Bob Hawke, the Silver Bodgie, emerged waving as if he were visiting royalty, which in that place at that time, he may as well have been.

Pandemonium erupted.

Bob Hawke greets the crowd at the national tally room in Canberra on election night, 1983.Credit: National Archives of Australia

The crowd that had been waiting in the national tally room for this moment stampeded towards Hawke and his wife Hazel. A trestle table holding reporters’ typewriters collapsed. A galloping television cameraman ran out of cable and landed on his back.

It was March 5, 1983.

Malcolm Fraser weeps after the Coalition lost the federal election in 1983.Credit: Paul Wright

Hawke had won the federal election in famous style, trouncing Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition.

Fraser, a man of such typically stony demeanour that cartoonists drew him as an Easter Island statue, appeared on TV and broke down in very human tears shortly before Hawke and Hazel brought down the house.

As Anthony Albanese prepares this weekend to announce a federal election it seems reasonable to reflect that we are unlikely to witness anything quite so unambiguously triumphant when this latest election day rolls around, or really, any time in the foreseeable future.

Election nights at the draughty old tally room at Canberra’s showground were such theatrical events you had to compete for a ticket to get in.

A giant scoreboard spread itself across the front of the room, the tallied votes from electorates and senate seats constantly changing as unseen operators rotated the numbers from behind.

“A landslide,” journalists and number crunchers breathed as the numbers rolled.

Yes, indeed.

When it was done, the Coalition held only 50 of the 125 seats in the House of Representatives,........

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