There goes the neighbourhood! Billy Thorpe moves to East Melbourne

Wandering the wide, leafy streets of East Melbourne the other day, I was reminded what a civilised part of town it is. As if all its towering Victorian townhouses, Deco dazzlers and historic mansions weren’t enough, it’s got the picnic paradise of Fitzroy Gardens within cooee, and seems magically buffered from the incessant traffic noise that plagues most of the inner city. An oasis of gentility, a haven of refinement… And yet…

One of Australia’s rowdiest rock’n’rollers once lived — and partied hard — in these very streets! 

Banchory Cottage, Gipps St, East Melbourne: someone was inside, watching me from the front left window when I took this, so I didn't hang around trying to take a magnificent photo!

Yep, this unassuming little cottage in Gipps Street was once home to Billy Thorpe — at the height of his pub-rockin’, ‘sink-more-piss’ phase, no less. It was in this ‘house of lunacy’ that ‘a million brain cells died and the Sunbury Aztecs were born,’ recalls Thorpie in his second autobiography, Most People I Know (think that I’m crazy). Judging by his detailed descriptions of the nocturnal festivities that went down there, I’d say that was more like a trillion.

Joining Thorpie in this den of debauchery were his girlfriend Jackie and two of his bandmates, Paul Wheeler and Jimmy Thompson. They hit town from Sydney in December 1968, and within no time, a constant flow of freaks and friends was beating a path to their front door. 

After a few months of this madness, the desperately sleep-deprived singer resorted to a drastic measure. He nailed a big sign to the front door, emblazoned with the following hand-painted message:

To those about to knock. About every 8 minutes DAY and NIGHT some arsehole knocks on this door and I’m going fucking insane! My bedroom is the front window to your right and I haven’t slept in 6 fucking months. Regardless of what you’ve been told this is not the Melbourne Salvation Army, the Hilton or the Thumping Tum East, IT’S OUR HOUSE. We don’t save souls, take confessions, serve breakfast, arrange marriages, sell cars, arbitrate disputes, find lost dogs, supply inspiration, give spiritual guidance, sell drugs, bust virgins, counsel lost teenagers, or need your stimulating conversation. Therefore:-

• If you’re not bleeding from every orifice and about to die.

• If your gear hasn’t blown up and you need to borrow an amp.

• If you didn’t leave your clothes here last night and you’re naked in the street.

• If you’re not a philanthropist with a million dollars to give away.

• If you’re not a record company that wants to give us a deal.

• If you’re a debt collector.

• If you haven’t called so we know you’re coming.

• Or if you’re a copper without a legal search warrant then;

FUCK OFF!!!!

                        Peace and love

The sign wasn’t up for long. An outraged old lady called the cops, who made Thorpie take it down. 

Don’t you just love it that little gems of rock’n’roll history like this still exist in the most unexpected places? 

Another view

Postscript:

Personally I much prefer the early, Sydney-era Aztecs (not to mention Thorpie’s rollicking account of those years, Sex and Thugs and Rock’n’Roll), but Most People I Know is well worth a read for its vivid, bawdy depiction of Melbourne in the late 1960s. 

Holy go-go boots, Batgirl!

Stumbling upon this mind-blowingly groovy quartet of Bat-babes during my cyber-wanderings recently, I thought all my blogmases had come at once. Not only did the photo date back to 60s Melbourne, but it had a Batman theme - could the planets align any more perfectly?

But there's always a catch, isn't there?

Much like Jan Stewart, the mystery model I posted about last year (a helpful reader informed me that she ended up marrying Ian Turpie!), I encountered a big fat dead end when I tried to investigate these gorgeous Bat-chicks further. But here's the little that I do know...

This photo appeared in the 27 September 1967 issue of Go Set magazine, and was taken at the Coburg Town Hall, at a Saturday-night dance called 'Swinger'. Can't you just imagine the search results that Google threw at me when I tried to look into that?!

The Coburg Town Hall was a popular live music venue during the 60s, hosting everyone from The Strangers to Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs and The Masters Apprentices. And sometimes the occasion would be Swinger...

I don't know how long Swinger lasted, but if the advert above is any indication, it was Melbourne's own 'big established fun centre'. Indeed.

And the Batgirls? I have a suspicion they were go-go dancers and seem to remember once seeing a photo of Denise Drysdale shakin' it with some Batgirls (that's not her on the left of the image above, is it? There's a certain likeness but I'm not convinced), but can't find anything to either support or refute this notion.

I do know that the character of Batgirl was introduced in season three of the original Batman TV series, which went to air in - you guessed it - 1967. 

If there's anyone out there who knows anything else about this photo (including the name of the photographer and who the chicks are), the Swinger dance, or even just what it was like going to gigs at the Coburg Town Hall, please get in touch and put me out of my misery!

Petrol fumes: an old revhead remembers Riverside Dragway

Boy racers are so tedious. Arrogant little louts in their foul plastic-looking cars, with outsized spoilers and peanut-sized – ahem – brains, driving way too fast, drag-racing down public thoroughfares and endangering other motorists and pedestrians as they go. I bet none of them have ever heard of the old Riverside Dragway in Fishermans Bend.

My colleague Norm, who’s always boasting about what fun it was to grow up in 1960s Melbourne, used to go and watch the Riverside drags as a teenager. As its name suggests, Riverside Dragway was by the Yarra, on the airstrip of the Commowealth Aircraft Factories behind the GMH engine plant. No sign of it remains today – it’s just some industrial estates (and a go-karting complex) in the shadow of the Westgate Bridge. But between the late-50s and late 1966, it was the epicentre of Aussie drag-racing. 

Cool and cooler: Riverside draggin'. Still taken from this video 

Now on the other side of 65, Norm’s memories of the races can be kinda …impressionistic. But piece them together and you get some idea of what it must’ve been like down there by the river, amid the smoke and noise, watching a bunch of petrolheads burning down the quarter-mile with minimal safety regulations and the occasional visiting pop star...

"Whacky hillbilly sorts"

When asked what the drivers were like, whether they were a bunch of bodgies or what, Norm says, “You had to be a bit of a hoon. But even now dragster guys are different from the circuit racers. They’re a different breed —whacky hillbilly sorts, revving ‘er up— compared to, say, Nascar, where they speed around in one direction until their head falls off.” Umm, right – thanks for clarifying that.

One driver Norm recalls is Ash Marshall, a Sydney car dealer specialising in luxury Yank tanks (doesn’t sound very hillbilly to me!), who brought down “Australia’s first top-fuel dragster, you know the big American-style car”. 

Ash Marshall (front) and Jack 'Fizzball' Collins (far lane), at the Riverside Drags, 1965.
Photo: courtesy www.moondog.net.au

However, young Norm wasn’t impressed. “He couldn’t even get one run out of it! It was so high-powered, he couldn’t get it started. I’d been really looking forward to seeing him blast down the track in his supercharger, but it just made a few banging noises. Someone in a car like that [see below] ended up winning, I reckon in 11.1 seconds."

“There was no money in drag-racing. Not like circuit racing where you had the likes of Norm Beechey, Bob Jane and Jim McKeown. Drags never attract the same crowds; I don’t think we’ve had any heroes in Australian drag-racing like Don Garlits in America, say … Drag-racing is always the poor cousin." 

Who needs safety precautions when there's no speed? 

Victoria hasn’t always been the nanny state it is today, and Norm tells me the safety standards at Riverside were what you might call relaxed. 

“At Riverside, I don’t remember any barriers around the crowd. If someone wandered onto the track, it didn’t really matter. As to who they’d let race, there weren’t the scrutineers they have today.” He adds, “There wasn’t all the safety, but there wasn’t all the speed either … we’re just talking fun.”

Driver Darryl Harvey on the grid, Riverside Drags, 1960s. Photo: Clive Windley

An FC Holden, waiting to start, Riverside, 1964. Photo: Clive Windley.
You can check out a whole series of amazing drag-racing photos by Mr Windley here.

A very Australian kind of fun, at that. “It wasn’t like the American dragstrips, where they pretend they’ve got a Ford but it’s really made out of fibreglass and has 5000 horse power. There was none of that silliness; it was just blokes in their cars, maybe with an extra-big carby or something like that. I remember one Morris Minor that was fast off the mark: I it had a Holden engine in it. The guy practically sat out the windscreen, he was perched so high up."

“In drag racing these days they’re hitting 500k/h in the quarter mile, but things were very slow then.”

Not sure if this Ford Zephyr is a participant or an observer, but it's pretty damn sweet! Photo: Clive Windley

Nervous breakdown on a flat-bed truck

Everyone knows drag-racing’s better with a rockin’ soundtrack, and Norm was lucky enough to catch Melbourne’s own Merv Benton performing at the Riverside between races.

“You’ve got to remember, he was a bit of a pop star at the time. He performed on the back of an open-tray truck; he did “Nervous Breakdown”. That was pretty cool, I hadn’t seen a dude like him before. Bit of a change from Bing Crosby!”



Sadly, Norm can’t recall seeing any other entertainers down at the drags. “You’re stretching my brains a bit! I don’t even remember how often they had a meeting.” I think it’s safe to assume that only Merv made an impression. 

Any final words, Norman? “I was down at the docks the other day, and was thinking how ironic it is that on one side we’ve got General Motors, which has stopped making cars, and right nearby, we’ve got 1100 cars a day arriving from overseas.” Ain’t that the truth. 

News flash: in a remarkable piece of serendipity, Norm has just told me he used to live across the road to Tom Cowburn from The Spinning Wheels (see my previous post) back in the day. Apparently, when the band got successful, Tom went out and bought himself a Jag, which he took to the same mechanic that Norm used for his Morris. The mechanic would complain to Norm about the Jag, saying, "Why didn't he just get a car like yours?", and whinging how hard parts were to get for it. Small world or what?!

Melbourne song of the month: "Shame, Shame, Shame"/The Spinning Wheels (September 1965)

A band’s name can tell you a lot about them, even before you hear their music. Take The Spinning Wheels. Even my old Aunty Lil, with her Vera Lynn records and True Detective magazines, would’ve been able to make the Rolling Stones connection. But unlike so many Melbourne groups of the time with aspirations to be our own Mick, Keef and co, The Spinning Wheels got there first. 

Early line-up of The Spinning Wheels. L-R: Glen Sievers, Don Hirst, Graham Lord, Rod Turnbull, Mike Perrin.

When The Spinning Wheels formed in early 1964, the Stones hadn’t quite taken off in Australia and Melbourne’s live music scene still had a strong rocker element. But the screaming tidal wave of Beatlemania had already landed; and the floodgates opened pretty fast after that. 

But where the Fab Four were loveably pop, many of the other British groups that emerged in their mop-topped wake were tougher, heavily influenced by black American blues and r’n’b. The Stones, The Pretty Things, The Animals and The Yardbirds (to name a few) — these were the bands that inspired guitarists Don Hirst and Michael Perrin, and drummer Graeme Lord, to blow the folk/skiffle scene they’d been hanging round in and embrace the beat explosion.

The band playing at daytime CBD venue The Bowl in 1964

Add singer Rod Turnbull and bassplayer Glen Sievers (lead guitarist Tom Cowburn came a bit later) to the equation, and The Spinning Wheels were born. Not everyone welcomed them with open arms: in their early days, they were occasionally beaten up by rockers who didn't dig their rootsy sound or mod aesthetic. They also copped a tongue-lashing from the judges of the talent show, "New Faces", who thought they were filthy reprobates! 

Fortunately, music promoter Brian de Courcy had better taste, and invited the Wheels to play at a popular weekly dance he ran in Mentone. Then Stones hysteria kicked off like a herd of stampeding wildebeest and suddenly every booker in town (and Lorne, but that’s a story for a different post) wanted a sound-alike. 

No prizes for guessing who they called. While most other local wannabe Stones combos were still getting their act together, The Spinning Wheels were already firing on all cylinders.

Anyone know what that cool guitar with the Florentine cut-outs is in the background?

The song

Not surprisingly, the band was snapped up by HMV, with whom they released four singles. Their high-spirited version of Jimmy Reed’s classic, “Shame, Shame, Shame” was the B-side of their third single, “You Can’t Catch Me” (the Chuck Berry number), and was recorded at St Kilda’s Telefil Studios with sound engineer Roger Savage (whose name has popped up in this blog more than once).

Where the original is cool and soulful and swingin’, The Spinning Wheels rendition is gritty and over-driven and struttin’. Rod Turnbull’s vocals are a world away from Reed’s southern tones, being closer to the snotty style of someone like Jim Sohn (Shadows of Knight).

In place of the bluesy harmonica solo that distinguishes the original, the Wheels let rip instead with a wild guitar rave-up, leaving the harmonica in the background. As close to fuzz as guitar got in those days, Tom Cowburn’s blistering sound was achieved when Savage split the cone in Cowburn’s little practice amp, cranked up the volume, and miked it up from behind — a trick he’d learnt back in London, where he'd worked with the Stones themselves.

A scorchin’ slice of r’n’b in the best blue-eyed British style, “Shame, Shame, Shame” doesn’t possess that indefinable ‘Aussie sound’ evident in some of the other songs featured on this blog, but it’s still a Melbourne classic… 

Time-tripping in the 1966 Lincoln Continental that belonged to Ford Australia’s head honcho

So apparently the GM of Ford Australia in the 1960s drove a 1966 Lincoln Continental – a right-hand drive model that was hand-built shipped over from the US especially for him. There doesn't appear to be any documented evidence to support this claim – but trust me, it’s the truth. How do I know? Well, because I was a passenger in this very car over the Christmas break!

And here it is. Holy Yank tanks, Batman, would you get an eyeful of that?

Stylin'.

Check out that rectangular beastliness: if that doesn’t look 70s, I don’t know what does. But no, this rumbling road-hog is definitely from 1966. Supposedly the 60s Lincolns were a deliberate departure from the fins and chrome-plated flamboyance of the 50s models.

Can’t you just imagine this thing cruising the mean streets of Geelong all those years ago? Personally I find it a bit odd that the top dog of Ford Australia didn’t support the national product by driving a Falcon XP, but hey, when you’re the boss, you can do what you damn well please. 

Imagine parallel parking this thing!

The Continental is currently owned by a Wollongong-based motoring enthusiast named Rob (let's just say it's one of his many two- and four-wheeled vehicles). Rob bought it off an old bloke called Kevin in Bathurst, who told him that Mr Ford Australia drove it until 1968 or 1969. Then he sold it to his mate, who subsequently sold it to Kev in 1981. But because the car's history started in 1960s Gee-troit, it more than qualifies for this blog.

Effortlessly outshining the ugly modern cars in the background

So what was it like to ride in? Smooooth, baby. We were driving through downtown Albury so there was no opportunity for hooning, but the sense of coiled power just waiting to be unleashed was palpable. Rob says the fastest he’s driven it was about 110 miles an hour:
"Whilst is it still amazingly smooth at that speed (approx 170kph), you are aware that you're moving a 5.6-metre and 2.5-ton object with only 1966 combination disk (front)/drum (rear) brakes to avoid Armageddon. I lack that bravery, I must say."

Inside, it’s super-flash, with all sorts of controls and fancy details. Some of them may be commonplace today but would've seemed positively space-age back in 1966.

Dash detail

Take a deep breath and repeat after me: ashtrays and cigarette lighters for every passenger (and the driver, of course), eight-way electric seat settings, cruise control, an eight-track player (Cosmo’s Factory by CCR was our motoring soundtrack) and separate AM/FM radio (with a foot switch to change the station!), air con and power windows (including power quarter vents). If you’d asked me whether power windows even existed in 60s Australia, I would’ve said hell no.

Inside door detail 

But wait, there's more! (Minimalism clearly was not a word in Lincoln's vocabulary).
Individual interior light switches for each passenger, vacuum-operated door locks on the driver's side to lock your passengers in, a foot-operated handbrake, hazard lights, variable-speed windscreen wipers, automatic boot release from inside the car... all topped off by a gas-guzzling, 462 cubic inch (7.6L) engine that Rob admits is "obscene and quasi-unspeakable by today's standards! Fuel consumption? Of no significance in 1966!"

No wonder the Lincoln Continental was the car preferred by US Presidents (although as Rob points out, "it didn't do JFK any favours -- a roof may have helped.")

Suicidal!

It was also a hit among US mobsters, thanks to probably its most noteworthy feature: rear-hinged ‘suicide’ doors. Yep, the back doors open backwards! Rob explains that suicide doors "allowed their dames to gracefully alight from the vehicle when draped in classy evening frocks (which was pretty much all the time). This, along with the car's vacuum locks and a trunk big enough to fit three bodies made it a firm gangster favourite."

Could that be why Ford Australia didn’t introduce them into any of their locally manufactured vehicles?

Rennie Ellis: Life’s a Beach

Hark! Is that summer I sense, tentatively showing its unfamiliar face? Of course, I could be speaking too soon, but it does seem to be warming up here in sunny (yes, you read that correctly) Melbourne. That calls for a celebratory end-of-year post featuring the early beach photography of my favourite Aussie photographer, Rennie Ellis…

Back view, Lorne, c. 1968. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Born in Brighton and educated at Brighton Grammar, Reynolds Mark ‘Rennie’ Ellis (1940-2003) was something of a Renaissance man, working as an advertising copywriter, seaman, creative director, author, gallery owner and TV presenter over the course of his career. But more than anything, he was a photographer, with an instinct for capturing Australian society in all its idiosyncratic glory.

Union Jack, Lorne, c. 1968. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright: Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive.

While his subject matter was by no means limited to home soil (he took photos all over the world), it’s his Australian work that resonates most with me. According to the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive, maintained by his second wife and his former assistant, Ellis saw his photographic excursions as a series of encounters with other people's lives. And what people they were: high-spirited and hedonistic, fun-loving and footloose, unconventional and unselfconscious.

Four sunbathers, Lorne 1968. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive.

It was during the 1970s and 1980s that Ellis really developed his signature style, taking iconic photos of Aussies at play: at parties, rock concerts, nightclubs, footy matches, the races — and, of course, the beach. But even in the late 1960s, the signs were there, as the photos featured in this post attest.

Surfer with girl, Lorne, c. 1968. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive.

Apparently, Lorne was the place to be on the Great Ocean Road during the 1950s and 1960s (stay tuned for a post on that soon), a bohemian hot-spot which attracted truckloads of young groovers from Melbourne during summer. By night, they’d hit the Wild Colonial Club to catch all the era’s hippest bands; by day, they could be found swimming, surfing and sunning themselves at the beach.

And who better to immortalise this swinging seaside scene than Rennie Ellis?

Volleyball, Lorne, c. 1967. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive.

Lindy Hobbs Surfing World, Lorne, c. 1968. Photo: Rennie Ellis, copyright Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Just as the music of The Easybeats or the sight of a koala in its natural habitat inspire a stronger sense of patriotism in me than usual, the same can be said of Rennie Ellis’s portraits. There’s something about their joyful exuberance, and their complete absence of value judgements, that makes me feel proud to be an Aussie. (And trust me, there’s not a lot these days that does..).

Want more Rennie? Check out the fantastic Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive NOW!

It was 47 years ago today...

...that Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Portsea, 59 miles from Melbourne.

Dig that nifty little wetsuit! PM Harold Holt with his step-daughters-in-law, Amanda, Caroline and Paulette. 

Holt's body was never found, giving rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories: such as the one that he'd been kidnapped by communists and whisked away in a submarine, or that he faked his own death so he could run off with a secret mistress.

Groovy bikinis too.

Suffice it to say, I can think of one or two pollies today who are far more deserving than Holt of such a fate...