but with near-zero ability to convert between them (because Canada was officially metric by the time I was in school, why teach conversions?).

There's still a generational gap between people who grew up in pre-metric times, who grok things like degrees fahrenheit and miles and ounces, and those of us who grew up after the metric conversion!

In the US

[kore]

Oh gosh, for me there's gay marriage being legalized, and the discovery of retroviral therapy for AIDS, and Obamacare, that was HUGE for my generation and later (and trump etc doesn't count right now!)....One giant thing that gets overlooked a bit in my experience is the giant lawsuit against the tobacco companies that led to, not the end of smoking, but how many millions of lives were saved. If you look at movies and shows smoking was *everywhere." There was an ashtray on every table, nearly everywhere.

....I would guess the very biggest change I lived through, pre-Trump (and preparing the way for him) was the shift in the post-9/11 society, but that's really depressing.

[kore]

I did not guess that, either!

"Socialized" medicine made such a huge difference in so many countries. Even the US.

[kore]

Yeah, altho I guess for us it's more "wholesale destruction of the government, and will he nuke Iran now or later". Gahh.