I grew up listening to Australian rock music. My parents raised me on a solid diet consisting of the cheek of Skyhooks, the grit of Cold Chisel, the groove of Ted Mulry Gang, and the visceral energy of Bon Scott era AC/DC. All the good stuff. But in my adolescence, as I began to pick up a guitar and form my own bands, dealing with the throes of teenage angst and misunderstood youth, my taste turned to more towards the frantic sound and blistering attitude of punk music.

Having grown up in suburban Melbourne, I’d always been enamoured by our city’s thriving and diverse music scene, captivated by its rich history spanning back countless decades and transcending cultural barriers. And as I started to delve more into punk music in the local scene – whilst simultaneously discovering and worshipping Aussie punk bands of decades past – Australian music, especially from Melbourne, became the one thing I was vehemently nationalistic about.

So, in 2019 when I – a music-obsessed, 19-year-old film student – was given a university assignment to create a short documentary about whatever topic I wanted, of course I wanted to make a film that spread awareness about what I have always been most passionate about: how good Melbourne’s punk and rock music is. However, in my preliminary research into Melbourne’s punk history, I stumbled across something much more interesting – photographs of snarling faced youths rocking tight knit cardigans, flared pants, outrageously high platforms, and close-cropped, mullet-like hair. I was baffled. Their look was so distinct, their attitude so tough, their stance so full of cheek and energy. I took my findings to the one person who knew more about Australian music than anyone else I knew – my dad.

“Oh yeah, they’re Sharpies,” he replied when I eagerly showed him the mysterious photographs I’d just unearthed.

“Sharpies?”

“Yeah, you know. Those kids with the weird dancing – like in that Eagle Rock video!”.

I certainly did not know. My mind was blown. There was a music-based subculture completely unique to the city I had grown up in – a punk-like movement before punk had even been thought of – and I’d never even heard of it?! How could there have been such a broad gap in my musical education, the education my parents prided themselves on so much?

“Hmm, I guess I just forgot about them. They used to be everywhere, but I haven’t heard anything in ages so they’re just a distant memory now.”   

As a teenager in the 70s, my dad grew up in the Pines area of Frankston, which was rampant with Sharps back in the day. But how could he forget something so unique and visceral from his youth? The Sharpies being a forgotten subculture seemed to be a recurrent theme – and what an insult it was to this fascinating movement! People like my dad needed to remember the Sharpies, people like me needed a way to discover this bygone subculture, people of the world needed – and deserved – to know how important the Sharps were in shaping Melbourne’s musical and cultural history!

I knew immediately that this is what I was going to make my documentary about. 

And so, I embarked on a journey to discover all I could about the Sharpies. Researching online, collecting photographs, reading tales of Sharpie youth in Julie’s books, watching 1960s news reports on the Sharps vs Mods, and surveying 1970s video footage of the Sharpie’s frantic dancing at Lobby Loyde concerts and Sunbury Music Festival – I devoured every last morsel of information in the very scarce pool of Sharpie documentation. But the lack of sufficient sources left something to be desired, and I sensed that there was more to the subculture than what the media of the time showed.

Deeply fascinated and hungry for more, I joined a Facebook group for ‘Sharpies, Sharps & Skins’ to contact some of these elusive ex-Sharps and was shocked at how vast and tight knit the community seemed to be. There were thousands of people in here, celebrating the music and culture of their youth, regaling tales of the bygone Sharpie era, and even organising meetups and events for ex-Sharps! For a subculture that supposedly disappeared into a forgotten void of Australian history as the 1970s subsided, it seemed to me that the Sharpies were still going strong after all this time – albeit in a different, more nostalgia-driven way. I made a post expressing interest in creating a documentary and was immediately inundated with photographs, stories, and offers to be interviewed.

The few Sharpie documentaries and news reports I had stumbled across online painted a picture of a brief flash in the pan movement of violent, delinquent gangs; snide youths destined for nothing other than the jail cell in adulthood – yet the ex-Sharps I interacted with and spoke to were so kind, so open, so eager to help! Age and the passage of time is one thing to consider, but this seemed to confirm my suspicion that there was more to this subculture than the superficial reports of fashion, music and fighting that already existed. These were all important aspects, but had the media perhaps misrepresented and generalised the youths of the time? What a shock.  

My fascination with the Sharpies was initially sparked by the distinctiveness of their look, their reverence of great Australian rock music, and the movement’s locality to Melbourne’s suburbs – all settings and interests of my own youth, decades later. I thought it was so incredible that there was such a unique and prominent subculture localised predominantly to Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs – yet nowhere else in the world! My passion to reintroduce the Sharpies to the world was also driven by the seemingly forgotten nature of the subculture, the injustice of society’s selective memory, because despite how distinct and influential the movement was back then, Sharpies aren’t widely recognised nor remembered in the modern era compared to other 20th century youth subcultures. It didn’t seem fair that the Sharpies were largely erased from contemporary discourse, yet subcultures like the Mods, Rockers and Punks all experience widespread recognition and celebration today.

But what truly hooked me was what was beneath the exterior – the sense of community and mateship I witnessed, and how the bonds formed during the Sharpie era seemed to persevere even to this day. Within the small realm of pre-existing Sharpie documentaries, all content seemed to focus solely on the historical aspect of the subculture, and often from biased points of view – from outsiders who didn’t truly understand the movement. But by focusing on the people within the subculture and their experiences being a Sharpie, I wanted ‘Stay Sharp’ provide the audience with a unique insight into this forgotten, yet significant, movement, truly showing what it meant to be a Sharpie; thus, creating heartfelt exploration into the relationships and sense of belonging that was – and still is – so vital to this historic subculture.

So, throughout the latter half of 2019, alongside a crew of my university peers that I’d conscripted to my Sharpie crusade, I shot ‘Stay Sharp’ with an incredible amount of help from the Sharpie community – namely ex-Sharps Julie Mac and Stef Egan, and City Sharps’ Chane Chane and Sam Biondo, all of whom I interviewed for the documentary. They brought along a museum’s worth of memorabilia to the shoot – clothing, records, newspapers, posters. It was truly awe-inspiring to see! We also received an extraordinary level of support from the wider Sharpie community – with many ex-Sharps providing photos and resources for use – and experienced this vibrant community spirit firsthand when we shot footage at a City Sharps gig, attended by a tight-knit group of ex-Sharps. Witnessing old Sharpie friends get together alongside newcomers, and the overwhelming sense of community present at the gig that night really demonstrated the strength of the Sharpie bond, and this nostalgic modern revival of the subculture reassured me that – despite being widely forgotten by society – the iconic Sharpie spirit was still being kept alive today.

So, while my documentary ‘Stay Sharp’ pays homage to this unique part of Melbourne’s past in a historic context, it predominantly explores the personal experiences of these ex-Sharps, uncovering what being a Sharpie really meant to them and thus rectifying the widespread misconceptions surrounding the subculture. From an outsider’s point of view, it seems that this youth movement merely revolved around the music, the fashion, and the fighting; but after hearing Chane, Sam, Julie and Stef recount their tales of friendship and insurrection from the 1970s and witnessing the strength of the bonds between them and the wider ex-Sharp community, it became apparent to me that the Sharpie subculture was truly about the relationships formed during this time, and the sense of belonging and community these teenagers derived from being a part of such a distinct subculture. These thematic motifs of belonging, mateship, nostalgia, and identity form the tonal core of the documentary, and are issues that are still relevant to teenagers and adults alike today. 

After its completion in early 2020, ‘Stay Sharp’ was screened at several Australian film festivals in Melbourne and Sydney including the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and Setting Sun Film Festival – and was also screened at iconic Melbourne locations such as Federation Square and Cinema Nova as a part of these festivals. But – to my surprise – it also garnered some international acclaim, winning ‘Best International Short’ at the LA Punk Film Festival, with audiences overseas being equally as intrigued by the Sharpies as I was. For its exploration of such a culturally significant part of Melbourne’s history, the documentary was also nominated by Swinburne University to represent them out of all documentary projects made in their film department that year for the CILECT Prize, therefore being screened in 180 institutions across 65 different countries and spreading the story of the Sharps worldwide.

But the reaction that mattered most to me was the public’s response to ‘Stay Sharp’ – the nostalgic joy of ex-Sharps reminiscing about their youth, and even non-Sharps rediscovering memories of the 1970s and their encounters with the Sharpies upon seeing the documentary. The release of the initial ‘Stay Sharp’ trailer really proved the power of the Sharpie’s impression too – it garnered over 40,000 views within a week and was inundated with comments from hundreds of Australians, all harking back on their experiences with the Sharpies, both good and bad. Even the fascinated response from young punks like me who’d never heard of the Sharpies before was a delight; I had people come up to me and express their shock that a such a distinct subculture that pre-dated the emergence of punk existed in our city.

Despite the misconceptions and myths surrounding the movement, the Sharpie movement was such a unique and ground-breaking subculture, ahead of its time in aesthetics and music but also in its values. From the stories I heard from ex-Sharps, it seemed to me that everyone was welcomed into a Sharpie gang and your actions proved your worth – not your background or your race or your gender – which was at odds with the conservative nature of society at the time and gave youths a sense of belonging and family that they might not have found anywhere else. These values based on equality, paired with the distinctiveness of the Sharpie look, its heavy involvement with iconic Australian music, and locality to Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs – yet nowhere else in the world – makes it an important part of our city’s culture and history; which is why it’s paramount to dispel these misconceptions surrounding the Sharpies and why the movement deserves to be remembered and documented properly.

As director of ‘Stay Sharp’, I got the opportunity to connect with a group of extraordinary individuals and witness the thriving resurgence of the Sharpie subculture, learning about this intriguing cultural movement as I did so. In creating this documentary, I strived to remind people of this unique subculture, but also dispel many of the unfortunate misconceptions that surround it and provide a heart-warming insight into the true meaning of what it meant to be a Sharpie. By listening to these incredible stories of friendship, adventure, and rebellion, I truly hoped that others would be inspired by this significant, yet forgotten, part of Melbourne’s cultural history just as I was – helping us keep the iconic Sharpie spirit alive and well.