The barber of Geelong

Andrew Mathieson
FOR immigrant Edward Persic, Australia will always be a land of opportunity.
He arrived at Melbourne’s Station Pier in 1968 – a once familiar last stop for many new Australians – and started work in a Geelong barber shop just two days later.
“I walked in the door and, yes, I had a job here straight away,” Edward insists.
“On Saturday I came here and on the Monday I was in the shop working.”
Edward said he first cut hair for Joe Faranda in Yarra Street, before moving across town to a Malop Street barber four years later.
His final move was to Max Gents Hairdressing in Pakington Street in 1982, which he now owns.
It still takes him aback how easy it all was.
“I came here without speaking any English – I spoke Italian,” Edward grins.
“That was alright because they were all Italian barbers then.”
The 64-year-old did emigrate from Italy to Australia but after growing up in Yugoslavia.
In fact, he was born on Italian soil during the Second World War to Slovenian parents.
“Then they changed the border and we were a part of what is Slovenia,” Edward explains.
He can now lay claim to three passports, including an Australian one.
Edward first started in a barber shop at age 15 in Yugoslavia on that Italian border.
People back then used to walk across for cheap haircuts.
“If the shop was here,” pointing to the other side of Pakington Street, “the van was where the border was,” he says.
It helped him to understand and speak not only Italian, but also Slovenian, Croatian and “even a bit of German”.
Barber shops of Europe were also a vastly different place from the hair salons of Australia today.
“Back then all the people used to come in drinking wine, playing cards and smoking like a chimney,” Edward chuckles.
“I didn’t smoke, so it affected me a lot.
“My clothes were stinking in the end.”
Edward worked 14-hour days during his three-year apprenticeship, which included three months each year at school.
He also had to obtain a masters degree to be licensed to run a barber’s shop there.
But it meant little in Australia.
It only allowed him to work for just one year before registering his craft on March 19, 1969.
Back then a haircut was worth 80 cents and the still popular shave was 50 cents.
Edward still loves performing a clean shave on many old-time customers.
“We still shave the head, the neck, the face, everything with a razor,” he boasts.
“It’s a real old-fashioned barber shop, you know?
“You can’t find that in Geelong – there’s not many left.
“But I can do new fashion, spiky haircuts, no problem.”
Edward loves life in Australia, but it didn’t start out too well.
The ship first docked in Fremantle on its way to Melbourne after 32 arduous days on board. It was hot and dry.
“I first said ‘what are we doing here’ because when we went down there was really only one street, as there was nothing in Fremantle,” he recalls.
“It was 120 Fahrenheit – and it was like a desert. We were all dressed for the winter and we were sweating like a pig.”
Now after landing in Melbourne on January 6, 1968, his past has revisited him in a twist of irony.
Daughter Katarina is working in her job as a public afairs manager for Toyota, just metres away from where her father first laid eyes on his future.