Episode 6
The Sharpies - Cult Gangs of the Sixties and Seventies

Broadcast 6.30pm on 18/03/2002

In the 60’s and 70’s the streets of Melbourne were full of gangs but it was the Sharpies, enemies of the Hippies and Mods that held the power on the street. For a mean bunch of kids they were extremely fashion conscious with their crest-knit black shirts and personally designed cardigans. But as Saturday night fever exploded the Sharpies started to conform until the gang slowly faded away.

LARRY JENKINS, FORMER SHARPIE: It's just a period in Australian history where the youth culture became really suburban and urban. If you weren't in it, you were out. If you were out, you were in danger. So it was best to be in it.

GHANE CHANE, FORMER SHARPIE: Everybody was in a gang. Everybody. Every second street there was a gang. Um -- there was like you were either in a gang or you were the victim.

LARRY JENKINS: The reason a lot of us congregated together was safety in numbers. It seemed like every shopping centre had a gang. So to protect yourself against other numbers, you had to congregate in numbers. It was pretty violent.

I went to school in Blackburn South where half the other guys went. And we all sort of started -- had the same mentality and hang out together and we knew each other through other circles. We just congregated as one over the next year or two.

BERNARD HAW, FORMER SHARPIE: But in one common place -- Blackburn South shops. There was never really a quiet moment.

LARRY JENKINS: No-one wanted to stay home one night. If you stayed home, you'd miss out on some action. We were at that shops nearly every night of the week.

GHANE CHANE: The whole thing was the local shops. Everybody would hang out there during the week. Weekends, you'd go into town. Most of it was evolved around public transport. If there was a train line, that was your source to get around. It was very important to us, because the trains were our artery. They brought us home. But whenever a skinhead would jump on a train, everybody would hold their breath for a moment. And, uh -- that gave you a feeling of power. It was very much like being a cat, trying to find your way home. You'd have to cross a lot of territory.

BERNARD HAW: I think you were like a cat at night, weren't you? You were sort of -- your senses were alive. You were -- you -- your eyes had to be peeled open, because you just didn't know who was coming from where. It was only other rival gangs that we had altercations with. Footscray guys got us on the train one night. They actually made it all the way out to Belgrave and back. We came across them on the train, one or two might be caught out, and, I tell you what, when they arrived back to home base, say, puffing and panting and saying, "Well, we just outran one of the groups from -- one of the inner-city groups," or something. Because they would've got -- a kicking.

GHANE CHANE: It became very stylish. When it moved from being skinheads into sharpies, it became very stylish. People would dress very well -- the Conte, the crestknit, the black shirt, the black pinstripe pants -- we were all very fashionable. And I suppose that's where the name came, from looking sharp.

BERNARD HAW: We used to catch the tram out from the city to get our cardigans, specially ordered, made, designed.

LARRY JENKINS: It was either Conte cardigans, Sangs cardigans, Freney's Shoes or Acropolis Shoes, suede, chiselled toes.

BERNARD: Basket weave. (Laughs). But it had to have the Cuban heel and the chiselled toe.

LARRY JENKINS: All leather. Leather sole. Leather heel.

GHANE CHANE: We never went with the big designer label. No-one wore anything from New York, London, stuff like that. It was always Brunswick, you know, Thornbury, Richmond and these makers were fantastic tailors.

LARRY: Our jeans and cuttings were short, we all wore undersized clothes to make ourselves look bigger. The girls had their uniform too and they were quite similar to ours. They just had slightly longer hair.

GHANE: And they use to dress pretty good. The girls were always into the cork shoes, the pinafores, but they'd wear Conte's sometimes too. They had their own fashion, which was -- unique. Very unique.

LARRY: The T-shirts, I actually designed that myself, which was our logo. It was on the back. It went 'Blackburn Sth Sharps'. It was an interest of mine to take photos and loved the group of guys I hanged around with, they were best friends, as well as a gang, they were all tight friends. I always used the urban backdrops we had.

BERNARD HAW: There was a few guys in the group that liked showing off. They were exhibitionists, you know, in their -- OK, one guy gains a few muscles and the guys with the T-shirt and that he would like to show them off and, of course, you get that on the camera.

GHANE: When you were younger, you thought, "I'm gonna be a skinhead forever." You know, "I'm gonna die in my Conte. I'll be buried in it." You thought your gang was there forever. But, eventually, everybody grows up. I just got sick and tired of the violence and decided to move into music, fortunately.

BERNARD: I started to grow my hair and I was -- came under the scrutiny of the rest of the guys that were still holding fast that, you know, the sharpie look and I started growing my hair, so.

LARRY: We had to grow our hair to conform 'cause 'Saturday Night Fever' was exploding and we wanted to get girls. To get into pubs, we grew our hair.

BERNARD: I was the one always going to the bottle shop. We were then really back-pedalling, in a sense, by that time.

LARRY: So, we to conform or die.

BERNARD: Yeah.