Bondi as you’ve never seen it before
A Bondi local used his camera to record the carefree summer days of Australia’s most famous beach in the 1930s and ’40s. Check out his spectacular pictures.
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Beaches have always been places for creativity, imagination and freedom of expression. The 1930s saw beach culture and the Australian body — a tanned, muscular archetype shaped by sand and surf — come to the fore of the Australian identity. With the idea of a day in the sun taking hold in the 1930s and 1940s, the more physically fit entertained beach crowds with ‘beach acrobatics’ or ‘beachobatics’. But this activity would not be known today if it weren’t for the amateur photography of Bondi local George Caddy.
In those carefree years just prior to World War II, when champion jitterbug dancer George Caddy wasn’t dancing and romancing, he was busy snapping his evocative shots of the glamorous types hanging out at Sydney’s most famous beach. A Bondi resident, George used his camera to record the gymnastic feats of his friends as well as a parading populace of leisure seekers wearing the latest beach fashions.
As more and more of Sydneysiders chose to spend their off-duty hours at the seaside, the time was ripe for the evolution of the modern swimsuit. With Australian sporting legends beginning to take their place in the international sporting arena, the notion of a modern Australian super race emerged, embodied by the Surf Life Saver, and the beach lifestyle was further promoted through the new-found glamour of the silver screen.
The American motion picture industry had relocated from New York to California in 1910, and the sports clothes favoured by Hollywood actors were soon mirrored in the wardrobes of their audiences. Fashion houses turned their attention towards designing swimsuits and, as screen stars added glamour to swimwear, so style conscious sunbathers needed to keep up to date. Innovations such rubber bathing caps and beach shoes (some with ribbon ankle ties) introduced new materials, while Japanese kimono wraps and hand-painted oriental parasols lent an exotic air to beach ensembles.
The ability of movie stars to turn the most casual of popular play clothes into a sophisticated fashion became still clearer when (from 1926 on) female stars began wearing pants in public.
The 1930s saw local Jantzen swimsuit designers producing functional, sleek, and streamlined swimwear with fancy knitting which enabled intricate colour toning and patterning. Featuring up and coming movie stars as swimsuit models in their product catalogues, Jantzen claimed to have a shade to suit every swimmer.
Tanned skin was traditionally a mark of poverty. Being bronzed only became fashionable after 1923, when iconic fashion designer Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel (1883—1971) returned from a holiday cruise with a startling suntan. The popular press immediately assumed Chanel was making a style statement and overnight a tan became the “must have” fashion accessory. Throughout the 1930s the trend was towards maximum skin exposure as tanned skin became a symbol of health and luxury.
New types of clothes were designed to show off smooth golden skin, including shorts and white dinner jackets for men and beach pyjamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women. From the early 1930s, Australian beaches were frequented by women wearing midriff-baring two-piece bathing suits consisting of a bra top and modest, shorts-like trunks and, by 1934, the Daily Telegraph was debating whether women wearing two-piece swimsuits would be allowed on Sydney beaches. Jantzen’s ‘Shoulderline’ swimsuit (1931) had adjustable shoulder straps for all over tanning.
Jantzen’s 1937 moulded-fit suits used rubberised “lastex” yarn blended into the knit fabric, while the “panel suit”, retaining a small skirt, was popular for the less adventurous. Though these ensembles were alluring and sexy, they were not necessarily scandalous.
Sunglasses shielded the eyes of sun worshippers while hats became fashion statements rather than protective clothing and, for the first time since the ancient era, sandals — reinvented by Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo for costuming Hollywood’s biblical epics — became acceptable streetwear.
North Bondi local Valmae Maher turned heads in her lace-up Canadian swimsuit on 3 February 1940. This style of costume became known as a ‘swoon suit’ — so named to suggest the appropriate male reaction to a woman wearing it. The Swoon Suit was offered in one- and two-piece styles and was designed to fit the figure with adjustable ties and side laces without using elastic.
George’s interest in fashion is clear from his own clothing as well as that of the people he chose to photograph. He cuts a dash in his casually elegant combination of ‘baggy’ tailored trousers and sports jacket worn with a plain or patterned open-necked shirt and leather sandals or teamed with sandshoes and a ‘sloppy joe’ athletic sweatshirt in cooler months.
George Caddy’s precious negatives are the only record we have of the beach gymnasts who entertained crowds on Australia’s most famous beach in the 1930s and 1940s. They offer a remarkable reminder of the iconic status of Bondi Beach and the popularity of physical culture at that time as well as the ability of the camera to capture the ephemeral nature of our changing society.
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