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Location: New South Wales, Australia

Born in Yorkshire, raised in Australia. I love Poetry, Guitar (especially Spanish classical & Delta Blues), Tudor, Jacobean and Stuart England, Archaeology & good Ale. I edit The Flea http://www.the-flea.com & The Chimaera (with Peter Bloxsom) http://www.the-chimaera.com, and Shit Creek Review http://www.shitcreekreview.com

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Long Hairs in The Domain



Sydney, The Domain, August, 1964 - left to right: Swiss Walter, Name Forgotten, English Paul, Terry Stanton, Rick O'Hara, Rod Grayson (thanks, Cass) from Melbourne.

The joke was: longhairs were etxremely rare in Sydney in 1963-64 - so much so that everyone would stare at you, old ladies would pass comments ("The longer the hair the less brains!"), wits would wolf-whistle or say "What are ya - a boy or a girl?", real men would offer (and sometimes proceed) to beat you up. Yet here was this statue of a long-haired and bearded solid citizen of yore (Sir John Robertson, an 1860s NSW Lands Minister). Hence the irony of the imitative pose.

I was there when the photo was taken, by the way. Maybe I held the camera. I wasn't in the shot though because my own long hair had been recently cropped due to circumstances beyond my control (a story for another time). The photo was taken the same day as the top one in this post.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I lived in Sydney during 1960's.
You mentioned Long Hair on men then.
Well I remember it was considered so unusual that the Police used to round up male teenagers for a haircut..
Unbelievable now but very true then.

They used to pick you up in a car then take you to a barber..if you refused you could (and would) be fitted up with a trumped up charge (usually using indecent language)

8 February 2008 at 9:58 am  
Blogger Caratacus said...

Yes, that is true. I remmeber that. And straights would regulalry try to beat you up too.

17 July 2011 at 5:28 pm  

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