julie daris SHARPIE
I grew up in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and became a sharpie at around 15 or 16 – every suburb had a sharpie gang. It was the early ’70s and it was a little subculture of kids who didn’t have their licences yet. At that time, you were either a sharpie or a ‘long-hair’ – the long-hairs were the surfie crew, and sharpies seemed cooler. For me, it began when my friends and I went to dances at the local town hall on Saturday nights. It was the time of bands like Lobby Loyde, Coloured Balls, and Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. We became influenced by the music and the fashion and it went from there.
I was in my second year of a hairdressing apprenticeship, so I did a lot of sharpie haircuts at home: short on top with these long tails at the back. The boys would come and have their tails bleached and I’d be piercing ears, too. All my pay packets were spent on clothes: my first suit, satin skirts, the big cork shoes. The boys were particularly dapper. They had their Conti cardigans (which were nicknamed ‘Connies’) over a polo shirt, tight flares, square-toed shoes and braces. That was the uniform.
We all smoked cigarettes whether we liked it or not – it was a real look. People would look you up and down like you were an alien. But we loved the notoriety; it was great fun. On weekends, we’d catch the train into the city, all 30 of us, and hang around Flinders Street
Station with the City Sharps. We’d lie our way into the Grand Hotel on Swanston Street for a beer – all you had to do was sign a form saying that you were 18. We’d tell our parents we were staying at someone’s house, then go out to these massive, out-of-control parties. We’d go to someone’s backyard and all the criminal-type boys were there. We didn’t do anything illegal, but we enjoyed the slightly dangerous side. It was thrilling. The boys fought at every party. They’d fight about anything – suburb against suburb, sharpies against long-hairs – because, of course, we’d all drink, and at that age one beer would tip you over. There wasn’t a particular sharpie philosophy. It was just about looking good, being out there and showing off. I came from a middle-class family, but there were people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who were drawn to the rough and tough attitude of the gang. I went out with one guy who had an impoverished upbringing and his family were feared in Melbourne. My parents wouldn’t have him at our dinner table – he and I had to eat in the sunroom. It all started to peter out when disco happened, as that was new and exciting. By the time I was 18, we’d moved on. I’m 62 now, and that idea of morphing into a completely different look is still part of me today. I still love to dress up and look different to anyone else my age.