Pete 'Pomstar' Crowley has owned and operated one of Lismore's favourite hair salons for three decades, fulfilling a prophecy foretold by a high school mate's mum. Pete shared his story of growing up in Manchester and finding his heart in Lismore with Sara Browne.

The last flood, in 2017, when they allowed us back into the CBD, we went in and of course, it was trashed. Water went about two metres high but we flicked on the light switch and the lights came on. So, we just got on with it and reopened in about eight or nine days. This one, when we went back in, there was no lights, it went above the roof.

We put something on Facebook to keep in touch with clients. I’m not a fan of Facebook I have to say but, Telea and the girls put out a post with our mobile number so people have rung and we’re managing to do a few appointments at home to keep us ticking over. People have been fantastic. Many people ringing to say ‘how can we help’ and the way you can help is – come and get your hair done. And it’s surprising that many people say ‘oh I don’t want to bother you’. They feel quite intrusive in ringing or feel that they’re hassling us. But they’re hassling us if they don’t ring. We just want to try get back to normal in a business realm as quick as possible.

We will get back in the CBD. I absolutely adore and love Lismore. It’s been nothing but brilliant to me. And I want to be back in there getting people’s hair done, buying a coffee, getting a sandwich, it’s such a great little city. We musn’t give up. We just have to keep going.

I’ve been in that shop 30 years. I arrived in Byron Bay. I had an aunty there in the industrial estate and I stayed in a caravan at her car yard. I was living in the caravan and I had $500 in my pocket. I’d come from Manchester. I came for the sunshine, of course. It was my second time to Australia. I had come out earlier for a little sort of holiday and liked it. I stayed on a one-year visa but I knew because of my hairdressing qualification I could extend that to a resident visa.

The first job I got was at Ballina Fair. No offence to Ballina but Ballina Fair was not really me. I clearly remember being there and they had the radio on and the DJ was saying, stick around because we’ve got some really exciting news. I had heard that the Sex Pistols were going to be touring in Australia so I thought the DJ was going to tell us that the Sex Pistols were going to be playing locally. So, I got very excited. Sadly, after the break, the DJ came back and the exciting news was that avocados were on special at Farmer Charlies. I knew it was time to move on.

Luckily, I met a great guy called Pop – many people in Lismore will know Pop – I ended up working with Pop at the salon where I am now in the Starcourt Arcade. He had the salon then, it was called Pop Hair. Then I took over and changed it to Pomstar and we’re still there…hanging in there.

I grew up in Manchester. I left school when I was 15, on a Friday, and I started work in a salon on Manchester on the Saturday, as an apprentice. The weird thing is – true story – on the Wednesday before, I went to my friend’s house, Ian Cheadle was his name. I was leaving school on Friday and didn’t know what I was going to do. His mum – Tracey, she was a hairdresser – said ‘come on I’ll give you a haircut’. I must have looked scruffy or something. She sat me down, she was cutting my hair and she said – I’ll never forget it – ‘you know you would make a good hairdresser’. So, if you think about that, it would have taken her about two seconds to say that. It was probably because of my devilishly good looks and great personality, all the good stuff. Nah it was probably because she thought it was the only thing I could do. I don’t know. I always got taught manners and being polite, and I could talk to people.

Back then, in inner-city Manchester when you were 15, you left school and got a job in a factory or something and that was it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So, I went into Manchester on the Thursday, got an apprenticeship, started Saturday, the day after I left school – that has shaped my whole life. If she had said ‘you’d make a good car mechanic’ I very much doubt I’d be sat here with you now as owner of a hairdressing salon. It was that moment that was my big bang. I always wondered if she had said I’d make a good chef or doctor or something…who knows where I’d be.

I stayed at the salon for my whole apprenticeship, in the middle of Manchester. It was right when Manchester was really starting to happen. I lived with my family. I lived with my brother for a while but that was too much party central so I had to go back to Mummy for a good meal and get my washing done. Manchester was great then, still is great. But the Smiths and New Order and the Hacienda…and all that was happening…and Oasis, all this music explosion. It was about 1986.

I can remember being at work in Manchester and a client coming in with a demo cassette of the Smiths first song, that kind of thing. Then New Order were starting to happen. Japanese tourists came in wanting to know where the Smiths grew up or where New Order live. It was really a great time for Manchester. After that, I came out here for a holiday and fell in love with the sunshine, ironically.

My father worked in real estate. My mother set up a childcare place from home. She was one of the first people in Britain to do that. She turned the kind of garage into a childcare centre. Perhaps that’s what gave me this knowledge of setting up your business in a garage.

She had a sister out here, Linda, who came to visit and my love for Australia began then really. To go from inner-city Manchester to a place like Australia, you can feel the wonderful space and the great place that it is, the beaches and sunshine. I can remember being at Byron, first time I went, I had a bbq on the beach with Aunty Linda and the full moon rose above the ocean. In inner-city Manchester you’re lucky to see a tree, never mind a full moon over the ocean. It was just mesmerizing. And I thought, yeah.

Going to work with Pop was wonderful because of the creativity of the hairstyles we got to do. We’d get people coming in wanting to look like a rainbow or mohawks…Pop’s salon was a very exciting place to work if you were a hairdresser. It tended to attract the different kind of stuff.

My Mum is still in the UK, sadly my Dad passed away. I went back about six years ago and it was wonderful but my heart was here in Australia. I do love Australia. I particularly love Lismore. I really do. It’s been very, very kind to me. I know when I get back in there I want to give back to Lismore if I can.

I absolutely believe in fate. It’s an interesting one, I’ve got these 11s tattooed here, you talk about fate and what not. I’ve got this thing where I see 11s all the time. Pomstar is shop 11, we opened on the 11th. My daughter was born at 11 o’clock on the 11th of September. My father passed away on the 11th of the 11th. I got a phone call to tell me and it was 11.11. So, I do firmly believe that there is something magical. It’s hard to believe at the minute. I think it’s easier to feel that and to believe in that when you’re working in a place like Lismore. Here I feel it more than in a city like Manchester.

I’ve got two wonderful children, Ruby and James. Ruby is 17, James is 11. My partner Libby’s birthday is 11/11 as well. There’s something in them ones.

Parenting is fantastic, I love it. That’s the thing, I couldn’t see myself, Ruby and James living in Manchester. I used to describe it like if you wake up here and you open your fridge and you’ve got no milk, you tend to put your thongs on – or flip flops as we call them – trudge down to the shop and get some milk. Now if it happens in England, you wake up and there’s no milk, it’s a complete nightmare. You have to defrost your windscreen, get yourself wrapped up, get in your car, drive to the shop, it’ll probably cost you 50p to park, it’s pissing down and freezing. So, there’s that.

I adore this place. The people are fantastic. I think only the people around here can deal with such a terrible flood. They are strong. All I can say is that there’s this feeling that something has come along and grabbed everyone’s life like it’s set of dice – it’s been grabbed and thrown in the air – and we’re all just waiting to see how the dice fall. I’m not sure there’ll be too many double sixes. I really hope we can get back to having a great Lismore CBD and residential area. It’s going to take some time this one.

There’s a psychological interaction happening as a hairdresser with a client. There’s something about a one on one with someone. We get to talk a lot about all kinds of stuff. We have this ability to make people feel good. If they look in the mirror and they like the way they look, it gives them a real psychological boost. I’ve always been fascinated with the psychology part of hairdressing. We get told, we listen, we hear, many things, which I like. I think if I wasn’t hairdressing I’d be involved in some kind of psychology.

I would have a career change but it’s been 30 odd years and I absolutely love doing hair. I’m dying to get into your fringe right now. Whilst I’m lucky enough to really love what I do, I’m going to stick with it. I’m very happy with Pomstar and the way that is.

A lot of people say to me – you could have 30 Pomstars all over Australia – and this, that and the other. And I could, I know I could, but I just don’t want to. I’m not driven by that kind of thing. I’m driven by creating something on someone’s head and meeting lots of interesting people.

I’ve got many clients I’ve been seeing from day one. They still look the same to me. And me to them probably. Yes, I’ve got many clients who have been with me from the very beginning.

I’ve got this thing, I need help with it. There might be a few people reading this who are helping me so I thank them. Believe it or not, I really, really want to write a book. Now, I know how that sounds. If my English teacher from school heard me say that, he would split his sides laughing because I was in the ‘special’ class for English. You know what I mean? I need help with my book.

The book would be about the different characters that come to Pomstar and having their hair done, the psychology part of it, it would definitely be a lot to do with that. Stories from the chair.

I’ll give you an example. There’s one chapter that will be called the Second Cut Syndrome. A lot of people will come in and they want a redo – they’re fed up, they want something completely different. So, we do something completely different and they love it and they go out and all their family and friends say wow that looks so good and they get such a high. Six weeks later, they come back and they say ‘do that again’. But of course, we’re only trimming it really at that stage, you can’t do anything.

Then they go out, it looks the same, it looks just as good, but of course, to friends and family, it’s not really any different. There’s a disappointment there because they’re not getting the attention or feeling they got from the first haircut. We call that the second cut syndrome. We have to explain to them - now you’re not going to get the same response even though what we’ve done is exactly the same. It’s that psychological experience that applies to many things, not just that haircut. The first kiss if you like, can we ever get that first kiss feeling again? I’m not sure we can.

I just jot things down. It would be lots of things like that, how hairdressing psychology relates to real life. A few months back, I was getting some takeaway and this lovely lady came up to me – and if she’s reading this, I apologise to her – and she said oh hi Pom how you going – and I’ve no idea who she was. I had to pretend. I guessed I did her hair. There’s lots and lots of stuff to write about, some humorous bits. It’s how a hairdressing salon really does have its finger on the pulse of the town that its in. We really do get a feel for what’s going on.

I just cannot see myself being anywhere else, I’ve got that much of a spot in my heart for this area, especially Lismore. If I won 50 million in lotto, I would live here, not Byron or anything like that. I want to be here.

Now, in regards to Pomstar, sadly we’re sat on our hands and we’re reliant on other people. That’s the big difference with this one. The last one, we could get in and do it all ourselves. This one, we need a structural engineer, we need a builder, we need a glazier, we need an electrician. There’s nothing we can do. The landlord of our shop, Theresa, is local, she’s wonderful. It’s a big company that owns the arcade so it’s them that have to come to the party.

They’ve got to get power to the arcade, fix the roof and everything, make sure it’s structurally sound. Then once they’ve got power to the arcade, we have to get someone to get power to the shop. We moved our equipment – like we have done for the last hundred years here – the rule is you move it to the second floor, which we did. Everyone did. But sadly, this went up into the second floor so we lost a lot of stuff. But in the scheme of things, we got off very lightly. We can replace a few chairs and a few bottles of shampoo. How we make money is with our hands.

In the future, I don’t know what they’re going to do. You have to think that this will happen again, sadly. Anyone who is going to open a shop in the CBD surely has to think about making sure they can get everything out. We’ve got a concrete floor for example, we’re not going to put timber on it. Maybe it’s the end of gyprock.

a song lyric from one of Pete's favourite bands The National

I love music, that’s my thing. I actually play a little bit of music with a friend of mine. I play electric bass, badly. I play it my way, as Frank Sinatra said. That’s the only way I can play it.

As daft as it is, I’m an extremely keen golfer. I love playing golf. I play in Lismore, not at the minute of course. I’m a member there. I just love the open greenness of it all. I play with a friend, sometimes there’s competitions. I’m very lucky to be going to America in four weeks and playing over there. It’s a family thing, I’m meeting my brother. It’s something we do every year but we haven’t been able to do it because of Covid. My brother lives in Manchester. We’re looking forward to that.

It’s funny how things work because I was supposed to go at the very beginning of March but we moved it. Thank god because that was when the flood happened, that was the universe saying ‘you’re not supposed to go to America yet, we’ll put that back a bit.’