Sydney in the early '60s – banned books, taboo social topics, the white Australia immigration policy – Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies proclaims: 'We are a happy nation and despite some dismal critics – we deserve our happiness.' From their hangouts at Vadim's in Kings Cross to the Newport Arms Hotel, a group of young people decide the time is ripe to launch a magazine of dissent, covering topics like abortion, police brutality, the criminal underworld, homosexuality, censorship. 'OZ' lands them in court on obscenity charges amidst howls from the Establishment denouncing the 'filthy little rag', its central editor slagged as 'the dirty Wizard of OZ'. Decamping to Swinging London in 1967, the co-editors publish the London OZ, Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Michael Leunig and a raft of radicals and artists contribute on topics ranging from the anti-war movement, drugs and sex, and politics. An obscenity trial in 1971 – described by 'The Sun' as a 'gold-plated sledgehammer to crack a very squalid nut', in which harsh prison sentences and a deportation order 'hung heavily for being transported back to Mosman is a fate worse than death' – ended in acquittal on appeal. inscribed, to ____ whose intervention would no doubt have improved it, by the author in the year of publication.
