Actor and comedian Grahame Bond created a character named Kev Kavanagh for the 1972 sketch comedy series The Aunty Jack Show and the spinoff series Wollongong the Brave. A more exaggerated version of the character was revived as the "last living bodgie" in the 1985 comedy series News Free Zone. Former Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke was nicknamed the Silver Bodgie by the Australian media for his thick silver-grey hair worn in the bodgie style and loutish behaviour before entering politics. Bodgie is a 1959 ABC television play.
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Bodgies & widgies were the first of the teen gangs in Australia post WW2 - the term "bodgie" originated in the Darlinghurst area of Sydney. It was just after the end of WW2 and rationing had caused a flourishing black market in USA made cloth. People used to try and pass off inferior cloth as American-made when in fact it was not: so it was called "bodgie". The first bodgie gang was the 'Woolloomooloo Yanks' who congregated in Cathedral Street Woolloomooloo. By 1948 about 200 bodgies were regularly frequenting Kings Cross milk bars.
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Music included a comic theme for the Elegant Inebriate, a rhumba for "The Bodgie", and romantic music for May and the Digger's Mate.
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Bissett, Andrew (1979). Black Roots White Flowers - A History of Jazz in Australia. Golden Press Pty Ltd . Clare, John (1995) Bodgie Dada and the Cult of the Cool.
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Wide Boy was filmed for Australian TV as Bodgie. There were also Australian versions of Who Killed Kovali? and Close to the Roof. In August 1961 Rienits left Australia for London, spending some time in Tahiti.
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Bissett, Andrew (1979). Black Roots White Flowers - A History of Jazz in Australia. Golden Press Pty Ltd . Bruce Johnson (1987) The Oxford Companion To Australian Jazz - Oxford University Press Clare, John (1995) Bodgie Dada and the Cult of the Cool.
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Wells died of prostate cancer on 27 March 2006, although another solo album, Greetings from the Aloha Monkey, appeared in May that year. Another posthumous album, Bodgie Dada (April 2008), had been recorded by Wells, De Soto and Grosser in December 2005.
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The ball opens in a shell-hole during the Siege of Tobruk. Two Diggers meet and dream of leave in Sydney. The scene dissolves to a bar in King's Cross. They met barmaid May and her friend Sheila plus an Elegant Inebriate and a "Bodgie".
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I've got nothing! I've got nothing!' So he threw me a bone." Walker later said of his song "Harry was a Bad Bugger", "The subject matter is a combination of three blokes that I knew when I was young in Grafton. These were older guys who were part of the bodgie generation who had washed up in regional Australia.
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Aunty Jack returned in early 2006 in a live stage show titled The Aunty Jack Show and Tell, starring Grahame Bond and Rory O'Donoghue. As well as Aunty Jack and Thin Arthur, the show featured the singing tramps Neil and Errol, Country and Eastern music exponents the Farrelly Brothers, the Ri Fol Tit Men and bodgie butcher and meat artist Kev Kavanagh.
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Soon, bodgie gangs formed at other inner-Sydney locations. After a time, moccasins and American drape suits complete with pegged trousers replaced their attire of blue jeans and leather American Airline jackets or zoot suits. The mid 1960s saw the arrival of the "sharpie" culture - The sharpie gangs were particularly prominent in Melbourne, but were also found in Sydney and Perth to lesser extents.
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Wild Cat Falling is a 1965 novel by Australian author Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson). The novel depicts the life of a former 'bodgie' as he leaves gaol and cynically searches for purpose in life. The author leaves the main character unnamed, although near the end, an old man says that this character is "Jessie Duggan's boy." The novel uses a series of flashbacks to highlight the character's struggle in the past.
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