When my stepmother Bev took this photo of me and Andrea wearing our Skyhooks makeup in December 1976, we had no idea that one day it would become the cover of my first book.
The day I met Andrea was one of the most exciting days of my life. I was 13 and Andrea, aged 14 had absconded from Winlaton Girls Home (juvie) with a friend and I met them at Croydon Sunday flea market with our mutual friend Jacko. We got up to all sorts of mischief, and the day finished with the two girls being rounded up by a British Racing Green vintage Jaguar on Croydon oval, grabbed by two men and forced in the car. I thought they were being abducted however it was Andrea’s stepfather Denis, doing his best to keep her safe. The following Friday after school I went back to her house and knocked on the door. Her little sister Sandy opened the door and Andrea came bouncing down the stairs on hearing my voice. That was it. We were best friends forever. We lost touch in 1985 and I reinvented myself from young rebel to corporate maggot.
As the years went by, I missed my old friends and after some internet stalking, I found Jacko in 2004. Always the intellectual, he was working in IT for the Government and was known by his real name Jacques.
He still loved flea markets and one Sunday in 2006 while at Camberwell market he found a flyer for an upcoming Sharpie exhibition at Dante Gallery curated by Sam Biondo. We went to the exhibition together late on the last day and I arranged to meet up with Sam later to give him my Sharpie photo albums. I knew they would be safe with a collector. If anything happened to me, my daughter and husband would throw everything in a skip, set fire to it and dance around singing ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’.
Jacko and I wondered about our old friends and surviving photos.
We dreamed of a website, where we could find our former gang…
And then along came Facebook! By the time Sam organised his next exhibition in 2010, we had found 80% of our old mates. With the encouragement of our gang and backing by Sam, I wrote RAGE and it was launched at the exhibition. The fantastic cover was created by Tan from Careless Navigator media.
I had to self-publish. Mainstream media wouldn’t touch it, they immediately thought ‘Romper Stomper’ and stated ‘No unsolicited manuscripts!’ Even a vanity press refused stating ‘I’m not interested in the ravings of a mad woman’. Lucky for me, because he ended up ripping off a fellow author.
Anyway, who cares what crusty old arseholes think, especially when the King of Australian Glam Rock, Keith Lamb from Hush is holding your book.
When I was writing, editing, formatting and sourcing a printer (skills I learnt in my corporate maggot secretary days), I read somewhere that if you write a book, you automatically become the expert in that subject. ‘Yeah right’, I thought. Famous last words.
Becoming the expert…
Next thing I knew, I was talking everywhere about the Sharpies. Luckily, I inherited the ‘gift of the gab’ from my Irish ancestors.
With Allison, the Hot Rod Librarian at Altona Library
2011 At Thomastown Library with the Thomastown Sharps for their book ‘Once Were Sharps’ by Dean and Nick.
When actor and presenter Tony Robinson bought his TV crew over from the UK late 2011, Camberwell Sharp Chris O’Halloran invited me along to watch the filming for the episode on the 1960s Sharpies. I was in the right place at the right time and was asked to join in the episode. My favorite memory is doing the Sharpie strut up the street and seeing the Williamstown Stomper demonstrate the Sharpie shuffle/break, a dance from the 1960s. The break was a line dance across the dance floor that forced the stomping mods and longhairs off the floor.
Tony Robinson’s Time Walks 2011. Series 1, Episode 2.
Sharpies spaghetti sieges and street art.
Tony Robinson discovers the real story of Melbourne isn’t found in the grand tree-lined boulevards or boomtown architecture. It’s hidden down the lanes and alleyways.
I kept hearing ‘when are you going to write another book?’. Luckily, I was underemployed at work, so I had time to work on my book, my family tree, and homework when I returned to study in 2011 to become a social worker. My co-workers resented me for bludging. I turned into the type of employee I used to backstab, arriving late, talking on the phone, long lunch breaks and leaving early after completing more personal work than KPIs.
Jenny from the cover of SNAP being photobombed by Stef.
Melbourne and Westside Sharps.
Radio interview at Inner North East Community Radio on the 1970s with Soozie Pinder and Laryssa Faulkner 2014.
ABC Radio interview with Richard Stubbs for the Warner Music launch of ‘When Sharpies Ruled’ CD. A CD of Australian music compiled by Glenn Terry of Vicious Sloth Records, Malvern in 2015.
The Warner Music launch. Having our music accepted and acknowledged was the first big step for recognition of our sub-culture.
From the ABC 7.30 report – Bob Bob Spencer was the guitarist on one of the featured bands, Finch, and went on to play in Skyhooks and The Angels.
“I think it’s really important to include the sharpies in our musical heritage,” he said. “They helped the bands I was in, they helped the music scene enormously, they were part of my bands being able to play to 1,500 kids at Hornsby Police Boys Club on a Friday night.” Spencer identifies as a surfie, but said the sharpies’ love of music encouraged the development of a number of Australian bands. “I think that music gave birth to the stuff that became the Angels, AC/DC — you know all that sort of stuff,” he said. “That music helped fertilise the ground for what came later.”
As the years passed, the sub-culture’s social significance accelerated, and Sharpies began to receive independent and mainstream attention.
Sharpies were the first and last homegrown Melbourne youth sub-culture that rejected commercial fashion and spent their junior wages on custom designed fine Italian knitwear and handmade chisel toed, cuban heeled shoes for the boys. Today, with manufacturing offshore, globalisation and the free market, it would be impossible to have a similar youth directed fashion movement.
Next thing we knew, Sharpies were included in a 1970s exhibition at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
It is likely we were laughing at my description of how I would have behaved inside the RHSV heritage building in the 1970s…
“Thank you for having us at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. This is a big thing for the Sharpies to be here. If this was 1978 and I was in this building I would have graffitied my name in the toilets using a texta I carried in my hand bag and I may of climbed on the vanity and burnt my name into the roof with my lighter.
If I had my boyfriend with me, we would have been pashing over between the bookshelves. I would have stolen something, not sure what, I know I now want the book over there about the Vagabond papers, but that would have been too intellectual. So maybe we would have stolen a centrepiece or something like that. Then we would have created some kind of a commotion, and that may have involved knocking something over, banging or making noise. When challenged we would flounce out loudly probably dropping the f-bomb and c-bomb saying ‘well we didn’t want to be in here anyway’.
Depending on how spiteful we felt after, when walking past we may or may not have banged on windows and shouted through open doors.“
It took fifty years for Sharpies to be remembered. Our forgotten subculture was now of interest to a younger generation of academics, film makers and creatives.
Lauren Hester’s award-winning documentary on the big screen at Federation Square.
A young film maker Renee (below centre) attended the talk at the RHSV. She became interested in the Sharpies after someone commented one of her hair styles looked like a Sharpie cut.
Renee did her research and did something no one else had been able to do! Renee sourced funding for a short movie about the Sharpie subculture through a grant from the City of Melbourne.
Which was then chosen from over 900 entries to be included in the St Kilda Film Festival 2025 and was nominated for two awards.
June 2025 was a big month for the forgotten Melbourne Sharpie Subculture. The St Kilda Film Festival and the photobooth exhibition at RMIT.
