Still going, underground

WHY Mod culture refuses to die.

Paul Wheller

PAUL Wheller says he "didn't want to go overboard” when he was accessorising his Vespa PX in classic Mod style.

So he drew the line at only 10 wing mirrors, eight headlights, a custom exhaust, chrome panels and a big aerial at the back with a fox’s tail hanging off it (you can buy them on the internet, he says mysteriously). He ditched the tail a while back. It was a bit over the top, he says.

The 39-year-old got his first taste of Mod culture back in the mid-’80s, at the Underground Club in Melbourne’s King Street. It made a big impression on the teenager from suburban Oakleigh South, seeing older boys there wearing sharp suits and parkas, dancing to The Jam, the Who, northern soul. “I was fascinated,” he says. “I’d never seen anything like it before. These guys were tough, but they were dressed up all smart. They looked so cool.”

A quarter of a century on, the culture retains a tiny, underground foothold in Australia’s major cities. Wheller lives and breathes it all – the music, the scootering, and of course the dress code: bespoke ’60s-style suits for nights out; fur-lined parka and desert boots for riding; Fred Perry shirt (top button done up, naturally) for everything else. Even in his bathers, he looks the part – the Fred Perry garland logo is tattooed over his heart.

Wheller, a friendly and modest soul, shares  these passions with his mates from the Melbourne Crusaders scooter club. They often ride out en masse, Quadrophenia-style. “It feels like freedom,” he says, “and it looks amazing.” Like other classic scooter clubs around the country, a lot of its new members are blokes in their 40s who’ve become nostalgic for the fashions, the sounds and the scooters that once set their teenage hearts racing. Only this time round, they’ve got some serious cash to spend. One of Wheller’s mates coined a phrase for this. He calls it a Mod Life Crisis.