fibrearcheology

Historical clothing resource for film and television

Early influences

 

 

Blog No.1

 

When I was at Dee Why school on the northern beaches of Sydney in the 50s, at about 7 years of age, I was surprised to see a boy wearing leather shorts with shoulder straps and engraving in the leather.  He was Swiss from memory, and this is my first recollection of the impact clothing has on the senses.

Dee Why had become home to the wave of Italian migrants who left Italy at the end of WW2. The Italians knew how to make good use of the rural fields behind Dee why, where they grew flowers and vegetables.  When we used to go swimming in the baths at Dee Why beach, the young Italians would also come to swim… They were wearing tailored fluorescent coloured costumes, whilst we were wearing dull navy cotton Speedos.

These were the early childhood memories of  the stimulating “difference” from these people, not so much in language or food. Although as a child these new influences of European food stores did make an impact on me… with hanging  salami and other sausages… vats of olives, and olive oil,  layers of carrot, onion; capsicum;  and gherkins, pickled in large glass containers, and incredible cooking aromas coming from the back of the shop.  Rather, it was the clothing that really made an indelible influence on a young boy.

Looking at old photos of migrants arriving in Australia on ships from Italy… leaning over the railings, … even though, in a lot of cases they were from poor families, the quality and sheer style in dress sense was so far ahead in sophistication, of us Aussies.

The snowy Mountains scheme was a huge infrastructure project of 16 major dams seven power stations and 225 km of tunnels and pipelines starting in 1949 and drew a huge influx of European migrants of various skills. They came from all over….. Europe, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Yugoslavia as it was then known. These people became wealthy (as in mining today) and moved out into Australian society and transformed it for ever in food, in art and architecture including furniture design and of course fashion.

For a young person this was exhilarating. Life seemed very secure in our Anglo-Saxon society before then, if rather colourless. This is generalising of course.  We had our beaches and unspoiled nature, but in man-made things Australian life seemed very conservative and dull….these are just impressions of a young man from the suburbs of course. There would have been a Bohemian culture like anywhere in the world, but in the suburbs it was these migrants that excited and stimulated those hungry to embrace, the influence of art, architecture, food and fashion, all of which that stood out so starkly, against this conservative society.

The beaches of course produced a whole new culture… Perhaps sparking off from these previous colourful influences,  but a very rich culture in itself… was

The surfboard riders

 
Midget Farrelly was the first iconic figure, followed by Nat Young, and others… I remember Midget coming to Long Reef Beach in Sydney in a Morris minor van painted bright orange, with surfing images cartoon-like. The first surfboards were balsa wood from South America. The foam surfboards did not exist then. Bob McTavish migrated down from Queensland and shaped early balsa boards (I think he might be recreating them now?). The world was a lot smaller then, and events didn’t immediately manifest themselves as they do in the digital age.
 
To see a tribe of colourful characters arrive in cars like those we see in Cuba now, (the 1950s classics), with long hair and colourful board shorts from the southern beaches of Sydney was somewhat alarming… They went out into the waves and showed us that we  weren’t at the epicentre of surfing, even though these famous iconic figures like Midget lived there… They were hot surfers.  Robert Conneeley, and Kevin the Head, from Bondi, beautiful, graceful surfers…UG who looked like a Native American Indian with peroxided hair, very handsome,  and Gordon merchant from Maroubra, who went on to form the global brand Billabong surf wear…. The peroxided hair was a cultural statement from those times and  it became a fashion.  Was this because they wanted to look like Midget, who had a shock of long sun bleached white hair? Anyway.. like the Italian peacocks at the swimming baths.. the surfers were in stark contrast to the previous beach culture of the surf clubs with their uniform swimming costumes, short back and side hair styles and regimented ways. They actually had long 16 foot plywood hollow boards that weren’t manoeuverable and you had to head straight, facing the beach on a wave, rather than play all over the face of the wave as on the new balsa boards  which were highly manoeuverable. There was a cultural divide and the balsa boards and their riders weren’t well  tolerated by the surf clubs  because of their free wheeling surfing safari lifestyle.
 
This freedom to surf dominated their lives.  They lived for it, even when foam was first discovered to create surfboards, and the factories were built  by Gordon Woods, Scott Dillon, Barry Bennett, creating iconic brands.  All of the famous surfers because of their skills and knowledge went to work there, and even though they were fully fledged businesses, if the weather report indicated big swells were coming, from the boss, right down to the lowest skill worker, everyone would down tools and head for the waves.
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