The History of Pendragon year by year – 1989

In 1989 we were still having a regular stall at Riverside Market in Brisvegas. Lots of new fantasy styles were on the bench with moons and star inlay and colourful suedes….we made everything in suede in those days. We finally worked out that we needed shoe lasts to move forward with our shoemaking. Remember we were completely self taught at this stage so we had to work out how to use them. A few months later we made boots for our first opera production for The Queensland Lyric Opera Company…they must have been desperate! LOL The head of costume found us at the markets. Unfortunately we don’t have any photos but it was memorable! They wanted curly toed slippers…I can’t remember what Opera it was. Having been used to offering only pointed toed boots up until this stage, we initially made all of the boots pointy too. We had to re-last the toes to make them rounded squares. Considering we only had pointy lasts, that was a learning curve. We learnt a lot early on about adjusting last shapes and working with what you’ve got.
Around halfway through 1989 Adrian moved to Melbourne and Jackie went travelling with her then boyfriend (now husband) Russell. It was the start of a big adventure for both of us. Adrian started working in Melbourne on new designs and developing the art of shoemaking further, eventually having a regular market stall at the St Kilda markets with his friend Elke who made amazing suede jackets, vests and bags, and Grant Hunter (RIP) of Farout Footwear.
Jackie and Russell started travelling through Indonesia and would end up in England early in 1990.