Discussion: Free

I remember Free John Zarb and variants. I think one was visible on an underpass near Camberwell Station for a couple of decades after the consription conscientous objectors had been released on Whitlam's election (or maybe I am confusing it with another venerable free graffitti). A contender for some form of heritage listing.

I think John Zarb was a colleague of my father's at the ABS for a significant period of time.

There's certainly some heritage-listable graffiti around - some from 1952 (not politically inspired) on one of the pillars of the Chandler Highway bridge comes to mind (sticks in my mind because its date, 14.7.52, also marks the flood level). There was still a 'Menzies Out - Vote No' (probably dating from the 1952 referendum to ban the Communist party) on the Malvern railway bridge in the mid 1990s, but it was almost illegible last time I was there.

During my childhood I was always intrigued by the grafitti "Poofter Payne" on the Dorset Road railway bridge at Croydon. I didn't understand what it referred to. The grafiitti certainly was old even then. I suspect it was a product of the early 1950s. It was painted over in the 1970s. I was much amused to see that in the 1990s someone with a sense of history redaubed the same spot with "Poofter Payne is back again".

Forgot the 'Vote 1 Chifley' I saw on a railway underpass at Portland (NSW) on the way to Easter in Mudgee in 1991.

you also forgot the 'get a big cock up ya' in the tunnel under caswell drive between aranda hill and black mtn.

I always thought that was some of your finest work Shep.

Noticed a few years ago that the names of a few of my fellow Aranda Primary students appeared on that tunnel (although not the one who attracted some notoriety when he got a seven-year ban from rugby league for flattening a referee).

re: grafitti "Poofter Payne"...it really must have hurt to paint it twice