A new book reveals the links between Australia’s first ‘larrikins’ and today’s rebellious youth on the streets of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Research by historian Melissa Bellanta from The University of Queensland’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies details the similarities between the rough youth first called ‘larrikins’ in the Ned Kelly era and today’s street hooligans or young gang members.
“There are definitely parallels between what was Australia’s first street youth culture and youth culture today,” said Ms Bellanta.
Her findings feature in a new book of her extensive Australian research called Larrikins, A History, published by University of Queensland Press.
The book catalogues the colourful histories of the larrikins of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney over the years between the late 1860s and 1930, with tales of bare-knuckle fighting, football barracking and knicker-flashing teenage girls.
From ‘rowdies’ in Fitzroy, to the 1885 Bondi riot, to the neighbourhoods of Redfern and Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, the book identifies the ‘larrikin belt’ of each city, traversing the early lifestyle of the youth who lived there.
The book also reveals the connections between over-policing and the development of anti-police violence and anti-social acts by ‘larrikins’ in the 1880s. Like their hero Ned Kelly, larrikins rallied against the law in this period, forming loose gangs or ‘pushes’ and bolstered by members of their communities.
“Over-policing youth was counter-productive then just as it is today,” Ms Bellanta said.
“It was only when policing and criminal justice strategies towards street youth changed that larrikin ‘pushes’ became less hostile towards officers of the law and the wider community.”
The book goes on to show how the street youth culture in the inner suburbs of Australian cities developed in the early 1900s, becoming more focused on struggles over territory between rival ‘pushes’ and skirmishes at Saturday afternoon football games.
“Larrikin youth became more focused on fighting for prestige among themselves rather than fighting police in the early years of the century”,” said Ms Bellanta.
“At the same time, community attitudes towards them started to become more lenient.”
The book charts how the meaning of the word ‘larrikin’ changed over the following decades, coming to refer to a harmless prankster such as Paul Hogan, Steve Irwin and the Beaconsfield miners.
This softening of sentiment was aided by much cheerful representation of the ‘larrikin digger’ and popularised by cartoons and vaudeville acts during the First World War.
“The end result is that today we have a far more affectionate rendering of the term,” Ms Bellanta said.
Larrikins: A History also reveals that the violent young woman of today is also no new development. The rise of what we now call the ‘ladette’ began in the 1860s as young women participated in the emergence of the larrikin street scene.
“In some ways we are today seeing a resurgence of the brazen, rough female of those days,” said Ms Bellanta.
Larrikins: A History is available at quality bookshops and online from The University of Queensland Press website.
Media: Author Melissa Bellanta (07 3346 7410 or m.bellanta@uq.edu.au) or Janelle Kirkland, UQ Communications (07 3346 0561 or j.kirkland@uq.edu.au).
BACKGROUNDER
In Melbourne terms, the ‘larrikin belt’ ran from South Melbourne (then Emerald Hill) to Richmond, Abbotsford, Collingwood, parts of Fitzroy and Carlton through to North Melbourne, but also in the vicinity of Little Bourke Street.
Sydney’s comprised the waterfront districts from Woolloomooloo through Miller’s Point to Pyrmont, streets on either side of Blackwattle Bay in Glebe and Balmain, and the industrialising suburbs running from Chippendale, parts of Surry Hills, Redfern, St Peters, Alexandria and Waterloo.
In Brisbane, the larrikin districts were Woolloongabba, West End, South Brisbane, Fortitude Valley, Spring Hill, Petrie Terrace and low lying parts of Red Hill and Paddington.
