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.
posted by Caratacus | 12:15 pm
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