Where it all began...

 I was born in Melbourne, Australia, and in 1964, I travelled to London; "Swinging London" - Wow - or groovy, as we said way back then.

It was a rite of passage for young Australians at this time to travel to the UK, as working holidayers. 

It would be easy to leave Melbourne behind, it was an uptight town - the bars and hotels closed at six in the evening, hard to believe, but true. People left work at 5:30 and had half an hour to socialise,  no place for young people who wanted to have fun.

Leaving on the RHMS Ellenis. 

The trip took six weeks and stopped at exotic and wonderful places on the way, eventually arriving at Portsmouth, surrounded by ghosts - the English were so pale! It was a surprise. 

Took a steam train to London - what a place London was, colourful and exciting, Carnaby St, Kings Rd, fabulous clothes, wonderful music, and later, Biba, just people having a fab time.

Here I was, in a young person's paradise, I was a hairdresser at the time, but that didn't seem like so much fun, but all that changed when I was walking through Soho, and I saw Elizabeth Taylor step out of a pub and into a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. 

The pub was The Salisbury, and of course, I had to go in. It was busy and raucous, oh gosh, Peter O'Toole was at the bar, very drunk and holding court. I watched the happenings over a pale ale, when I noticed a newspaper on the table beside me, it was The Stage., I took it to my digs.

The Stage is a theatrical paper telling of the happenings, shows, news, and agents. I read it, it had a list of agents, I made an appointment to see one, Vincent Shaw.

I had to read an audition piece, so I read a piece from an Australian play, "The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll". It went OK, and was sent to Teignmouth in Northumberland for a three-month season of weekly rep.

Weekly rep is hard work, it meant a different play each evening with a matinee on Saturday, with Sunday the only day off. So, we were playing that week's play in the evening and rehearsing the next week's play during the day. A lot of work, but a lot of fun.

One play was an English farce, can't remember its name, it was by Roy Plomley or Brian Rix, a silly bit of nonsense that the audiences enjoyed at that time - in one scene, there was an explosion, and a woman's dress was blown off, costumes were provided, but not for this scene, so I said, "I can make a dress" - I had done alterations on clothes, letting down trouser cuffs and lengthening jacket sleeves, but never a full garment.

I made a red dress, it was taped at the back, so it would come of easily, and at the front, it was attached to a length of very fine fishing line and the other end was held by someone backstage - when the explosion happened, he pulled the line and the dress flew off... it worked.

Finishing off the season, I returned to London and bought a sewing machine. Shirts were always the problem, they can't be lengthened, and at 6'4" tall, they were always too short in the sleeves and body.

The machine I bought was a straight stitcher, so I took the shirts to an alteration place for the buttons and holes.

I did another season in Bexhill and then moved onto other things. I don't have many photos of this time, I left a lot of them at a modelling agency, which is a pity.

Anyway, the point of this post is that it was the first time I made an actual garment, and have been sewing happily for the last sixty years,