Bodgie

I comb my hair as best I can. It is in a crew-cut ordered by the chief warder. He must have read that bodgies wear their hair long and decided to do his bit in the fight against juvenile delinquency.

Unlike McDonald, Manning noted with dismay that traditional relations between the sexes were broken down in bodgie groups. Bodgies, he argued, were disturbed youth, hooligans, maladjusted.

The New Zealand public and press largely shared his view of bodgies as juvenile delinquents who posed a social threat. The bodgie soon became a national bogey man, with alarmist newspaper reports about bodgie behaviour.

In Toowoomba, Magistrate Kearney was up in arms over the bodgies and widgies in town – those dressed-up teenagers with their spruced hair and polka-dot dresses who loitered around the city streets. They were seen as a threat to society.