Introduction - Following the Flip-Flop of the Thonglines
by Dominic Pettman

In one of Bruce Chatwin's most popular books, the author goes in search of that "labyrinth of invisible pathways which meander all over Australia" known as the "Songlines." Through that ethnographic shorthand which makes for great hammock reading but shaky research, Chatwin states that:

Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes - and so singing the world into existence. (2)

He then sallies forth on an Antipodean odyssey in order to trace the mysterious trajectory of the Songlines - the melodic map of belonging which is passed down the generations through the singing voice. A lovely idea, but perhaps a little romantic in its search for the origins of Dreamtime (and indeed all human endeavour) beneath the scratched patina of Australian Culture.

I believe he would have been better advised to follow that other geo-political network of tangled tracks criss-crossing the continent. The rubbery flip-flop of a more modern etiology known as "the Thonglines." Beginning in Europe, and soon incorporating a global aspect, the Thonglines now interlock with the Songlines in a postcolonial puzzle harder to unravel than a telephone extension cord.

More Sony Walkman than sunny walkabout, the Thonglines create the metronomic heartbeat of a young nation looking for compass points. They are the bindi-defying, big-toe cracking, $2.95 at K-Mart, thongs of our youth, and our parent's youth. In an age where thongs are the fashion accessory for professional urban groovers in downtown New York, we should look to this particular piece of technology as a symbol of a fragile, yet belligerent identity - both practical and strangely elusive. Something is afoot when $300, 000 Yank yuppies are sporting the same humble thong as Sharon from Shoalhaven, and I'm pretty damn sure it has something to do with globalism and appropriation (since everything else does).

After all, this is the year that Australian Vogue announced that "the iconic thong is back in fashion." (Can't you hear Broadmeadows and Parramatta just sighing with relief?) Indeed it is worth quoting our troubled taste-maker in full:

The thong is looking utterly cool again. No longer manufactured only from rubber, or produced in a puny palette, modern thongs are made out of everything from leather and raffia to velvet and suede, come in a rainbow of colours and range in height from flats to wedgies. [Which begs all sorts of questions concerning the essence of thongness, and how far you can stretch the aesthetico-ontological properties of the thong before it becomes something else; say, a sandal or a clog - see fig.1]

Many people regard thongs as an integral part of our national identity, up there with Vegemite and the Hills hoist. Surprising, then, to discover that they aren't really Australian at all. Curator at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, Lindie Ward, says the thong probably descended from the Japanese geta. "Thongs became popular in Australia because of our surf and beach culture," she says. "They're also very democratic: everyone can afford them and everyone can wear them."

Ignoring Ward's lego-centric last point (only people with feet can wear them), we must also note that this new slew of boutique thongs threatens to undermine the inherently "democratic" quality of the thong. Even now I'm staring at my partner's hipper-than-thou, Chapel St.-approved Converse thongs, realizing that capitalism really is an innovative beast, leaving nothing untouched. The postmodern millennium begins and ends with designer thongs.

And imagine the shudder of horror in the One Nation trenches at the thought of our Aussie icon being merely the humble grandchild of Japanese shoemakers. "Cobblers," they'd say. But there is no denying that a significant percentage of K-Mart thongs are made in Korea, and the "Asianization of Australia" is happening beneath our very noses (or feet, rather). Much like the ur-irony that most Australian flags waved at our great sporting events are made in Taiwan. All this gives plenty of credence to the claim that Australian identity is an import industry, or at least exposed to a global flux. Today the word "Thong" is just as likely to refer to a Vietnamese poet than grubby rubber flip-flops.

Believe it or not, The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has a special file devoted to thongs, tracing the lineage back to its ancestors, including the rubber-tyre footware of the Nigerian Zulu and the ancient Roman "minimalist sandals" uncovered in recent archeological digs (the crucial "inverted v" being the evolutionary hinge between sandal and thong). There is even documented evidence to suggest that ancient Roman prostitutes used their one-toed sandals as a sneaky form of advertising. Special markings on the sole imprinted such details as her name, price and speciality into the ground as she walks, so that the prospective client would only have to follow the inscriptions to the working lady's place of business - surely an early version of the modern Thongline.

There is a huge vacuum of information about the thong in the time spanning ancient times to the twentieth century, but we can safely say that the "sahara sandal" became the height of fashion during the 1931 European summer; an early retro craze. One man by the name of Reid, who opened a Sydney shoe-shop in 1935, claimed that his father, Clive, was the first man to bring thongs into Australia. They were known at the time as Japanese Bath Slippers.

Hearsay has it that our own Dawn Frazer kept the tradition going by smuggling some proto-thongs back from the Tokyo Olympics, so that by 1960 the Australian Women's Weekly could remark on the fact that "in recent years, growing demand for rubber-soled 'casuals' and thongs" has meant importing "great numbers from Hong Kong and Japan." It was during this time that the unusual size of the Australian foot was first noted in the industry press, and overseas suppliers began to utilize extra wide "lasts" (a frame on which the shoe is fashioned). Indeed the Australian Leather Journal (?) felt it necessary to voice their opinion that "There are no pretty feet, only pretty shoes."

An ad for Dunlop which appeared in local magazines in 1961 boasted of "over 523, 000 thongs sold this year," suggesting that the Thonglines were well and truly etched onto the landscape by this time. Indeed the records show that by the late 1970s an informal group known as the Australian Thong-Clapping Association gathered every month at a pub in Pyrmont. Perhaps it's only a rumour that one of the A.T.C.A.'s most moving recitals was captured on an acetate bootleg, which to this day is lingering in the vaults of a semi-rural community radio station, just waiting to be discovered, dusted-off and used as the basis for a tearful reunion and national R.S.L. tour.

With this rich history in mind, it seems hard to avoid touching on the fusion of political flip-flops and the Thonglines in the Australian collective unconscious (referred to as the "knotted thong" by some scholars, the Gordian Knot by others). John Howard's pseudo-backdowns on such crucial policy issues as immigration and reconciliation spotlight the Liberal government as particularly adept as meta-flip-flops - singing their own brutal economic agenda into existence with the diphthong of the truly Strine. The attempt to get international triple-A credit-ratings at the expense of any kind of day-to-day security (whether it be vocational, medical or financial) is something like a political version of the Eccles-Jordan Flip-Flop Circuit, an attempt by electrical engineers to reach "bistable multivibrator operation." While I have no idea what this means (you can read a book about it by P.A. Neeteson if you really want to know) I feel it has some rhetorical affinity with market fundamentalism and an increase in power blackouts. Indeed "bistable multivibrator operation" sounds like Kennett's vision for a kinetic, privatised Victoria.

There are, of course, more than one kind of Thongline. Different clans follow different totemic routes through life. Sydney is an important node in this rhizomatic geography, being the point at which a new directional emerges. Here the Thonglines usually refer to the mysterious white markings left on the upper part of the buttocks when the bikini-brief is removed. In a seasonal ritual praising the heliotropic gods, these particular Thonglines signify the importance of being initiated into the solar cult of the tanned. Tracing these melanomic tributaries is an important part of Queensland pre-mating rituals, suggesting that the cartography of the flesh is as important to modern Australians as the landscape which forms their baking-plate. Perhaps even more so.

My sister has a powerful psychological aversion to thongs which manifests itself through violent shudders and a nomadic nausea which begins in her eye-lashes before dropping like an express elevator into her toes. The soles of her feet form a protective layer of itchy denial against any attempt to shod them with a pair of thongs. I have my theories about this too, involving grand socio-historical theories combining Freud and the Mollymook Bowling Club. The summers of our childhood were spent in a tiny coastal pre-frab cabin with mangy seagrass matting and two orange fridges - Charles and Emily. The sound of Richie Benaud and Tony Grieg formed the sonic wallpaper for memories of interminable afternoons in a hotbox similar to that used for punishment in Bridge On the River Kwai. Adult naps vetoed any attempt to supervise our excursions across Burrill Lake to the shop which sold 20c worth of mixed lollies - so the minutes passed as if they were drowning in treacle. The bigger kids who passed our yard in a tableaux of crop-tops, bleached fringes, zinc cream, RC Cola or even KB Beer, seemed powered by the sharp smick-smack of their thongs, propelled towards adolescent experiences we couldn't even begin to imagine. The whole tranquil nightmare became a cicada-shrieking knot in my sister's head; an overdrawn memory bank with interest.

But rather than dwell on her own iconographic allergies, I'd like to invite you for a stroll along the Thonglines of my ancestors in order to appreciate some of the modern creation myths of this sunburnt country. This journey will take in many "sacred sights/sites" as viewed from the bottom-right hand corner of the continent and classified by my own brand of narcissistic anthropology: a kind of journalistic participant-observation incorporating a random sample of the politicians, media-stars, public debates and controversies which have warranted the media gaze in the 1990s. In other words, this book is about all the things I get worked up enough about to document in my own non-rigorous way. So slip slop slap and off we go.