Hurry, Hurry, Get Your Tickets Now: Teddy Trevor Recalls Shows
Teddy Trevor, 91, was born on Australian showgrounds in 1935 and can still recite the old sideshow spruik. He recalls the 1950s tent-show rush, the arrival of TV and RSL clubs, and why young showmen can no longer find permits.
Teddy Trevor, 91, a Brisbane showman born on Australian showgrounds in 1935, says he has no desire to quit the grounds after a lifetime in travelling shows, according to a Guardian photo essay published November 13, 2026. He can still deliver the old sideshow pitch: "Hurry, hurry, get your tickets now!"
The essay's author, his nephew or niece, hears the stories at the kitchen table of the family home in Brisbane, where Trevor pours tea and passes the biscuits. The mid-century heyday has passed. The grounds, he says, are still the lifeblood of his friendships and family.
Eight generations of show folk
Trevor feels blessed to belong to two great show families. The Trevors were circus people on his father's side, and the Fosters were sideshow people on his mother's. He comes from more than eight generations of show folk.
His grandmother Cora Trevor performed an iron-jaw act. She hung upside-down and spun grown men by her teeth, including her 14-stone (88kg) acrobat father.
Alice Foster, known as LuLu, arrived in Australia in 1913 as a widow with six sons and a daughter. She kept the whole family fed by running a dancing duck as a sideshow act.
Slim Dusty and the sideshow alley
Trevor's own working life began as the second world war brought the showgrounds to a halt. He started out selling fabric door to door from a vardo caravan.
In the 1950s he worked with Frank Foster, promoting Slim Dusty's tent show on the sideshow alley. The days were long. "You start at nine in the morning, you don't finish till after 11 at night, and you do a show every 20 minutes," Trevor says.
The show was a big event for the town, he says, and for some places the biggest day of the year. Men wore suits, hats and ties, and women their best dresses. "Now they go in a pair of shorts and thongs," he says.
The atmosphere of the sideshow, Trevor says, is what everyone came for. He can still recite the lines that drew the crowds: "Australia's top country-and-western recording star, the only Australian to top the hit parade in England, our only gold record-holder, is on this next big program. Hurry boys, hurry girls, get your tickets now! The cowboys, the cowgirls, the knife-throwers, the jugglers, you'll see and meet them all on the inside."
Why the grounds changed
Trevor says the showgrounds changed drastically in the early 1970s. He points to the arrival of television, RSL clubs offering sideshow talent a new way to tour, and state-based showground permits.
Those permits kept showpeople from moving beyond their trade. A clown joint, for example, can only do clown business.
The money shifted too. Performers could sing half a dozen songs at an RSL, Trevor says, "for what three or four days and hundreds of songs paid them on a sideshow".
Participant numbers fell while costs climbed, he says, and big rides worth millions moved in. "The showgrounds are saturated with equipment now," he says. "There's no more ground available, so there's no permits for the young showman."
Prices have risen as well. "They're charging $12 for a game on the clown joint. It's all ridiculous," he says.
He also remembers fellow showman Casey Nelson, who in the 1960s pitched a double-jointed horse to sideshow punters as "showing here for the last time". The act carried on for another two decades.
In Trevor's day it cost "only four bob [40 cents] to go and see the show". Some shows were three shillings, and a shilling for a child. "The money was sort of nothing," he says.
