Sydney’s eastern suburbs. 1972

My six years at boarding school had sharpened my resilience, to be sure, but in November 1971, returning home to live once more, I felt keenly the need to learn more about how the world worked. That, and what the hell do I wear? My civilian wardrobe was virtually non-existent. Mum took pity on me and we travelled into town and went to the David Jones men’s store on Market Street. A flamboyant assistant suggested a combination outfit that Mum thought was quite smart. I was in a thick fog of uncertainty. Shortly afterwards I got an invitation to a party at the local SP bookie’s house on Homer Street – my first as a civilian. I was in my new outfit and if truth be told I looked a bit like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island. I think most of the girls there thought so too. I quietly retired the sky blue double-breasted, striped, wide-lapelled, silver buttoned, sports jacket to St Vincent de Paul the following Monday. 

That still left me in a bit of a dilemma. Work was fine because I was in my bus conductor’s uniform all day but the weekends? When my mate Steve asked me over to his place on the northern beaches soon after school had finished I went through my brother Tony’s hand-me-downs and found a kind of fishnet T-shirt thing and shorts. This outfit was completed by my sandshoes and football socks. Since I looked like I had just failed to get a part in the off-Broadway crowd scene of West Side Story it came as little surprise I suppose to be ridiculed on Dee Why beach. Whatever way I looked at it I realised that I needed to keep my full-time job and in the meantime scope out where young men my age bought clothes. As it turned out, to get what I wanted to wear I had to leave the country.

At the time, Steve’s older brother John was studying medicine and his medical mates invited us to a party in the eastern suburbs one Saturday night in December 1972. Up to this point I had rarely been in the eastern part of Sydney. Dad would sometimes take me for a swim at Bondi on a Sunday and once when I was ten he took me with him to see someone he knew who lived in Paddington. I followed him into a kind of house I’d never seen before and encountered my first domestic staircase. I knew for sure that they must be incredibly wealthy. The party house not only had a staircase but paintings on the wall, rugs on the floor, a kitchen roughly the size of my house in Tasker Avenue, and appliances I had only seen in movies. The parents were not home.

Gough Whitlam had become our Prime Minister the week before and even though I was nineteen I couldn’t vote. The mood in the country was optimistic. The mood at the party was pretty good too with lots of stoned medical students flipping out to the latest J.Geils’ live album released earlier in the year. It was on repeat play. Even after a year of freedom my sartorial challenges remained and my default position was a pair of jeans and a flannelette shirt. But here at the party were young men a bit older than me who seemed both cool and comfortable in what they were wearing. A gang of them had been to Indonesia the year before and they were wearing loose pants and batik shirts. Something clicked. Steve had always had that northside surfer look so he was fine but for me it was a look I wanted. With Hard Drivin’ Man ringing in our ears, another endless night in Sydney was ours for the taking, and we decided on Bali in a year. We were never going to get old.

 

StereoStory#703

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It's taken a bit but the cracker memoir from Paul called 'Fingers Crossed' is finally finished. Instagram: @fingerscrossedmemoir Spotify: Fingers Crossed Memoir - Chapter Playlist/ Paul Dufficy grew up in Australia but has lived and worked for extensive periods in Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand. He writes about music, travel and other things that catch his interest. To support his writing he leads a Sydney walking tour with a focus on art and architecture. Paul is the creator of the new blog SoJournal. (Contributions welcome!)