PARTY AT THE BACK!
Pulling up outside the country town pub on a scorching 40-degree day, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I’d driven to Kurri Kurri in NSW to take photos of Australia’s first ever mullet festival – Mulletfest!
How big will it be? Who’s going to come? I wondered.
But judging by the hundreds of mullets proudly on display, it had been a runaway success!
Laura, who runs the Chelmsford Hotel, decided to host the festival at the pub after her friend, and co- organiser, Sarah suggested it.
Laura’s interest was fuelled by her father-in-law Kevin’s dedication to the style.
‘I liked Billy Connolly’s look in the ’80s,’ Kev, 62, said.
And once Kev got his own mullet, he’d never looked back. He wasn’t the only one! Embracing the ‘business at the front, party at the back’ look, Aussies turned the mullet into an icon.
Expecting most of the mullet owners to be from a certain generation, I was surprised to see lots of younger faces.
Cougar, 20, is a passionate advocate of the style.
In fact, he loves mullets so much he’d driven 11 hours to be there – all the way from Frankston, Victoria.
That’s when I spotted the numberplate on his ute even
‘My missus won’t marry me if I cut
it off’
spelled out
MULLET.
‘I seem to get pulled over a lot,’ he chuckled. ‘I think the cops just want to see my hair.’
But Cougar wasn’t the youngest mullet owner.
One couple had even crafted their baby girl’s hair into a mini-mullet!
It wasn’t all for the fun of it though – there was a competition to win.
Judges ranked mullets against five criteria: level of maintenance, split ends, length of time grown, density and lusciousness.
And of course, in true mullet fashion, if there was business there had to be a party – with former mulletowner John Farnham at full blast on the dance floor.
When the band – The Stunned Mullets – kicked off, the crowd went wild.
While there weren’t many women rocking the look, there were plenty there to support their men.
Contestant Zac told me his partner loved his locks.
‘My missus won’t marry me if I cut it off,’ he explained.
Judge Daniel, dubbed the Mullet Lord, is a cafe owner.
He came by the style a few years earlier, when his mum cut his hair into a mullet style by accident.
But after initially being embarrassed, he couldn’t let it go, loving the feeling of rubbing the shaved part and how silky it was at the back.
Others joked their hairstyle saves them half the cost of a haircut!
Chatting to mullet fans, I heard how their hair is more than just a style, it’s part of their identity.
There’s people from all walks of life, I realised, filling five rolls of film, snapping as many pics as I could.
It was great to see everyone coming together.
Mullet-lover Trent is a Christian clad in motorbike leathers. He believes mullet owners may come from different places and backgrounds, but they all have something in common.
‘The kind of bloke it takes to have a mullet is a special type of bloke,’ he said. ‘Easy going, carefree, a bit of a larrikin – a fella that’s a hard worker and a good man.’
And what could be more true blue than that?
Isabella is celebrating a classic Aussie hairstyle Isabella Moore, 32, Sydney, NSW